A FEUD involving a cook, a brigadier, his wife and flat chocolate cake culminated yesterday in the Ministry of Defence being sued for constructive dismissal.

I HAD a bowl of Shreddies and Grape Nuts in the morning, and a glass of milk. I'm the only doctor I know who doesn't live on coffee. I was at the hospital by 8.15, and spent the morning assisting in the operating theatre. At 12.30 I had lunch in the doctors' room off the ward. I had a can of Irn Bru, an apple, and some sandwiches I'd made in the morning. I use Safeway's granary bread and peanut butter. I get through so much peanut butter that I have to buy it in 3kg tubs. While I ate lunch I wrote up some overhead projector acetates for a case presentation I was making afterwards to some staff and students. In the afternoon I was in the frac

WHEN food processors first came on the market in the Seventies, the idea was that they would slice, shred, mix, blend and mince without the fiddly business of having to fit a different accessory for each job. Today's food processor, though, is likely to have more accessories than Imelda Marcos. There are specialised attachments for virtually every kitchen task you've ever heard of - and some that you probably haven't. You can also buy a food processor combined with a blender, a food processor with a mini-bowl for preparing small quantities, or even, for the ultimate in culinary one-upmanship, invest in a food-processing system instead - a mixer, processor and blender in one.

IT WAS all winks and whispers after the Free Handicap here yesterday, but for those who stopped to draw some conclusions the messages were clear enough. Redoubtable may win the 2,000 Guineas. Unblest probably will not. And Lemon Souffle, favourite for the 1,000 Guineas throughout the winter, is far from certain even to line up for the season's first Classic a fortnight today.

There were two troubling things about the photograph. First, although it was ostensibly a still from Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout de Souffle, made in 1959, the scene - in which the two stars, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, embrace on a street corner in Paris - does not appear in the film. It was not unusual for Hollywood studios to set up special publicity stills, but it seemed curiously at odds with the cinema-verite style of A Bout de Souffle.

We begin our series on spiced breads and cakes with a recipe submitted by Patricia Jeanrenaud of Ramsgate, Kent. 'My mother made this cake when I was young, and I continue because there is nothing else like it,' she writes. Her mother found it in The Joy of Cooking, by Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker. Ms Jeanrenaud will receive a bottle of 1989 Bukkuram de Bartoli muscat purchased from Reid Wines in Bristol.

MR KIPLING may soon be checking the decoration on his exceedingly good cakes with a computer vision system developed at the University of Wales, Cardiff.

PURCHASERS of doughnuts, beer and wine will be able to buy discounted tickets for the Royal Shakespeare Company under plans being considered by the company's new sponsor, Allied Lyons.

'He was the ultimate overgrown schoolboy. He was the voice of cricket, the sound of summer. Now he is silent.' The Sun

Sir: It is a rare occasion when a man feels comfortable about crying openly. The death of Brian Johnston is one such occasion. Yet I'm sure Johnners wouldn't have minded. He symbolised a summer of eternal boyhood, where tears mix with laughter in equal measure and where there's always an extra slice of chocolate cake.

Brian Alexander Johnston, broadcaster and writer: born Little Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire 24 June 1912; MC 1945; OBE 1983, CBE 1991; books include Let's Go Somewhere 1952, Armchair Cricket 1957, Stumped for a Tale 1965, The Wit of Cricket 1968, All About Cricket 1972, It's Been a Lot of Fun 1974, It's a Funny Game . . . 1978, Rain Stops Play 1979, Chatterboxes 1983, Now Here's a Funny Thing 1984, Guide to Cricket 1986, It's Been a Piece of Cake 1989, Down Your Way 1990, The Tale of Billy Bouncer 1990, Views from the Boundary 1990, Forty-Five Summers 1991, Someone Who Was 1992; married 1948 Pauline Tozer (three sons, two daughters); died London 5 January 1994.

SHARES in Sleepy Kids whirled 8p higher to 72p on news that Budgie, the Little Helicopter will be transformed into a chocolate cake for Marks & Spencer from February, writes Alison Eadie.

HERE is the second set of questions which offer you and your school the chance to prove that you have the knowledge and invention to grapple with fiendishly tricky questions and win an array of Sharp electronic equipment.

I DON'T know quite what it is about Mireille Johnston, the presenter of A Cook's Tour of France II (BBC 2), but you get the feeling that it wouldn't be a very good idea to cross her. It may be her delivery, which is projected as though she is trying to maintain order in a class of unruly seven year olds, or it may be the glacial elegance of her appearance, but there's something slightly forbidding about her, a sense that you will be in trouble if you don't enjoy what's put in front of you.