Newcastle 29 West Hartlepool 13

PERCY HAS just been violently sick, for the third time in an hour. While we weren't looking, he jumped up and ate a bag of jelly babies which a kind friend had given to our infant. Something in these sweets (would it perhaps be E numbers?) produces not merely nausea, but outright madness in a dog. Percy when sane is irritating enough. But Percy mad is a dreadful companion. He lets out whoops and moans as if the terrors of hell had been revealed to him. He becomes hyperactive. He runs hither and thither. Nothing said or done or shouted to him has a calming effect on him. Howl, howl, howl, howl, as King Lear says at his most abject moment. Last time something similar happened - he ate a whole box of chocolates on that particular occasion - he was mad and vomiting for 24 hours.

BRITAIN'S BEST-LOVED REPLACEMENT COLUMNIST

WHEN Peter Mandelson met Geoffrey Robinson in the early 1980s it was not a meeting of equals. Mandelson was a young Labour researcher, working for the MP Albert Booth; Robinson was already a junior whip.

AS A RESIGNATION, at least it had a touch of class. One of Peter Mandelson's most valuable assets has always been to judge where a story is going, and yesterday he used it once again in the service of the party.

It is still not clear to me what Mandelson has done that renders him unfit to serve in government

PETER MANDELSON awoke yesterday morning - in that house, of course - to find the right-wing press united in condemnation of his loan from Geoffrey Robinson.

THERE HAS always been an irony in Peter Mandelson's choice of parliamentary seat. Since his election to Parliament in 1992, Labour's ultimate moderniser has represented a depressed north-eastern town whose image is the epitome of the traditional Labour Party.

PETER MANDELSON'S description of himself (and the Treasury minister Geoffrey Robinson) as "exotic" yesterday in an interview on Radio 4's Today programme shows self-awareness, if nothing else.

IT HAD long been a mystery. How did Peter Mandelson afford a pounds 475,000 house on a backbench salary of pounds 43,000?

IF MARK REGAN found it unusually difficult to get to sleep last Monday night, it was not simply because his brand new daughter was giving her week-old lungs a full aerobic work-out. Bath's former inter- national hooker had just experienced his worst televisual nightmare: the sight of Richard Cockerill, the man he considers his most punchable rival, revelling in the chat show lifestyle as the nation basked in the delicious afterglow of victory over the Springboks.

Hugh Godwin says a career switch lifted the burden of comparisons

WITH REFERENCE to Blake Morrison's article ("Could these notes save your life?", 15 November), earlier this year I spent some time as

ANTHONY SULLIVAN is confident he can handle the huge weight of expectation surrounding his rugby union representative debut tonight.