Samantha Cameron has had a "down-with-the-kids" moment. She has met and utterly charmed Azealia Banks, a 21-year-old rapper from Harlem, New York. "Just met Samantha Cameron... She told me she loves 212...... *mind blown*", Banks tweeted. This was followed by a second message saluting SamCam as "the Michelle Obama of Britain".

One wonders how the representatives who will gather in Birmingham next month for the annual Conservative conference would react if they were told that the Prime Minister's wife is listening to this song, "212", she claims to "love". A sample of the lyrics, available on the net, reads: "You're gay to get discovered in my two-one-deuce c***-a-licking in the water by the blue bayou…"

In fairness to Mrs Cameron, the Diary's 18-year-old incomprehensible-modern-trends consultant says "212" is "a good song with a good beat", but the lyrics are belted out in such a way that an oldie like SamCam probably would not be able to follow them. Yet there is a word, which rhymes with Jeremy Hunt, which is repeated so often tat you would think even her sheltered ears would have picked it up.

At the cutting edge of reporting

"Top Tory quits to join UKIP", shouted the headline on the front page of yesterday's Daily Express. The "top Tory" was Lord Stevens of Ludgate, former chairman of Express Newspapers, who was expelled from the Conservative Party in May 2004 for supporting UKIP. Tomorrow, the Express exclusively reveals that the King is abdicating.

Reluctant apologies

Kelvin MacKenzie has had a rough ride since last week's report into the Hillsborough disaster, because it took too long for him to apologise for that Sun headline that libelled Liverpool fans. Channel 4 was on his doorstep yesterday. MacKenzie did not like that at all.

Boris Johnson showed more finesse in apologising promptly for an editorial in The Spectator in which he repeated the slander. There was always an undercurrent of sympathy for him in Westminster, because he was believed to be apologising for words that he did not write. The presumed author was Simon Heffer, who is not in apology mode.

"I had a hand in it, but at Boris's request," the Heff tells me. "Leader writers don't have any responsibility (or apologise) for things they are asked to write by their editors, so I won't be saying anything, but I of course support entirely what Boris has said."

In the steps of the literary master

This year being Charles Dickens's bicentenary, Simon Callow is back on stage delivering a gripping monologue on the life of Dickens. It ends with a description of Dickens driving himself to an early grave by overdoing public readings of his novels. You might think that Callow, who is 63, would take heed, but after Monday's performance he was to be seen celebrating at a nearby club, brushing off any suggestion he should take a rest: "It's a stimulus. It's good for you."