Diary

That extremely costly phone call

On Monday the Currant Bun ended a long period of uncharacteristic self-restraint by printing the transcript of a telephone conversation allegedly between the Princess of Wales and an 'admirer' (the tape had been held in a Wapping safe for two- and-a-half years). Yesterday it went one better by inviting readers to call an 0891 number and listen in on the 23-minute conversation. At a price, of course - callers are charged 36p a minute cheap rate and 48p at other times. Of that, by the way, the paper earns 28p a minute. By 5pm yesterday 22,900 eager readers had rung, generating, News International estimates, about pounds 21,000 in revenue. A tidy sum, all of which, a spokeshack assures us, will go to the NSPCC. Perhaps Relate would have been a more appropriate charity - after all the Princess is its patron. But then maybe that would have been tasteless.

THIS week's Radio Times has a vivid article, 'The Most Dangerous Place on Earth', in which Martin Bell talks about the perils of being the BBC's television correspondent in Sarajevo, where he is covering his tenth war. He previously spent 12 years in the United States as Washington correspondent but grew bored. 'I prefer Bosnia to Washington,' he said. 'It's a more real world than the White House press room.' You can say that again. Yesterday the BBC announced that Bell had been seriously injured by shrapnel.

Darling icky wink HANG on a second, what on earth does this word 'squidgy' (as in Him: 'Oh Squidgy, I love you, love you, love you') actually mean? A quick scan through the dictionaries reveals that 'squidgy' is not exactly the most flattering term of endearment for a future Queen of England. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English comes up with 'soft and wet, eg, like thick mud', while both Collins and Chambers agree on variations of 'soft', 'wet', 'moist' and 'squashy'. Yuck. Tiddlywinks enthusiasts will, of course, know that a squidger is the larger plastic counter with which you tiddle your smaller winks. So we guess that squidgy refers to anything round and plastic. But surely that's Fergie?

WELL that's it then. Peace in our time in Bosnia and Croatia. No sooner does Lord Carrington announce that he is retiring as the European Community's peace envoy in Yugoslavia than David Owen's name is mentioned as his successor. Can you think of a better man to bring squabbling factions together? Well, yes actually.

Pleasing the fans ON MONDAY night the BBC invited celebrities from the arts world to a party at Television Centre to celebrate the 25th birthday of Omnibus. Delight at the turn-out, which included Frank Muir, Anna Ford and Robin Ray, turned to astonishment when a commissionaire announced that 60 teenage fans were waiting outside. 'It would be lovely to invite them all in,' a producer said. 'Normally arts programmes don't even get one fan.' Alas, the enthusiasm turned out to be for Take That, a pop group, being interviewed for the children's programme Broom Cupboard.

THERE is some embarrassment at the Italian Inland Revenue's anti-mafia squad headquarters in Milan this week. It has just been discovered that the tune outside callers hear when they are holding on for an answer is the theme to The Godfather. 'We are too busy to listen to music,' a Guardia di Finanza spokesuomo snapped, 'it was supplied to us by Olivetti. We don't know anything about it.'

Sacred rights

SOME people will do anything to get in the papers. Yesterday the normally restrained chairman of the Countryside Council for Wales, Michael Griffith, donned a monk's habit, mounted a horse, and set off on a 60-mile trek to publicise the problems of blocked rights of way by retracing an old pilgrims' route between Llanberis and Bardsey Island nature reserve. Since the island is three miles off the Welsh coast he may have to walk on water to get there.

A day like this

26 August 1922 Katherine Mansfield writes to Sydney Schiff: 'I shall never be able to say a word to the intelligentsia. They are too lofty, too far removed. No that is unfair. It's simply that they are not in the least interested. Nor do they appear to know what one is driving at when one groans at the present state of English writing. As I see it the whole stream of English literature is trickling out in little innumerable marsh trickles. There is no gathering together, no force, no impetus, absolutely no passion] Why this is I do not know. But one feels a deathly cautiousness in everyone - a determination not to be caught out. Who wants to catch them out or give them away? I can't for the life of me see the need of this acute suspicion and narrowness. Perhaps the only thing to do is ignore it all and go on with one's own job.