Bongo drums and yo-yos for our beleaguered men in Brussels

The collapse of the Entente Cordiale has also taken a fearsome toll on the morale of the harmless galley slaves working at the office of Britain's ambassador to the European Union in Brussels.

Pandora hears that the UK's coming presidency is expected to be so difficult for staff there that the Foreign Office has just paid for 105 of the ambassador's employees to be sent on a series of "stress management" training days.

At £40 per person per hour, the diplomatic staff were educated in a variety of relaxation techniques.

I'm told that (among other things) their tutor – a Canadian former choreographer called Kevin Cottam – taught them to make music on African bongo drums, play with yo-yos and draw with coloured pencils.

The whole exercise cost a little over £4,000, an expense defended by our press attaché, Jonathan Allen.

"We've been under a lot of strain in the run-up to the presidency," he said after following Blair around Brussels yesterday. "We don't have the money to pay overtime and offer bonuses, but we can help in little ways."

* The painter Stella Vine, who is very much Britart's woman of the moment, has an unlikely new "muse".

He is Tim Jefferies, the Mayfair gallery owner who achieved fame dating Claudia Schiffer during the 1990s. They were introduced four weeks ago, by George Michael's boyfriend, Kenny Goss, and have since become close friends.

Vine credits Jefferies with curing a bout of depression, and has included him in several paintings in her latest show, Stellawood.

"Tim's clever and funny, and knocks you down with his wit," she tells me. "Three months ago, I was all over the place, and at one point did literally cut my wrists. But now I've got this wonderful man to cheer me up.

"He's my new muse. My next big work will be a huge epic painting, of him as Casanova."

If nothing else, they make strange chums. Jefferies is a transatlantic playboy; Vine, who comes from the North-east, worked as a nightclub hostess before being "discovered" by Charles Saatchi in 2004.

* Michael Jackson's acquittal strikes a chord with Pete Townshend, another pop star who was recently subjected to a media witch-hunt.

The Who guitarist, right – placed on the Sex offenders' register for visiting an internet site containing child porn (he claims to have been carrying out research) – says he's "pleased" Jacko, below, got off, and reckons his trial was "absurd".

"So, another absurd celebrity trial collapsed," reads a statement on his internet site. "I was pleased Michael was cleared. My only experience of his dealings with children is that he's unselfishly helped every cause, and individual child, I have sent his way."

How so? "In one case, he hired a circus for the Down's syndrome children of a special school, and showed up happily, and – yes – in childlike enthusiasm – to watch the show with them."

* They're all for saving the world, but goody-two-shoes MPs aren't always quite so brilliant at practising what they preach.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Debt, Aid, and Trade has hired a gas-guzzling luxury coach to take members to next month's Make Poverty History march in Edinburgh.

An e-mail about the jolly – leaked to Pandora – says the vehicle will "make it as easy and as comfortable as possible for MPs to make the journey up". They'll stay at "a top-class, 4-star hotel in Glasgow, on the Friday night".

The total cost is £159. A snip, says the organiser Matthew Hulbert, since it "means you will not have to sit on a crowded minibus with constituents, and will have the luxury of a coach with DVD, toilet and air-conditioning".

* I don't know where to start with this one, except to say that Ann Widdecombe MP has been dragged into a heated row with the sex retailer, Ann Summers.

Yesterday, Widdy gave an "if I ruled the world" interview to The Scotsman. Asked what she'd most like to abolish, she replied: "Ann Summers, because its all part of the increasing emphasis in society on sex, rather than emotion and intellect."

All of which prompted Jacqueline Gold, the chief executive of the firm, to issue a statement: "I'm going to send her a goody bag of delights in the post for her to explore in the bedroom."

The bag, I gather, will contain something called a "rampant rabbit", and Widdy won't be pleased to receive it. "If they send me such items, I shall regard it as obscene mail," she said last night.

pandora@independent.co.uk