Pembroke: Certainly not cricket

The Australians are truly taking over. Not content with mowing down our cricketers, they now admit to evil designs on our nascent national lottery. Tattersall's, a leading Australian lottery organisation, confirms that it will take part in a tender for the right to operate the government-sponsored lottery should the legislation pass through Parliament as expected.

Worse still is the identity of its co-conspirator - none other than N M Rothschild, the merchant bank, which has established an ownership consortium on whose behalf the lottery would be run.

If you paid pounds 1 to get the Next Magazine summer edition, you may have hit upon the curious hiatus where (in our copy anyway) pages 27 and 28 have been untidily and amateurishly torn out.

It's curious because the magazine (apart from six pages of men's fashion) tries to emulate glossy middle and up-market women's mags. There's an interview with Bryan Ferry, a profile of a woman escapee from the Moonies, plus an article entitled Heirs to the Good Life.

This illustrates the Poor Little Rich Boy/Girl syndrome with case studies of the Marquess of Blandford and Lisa Marie Presley. But bang in mid-analysis of Ms Presley the text comes to an abrupt halt. A loose sheet of A4 paper comes fluttering out on which the article, now written in ordinary typewriter print, continues on a very inky, dark grey photocopy. We suspect the swingeing blade of libel lawyers.

Another glitch - the kind that happens to us all - hit yesterday's FT Review of Business Books. The headline 'Hi-tec phrase book' appeared over a review of The Business Dictionary of Computers, written by Jerry M Rosenberg. The volume runs to 403 pages and wil cost you pounds 39.95.

Over the page, you notice that Mr Rosenberg has been keeping himself busy. Under the headline 'Salty Scottish tales' there's a review of another book he's written, also costing pounds 39.95 and also 403 pages long. But this one's about an Edinburgh-based shipping line even though its name is given as, yes, The Business Dictionary of Computers. If we discover the true title of Salty Scottish Yarns (of the two it sounds marginally the more entertaining) we'll tell you too.