Couch government: the cost of Labour's shrinks

Life in the Cabinet Office has, it seems, been a decidedly stressful affair for its incumbents, of late.

The department spent more than £50,000 on chartered psychologists last year to help staff tackle anxieties and boost achievement.

While the outlay on counselling has yet to be published in parliamentary tablet Hansard, I understand that all but a few hundred pounds went to the "executive coaching" firm Praesta, which yesterday declined to reveal which ministers have opened their hearts on the couch.

The Tories' shadow Trade and Industry secretary, Alan Duncan, tabled the original question. He says that the Cabinet Office's expenditure proves that working with "a government in breakdown" is "taking its toll" on civil servants.

Two weeks ago, it emerged that Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt was among senior ministers to have undergone "life coaching" to cope with the pressures of government. The psychologists are paid a reported £250 an hour to act as mentors to Hewitt and senior policy mandarins - enhancing "emotional intelligence" and helping them to "download" problems.

"We are not coaching people about to have breakdowns," said a spokeswoman for Praesta. "We are coaching good people to make them even better."

The Treasury, the Home Office, the Foreign Office, the Department for Transport and Number 10 are also thought to use them, so the Cabinet Office bill is just the tip of the psychological iceberg. Grin and bear it, chums. It may be over soon!

Elton likes football. And they're not real sisters!

Pandora camped it up on Saturday to embrace the falsetto warbling, feather boas and naked men in fountains at the Scissor Sisters' Trafalgar Square concert, part of the Product Red initiative to help fight Aids in Africa.

The band worked with "jokey uncle" Sir Elton John on their new album Ta-Dah. "You think he's going to be like the Queen: 13 minders, bodyguards, stylists," the vocalist Ana Matronic tells me at the aftershow party. "But he is pretty regular. He sat in the corner of the studio with the radio against his ear, listening to the football."

Adds the frontman Jake Shears, wearing what appeared to be sharply tailored curtains: "Watford? What's that? I know who Wayne Rooney is, he's hot."

If Rooney dons gold spandex hot pants, waxes his chest and can reach that high C, he is apparently welcome to join the band on tour.

Fashion victims

The fraggle-haired Scouse rockers The Zutons livened up the launch of Westfield's London uber-shopping mall on Sunday night. The band appeared slightly bewildered playing to an audience of suited retail execs, fashion scribes and jewellery-bedecked models.

"I'm really sorry, I know we're at Fashion Week and that, but I spilt something all over my trousers before I got on stage," apologised the singer-guitarist Dave McCabe.

Drummer Sean Payne admitted: "We're not really into clothes. In fact we had to get a mate to buy these for us. She said we couldn't come in shitty old jeans."

Not that McCabe's dirty threads stopped waitresses from sneaking into his dressing room afterwards.

Party poopers

David Cameron's ambition to gain votes from beyond the traditional Tory rank and file has paid off already - albeit to the embarrassment of party bosses.

The deadline for members wanting their say on Cameron's "Built To Last" agenda, outlining the party's new "aims and values", passed yesterday. And I hear that Electoral Reform Services, organiser of the ballot, has fallen victim to a mass hoax.

"They didn't have a complete membership list," reveals a Tory insider. "Members of rival parties infiltrated the vote by ringing up to obtain ballot papers. What makes this worse is that a lot of genuine party members never got ballots themselves."

Time will tell whether or not the deception is grand enough to lead to the party endorsing the execution of the Queen, the adoption of the euro and the incorporation of a hammer and sickle on to the Union Jack.

When even Kate says you're thin...

At last! We receive oracle from Kate Moss on the frenzied "Are-Models-Too-Thin-Or-Is-The-Emaciated-Look-Actually-Healthy?" debate. The giggling Moss sat next to billionaire retailer Sir Philip Green at Topshop's London Fashion Week show on Sunday.

As the waistlines plummeted, she was seen turning to Green and commenting on one catwalker: "She's thin. She's too thin." Moss would herself fail the "Madrid rule", by which the city's fashion show banned models with a body mass index below 18 - although fashionistas tell me the edict is crude and Moss is "naturally thin", rather than starved.

Has anyone considered opening a burger van in Berkeley Square for the week and ending this? Doughnuts and pints of Guinness at the aftershow parties? Please!