Pendennis

If you were thinking of marking Princess Margaret's seventy-first birthday on Wednesday with a present, do think again. 'One Christmas someone gave her a huge basket with all sorts of perfumes, oils, and lotions that took two people to carry,' recalls a former toiler at a leading fragrance company. 'The Princess and her lady-in-waiting came into our Kensington shop the day after Christmas with the mammoth gift. I knew it was Princess Margaret from the platform shoes. She had come to return the gift, and she refused to accept a credit note. "I want cash," she said.'

• Spare a thought for Mr Peter Mandelson. The 'fighter not a quitter' was once the social butterfly on everyone's A-list. Now we spot him, from the vantage point of our usual 'pec-deck', at the delightfully pretentious £1000-a-year London gym the Third Space. And - dear oh dear - Peter's working out alongside Paul from Big Brother. How long before the C-list, and the nightly company of Christopher Biggins, beckons?

• Gloria in excelsis! The frothing classes are already apoplectic at the appointment of Alan Bookbinder, an avowed agnostic, as head of religious broadcasting at the BBC. Mr Bookbinder is - whisper it softly - not only divorced but living with an unmarried partner by whom he has two children. Prepare the smelling salts again. Who has the trendy Mr Bookbinder just signed up to boost ratings on Songs of Praise? Gloria Gaynor, queen of the disco scene.

• Courtiers are bemused at speculation that they 'have no idea' how Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles might be styled in the unlikely event that she one day marries Prince Charles. (For readers unacquainted with courtly lingo, 'styling' in royal circles is a matter for the College of Heralds rather than Mr Vidal Sassoon.) 'We already call her the Duchess of Cornwall,' whispers our man in the periwig. 'Is there any reason to change?'

•Mr and Mrs Neil Hamilton are in deep water. Again. They may have to rely upon the alibis of their dining companions. One of them, they tell us, was Mr Derek Laud. But Mr Laud, we recall, had to resign as a Tory candidate before the 1997 general election after a drink driving scandal and silly confusions over his CV. His extensive work as 'book reviewer' to Prince Michael of Kent and 'special adviser' to Lord Gowrie were activities about which both were ungraciously perfunctory when asked for details. So we do pray that Derek's recollection of dinner with Neil and Christine will be crystal clear.

•Dear Doris Lessing suddenly insisted last week, after all these years, that men are having a rough time of it. She has made headlines ever since. Two weeks earlier, her fellow novelist Sir Vidia Naipaul denounced E M Forster, who 'didn't know India, just the garden boys whom he wished to seduce.' (How short Sir Vidia's memory is! It seems only the other day that he was recounting his own experience as a 'prostitute man'.) But Sir Vidia garnered a crop of headlines too. Could Doris and Vidia both have new books out soon? What a silly question.

• It's bad enough for Mr Rupert Murdoch that his daughter Elisabeth got married yesterday to Matthew Freud, the celebrated purveyor of spin. Now Murdoch's newspapers want to humiliate the raging old Europhobe too. The Times and the Sun have sent memos to all foreign contributors asking them to invoice in Euros in future 'to make the transition as smooth as possible'. What can it all mean?

• Thankfully, at least one politico need not worry about beach paparazzi or sex-pest allegations this summer. Labour peer Lord Mackenzie, the former police bigwig, is past all that. How was his recent stay in Tenerife? 'Just the usual,' he tells us. 'Sun, sea, sand and senility.'

pendennis@observer.co.uk