A tale of two Sixties

Marianne Faithfull tells The Mail on Sunday that the best night of her life was one she spent with Keith Richards. "Even now it stands out. I think it was so great and so memorable because it was just one night. That was it. And we're still great friends."

Richards has admitted that he took Faithfull to bed to revenge himself on her then-boyfriend Mick Jagger after Jagger had slept with his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg. He said he had to "jump out of a window" almost naked when Jagger came home unexpectedly while he was in bed with Faithfull and was in such a hurry that he left his socks behind. "Marianne and I still have this joke. She sends me messages, I still can't find your socks."

As this tale reminds us, the Sixties swung for Marianne Faithfull. They swung rather less for another pop star interviewed this week: Cilla Black.

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While Faithfull admitted that sheused to relax by having "a joint, or a line of cocaine, or a cigarette, or a drink", Cilla told The Sunday Telegraph that she always disapproved of drugs. "One evening I was at Brian Epstein's flat," she said.

"The Moody Blues were there and they started handing roundthis thing on a pin. It's called a spliff, isn't it?" (She says this disapprovingly in her strong Scouse accent.) "At the time I was a good Catholic girl and I didn't even smoke. I thought, How unhygienic is that everyone taking a puff? When it came to me, I couldn't wait to hand it on'."

Easy pickings

In his memoirs, Boris Johnson's father, Stanley, recalls his experience as a guest panellist on Have I Got News For You.The show's "odd one out" segment featured photographs of four houses. Three of them, says Stanley, were white, including the home of the US presidents. One of them was pink.

"I immediately recognised it as our own house on Primrose Hill. I could clearly see Tarquin, our rocking horse, in the bow-fronted window. That's my house,' I exclaimed. That's the odd one out. It's pink. All the others are white!'"

The show went out the next day. A few days later, some burglars, "no doubt grateful for the information about our address supplied on air, climbed into our house through an open window and helped themselves to the silverware".

Matthew Barzun, the US ambassador to Britain, has "proved a breath of fresh air" since he arrived here, says The Independent, even hosting rock concerts at the residence in Regent's Park. But if you invite him to supper, don't serve lamb.

Asked by Tatler to describe his ideal dinner party, the 43-year-old Harvard graduate replied: "I'll tell you what I would not serve lamb and potatoes. I must have had lamb and potatoes 180 times since I have been here. There are limits and I have reached them." The chef, Rowley Leigh, wasn't impressed. "Americans don't really get lamb," he says. "They'd rather have beef, or beef, or possibly beef."

Tabloid money: Blair's contribution to Islamic extremism

"All successful politicians have those who hate them," says Tony Parsons in The Sun. "What's unique about Tony Blair [winner of GQ's Philanthropist of the Year Award] is that he is despised by those of us who voted for him. Because Blair conned this country into a war that was totally unnecessary, a war that removed a dictator and replaced him with chaos that will last a lifetime." By "playing poodle" for George Bush, Blair "has done more to promote Islamic extremism than Osama bin Laden".

"He permanently damaged the multicultural harmony of our country. Then he left office and filled his boots." Blair is worth around £25m. "He is an adviser to American investment bank JP Morgan. He advised Kazakhstan's dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev on how to spin a massacre of his people. Anything for money. The homeless in Iraq are counted in their millions. But Blair's family have multiple homes." So philanthropy "is not necessarily the first thing that comes to mind" when we think of him.

"A French MP has demanded we should help to pay the costs of all the asylum seekers held in Calais waiting to get into the UK," says Rod Liddle in The Sun. "This is the perfect definition of cheek. How about this instead? France pays a fine every time some scrote escapes from the Sangatte camp and arrives here to claim benefits for himself and his 238 children."

"Douglas Carswell, Nutty Nigel (Farage)'s latest recruit, thinks he's brave for calling a by-election in Clacton-on-Sea on 9 October," says Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror. "I might lose,' he says, gritting his teeth ... 'There's a risk in this. But I'm putting my principles on the table.'" Oh no, he isn't. He's putting the money of millionaire right-wing businessmen Sir Stuart Wheeler and Sir Paul Sykes on the table. Just as he put the money of filthy-rich Tory donor Lord Ashcroft on the table when he took the Essex constituency (then known as Harwich) by a mere 920 votes off my Labour friend Ivan Henderson in 2005."