Dave takes five for sardines and a think

In The Times, Jenni Russell reports on 24 hours with the prime minister in the Midlands. He's lost 13lb since Christmas, having given up "biscuits and peanuts" and cut down on carbs, but sometimes the dieting gets too much.

At 7.45am, in a small hotel off the M6, Mr Cameron is to be found tucking into a fry-up of egg, sausage, mushrooms, toast and tomato. "He collects his own breakfast from the buffet and, as he sits down at a table of his aides, he says, with a faint air of defiance, I'm not doing my diet today'."

At dinner the night before, Russell had thought him relaxed after a long day of speeches, interviews and selfies; wearing a polo shirt and sweater, he ordered a pint, squid and spare ribs and was "expansive and funny, whether discussing Tony Blair's belief that his essential goodness justifies his dealing with tyrants", or how bereft his four-year-old daughter Florence will be when her favourite protection officer moves on. (He watches Frozen with her in the back of the car.)

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Attempts by politicians to sound "normal" should be taken with a pinch of salt, but Mr Cameron certainly tries. He likes his holidays and falling asleep on the sofa after watching half an hour of trashy TV.

He insists on tiny windows being built into his diary for thinking time (Barack Obama's idea); when he's in Downing Street these windows can mean escaping to his flat for 15 minutes at lunchtime to make himself soup and sardines on toast. Fifteen minutes is not very long, but it's better than nothing I suppose.

Kitchen sink dramas

Why are party leaders so keen to be photographed in their kitchens?As Allison Pearson said in The Daily Telegraph, the thinking goes like this: the female vote is key; "women spend a lot of time in kitchens: let's put Ed/Dave in a kitchen! Bingo!" But Miliband came a cropper when his "bleak galley kitchen" turned out not only to be his second kitchen, but down in the basement "along with the nanny and other things that could make a Labour leader look Not Terribly Socialist".

For the BBC, Cameron's kitchen was "dressed like a set for a play", with Sam in a check shirt telling us it's "me and the family" that keep Dave grounded. "Now if I sent my daughter to a £28,000-a-year public school suchas the one Samantha attended," said Pearson, "I hope she would say the family and I', but pretending not to be posh is the name of the game here." Pearson preferred SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon's honest reaction to being filmed in her kitchen. "My husband was up most of last night cleaning," she said. "It's not always this tidy."

"Russell Brand voted the world's fourth most important thinker": I read this headline twice to make sure it wasn't a joke. But no, this is the verdict of readers of Prospect magazine, "would-be house journal of Britain's centre-left intelligentsia", as Cosmo Landesman put it in The Sunday Times. Forget the dumbing down of the so-called masses. It's the dumbing down of the so-called intellectual elite we should worry about.

Tabloid money: the political ambitions of a pouting Geordie minxette

"Jeremy Paxman made David Cameron squirm over the rise in the number of food banks under his government," says the Black Dog columnist in The Mail on Sunday. "How the PM must wish he had known Paxo is getting nearly £300,000 (double the PM's salary) for the 90-minute TV election debate and a six-hour Channel 4 election night show. That's nearly £700 a minute more than some food bank users earn in a month."

Richard Branson tells of his bank manager coming to visit the day after he launched Virgin Atlantic, says Fiona Phillips in the Mirror. The manager said he was going to close Virgin down. "This won't come as a surprise to the many small businesses whose banks have withdrawn support, despite telling government they're helping firms. The truth is, most businesses survive despite the banks, not because of them."

"Pouting Geordie minxette Cheryl Fernandez-Versini has revealed she might become an MP," says Rod Liddle in The Sun. "The babe revealed she's not keen on paying more taxes no kidding and isn't terribly mad about Labour's proposed mansion tax. And in an interview she said she wouldn't rule out a move into politics. Stranger things have happened', Chezza commented. Yep, I'm sure they have, love. I can't think of any right now, but I'm sure they have."

"You can't help but admire the film-maker Sam Taylor-Johnson for politely declining the lucrative offer to direct the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, despite it making $340m at the box office worldwide," saysAmanda Platell in the Daily Mail. "Even a pair of golden handcuffs couldn't bind her to that mindless, misogynistic nonsense again."