One group attracted by the political possibilities of the foot-and-mouth crisis is the Labour whips' office. The whips have imposed fierce control orders on the movements of back-bench cattle in the run-up to the election. A message from Tommy McAvoy, Deputy Chief Keeper of the Black Book, informs MPs that "due to campaigning, no further requests for time off can be entertained".

Meanwhile, the parties are planning to fleece Fleet Street, with the Lib Dems demanding £5,000 from any hack who wants to follow Charles Kennedy on his battlebus, and the Tories demanding £9,000. Expect a Labour charge of at least £10,000 to follow the Great Helmsman on his triumphal tour.

And talking of the election, I hear that David "Over The" Hill, Labour's former head of communications, will return to Millbank from the lucrative world of lobbying, filling the tiny void created by the loss of Peter Mandelson.

Excitement about polling day does not preclude Machiavellian speculation about what happens afterwards. If William Hague loses heavily, then much could depend on the chairman of the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. The incumbent, Sir Archie Hamilton, is retiring, and my snout insists that Eric Forth and Gillian Shephard will contest the succession.

Forth is the backbencher who wears loud shirts with white collars, while Shephard is the mumsy former education secretary who reads Madame Bovary in the original French. She, it is suggested, would be more inclined to invoke the chairman's privilege of naming and shaming the 30 or so MPs who would be needed to force the vote of no confidence that triggers a leadership election. Ergo, if she gets it, the revolt is less likely to succeed.

Another nice little number will come up on the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee. Tom King, the Tory incumbent chairman, is retiring. Buggins's Law requires Labour's Barry Jones to succeed on grounds of seniority. But there is a buzz that he might hand over his safe seat of Alyn and Deeside to the Tory renegade MP Shaun Woodward (in return for a peerage, one hopes).

The next most senior Labour man on the committee, which allegedly oversees Britain's secret state, is Kevin Barron, once Neil Kinnock's PPS. Barron's only rival is the Tory Michael Mates, but his connections with the fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir must surely rule him out. But could Blair stomach a former NUM leader on whom MI5 probably had a file?

Look out, Central Office. Rory Bremner is turning his gaze on Amanda Platell, Hague's gorgeous, clouting press adviser. Bremner wants his show to create a Cruella character modelled on Amanda, with outsize pearls and figure-hugging black dress. But who could imitate her accent, from Perth, Australia, by way of fags and Fleet Street?

To the Reform Club for Rosie Boycott's farewell party from the Express. Her ex-political editor, Anthony Bevins, who quit rather than work for the publisher of Asian Babes, tells me he is writing a book about mad-cow disease and human CJD, which prompts a bystander to observe that that's about right because he is the longest known survivor.

Peter Oborne, the Sunday Express political columnist, advances the novel theory that the outbreak of foot-and-mouth is an act of new Labour sabotage designed to scupper this month's Countryside March. But then he spoils it all by insisting that, man for man, the shadow cabinet is superior to the real thing. Perhaps he has been eating the same cattle feed as Bevins.

I reported some time ago that Lord Irvine of Lairg attended a fundraising dinner in south Yorkshire, invited by the much-gifted Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham. It yielded rather less than the £200-a-plate Inns of Court gormandising in London, but tyke lawyers tend to hang on to their brass. The proceeds were supposed to be split among three constituency parties. "Where's our share?" the other two are still asking.

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