The Times is searching for a new parliamentary sketch-writer. It has been searching since the magnificent Matthew Parris departed. Ben Macintyre made a good fist of it, until he was promoted to edit the new Saturday Review. So did Joe Joseph and Richard Morrison. Many of the Times's best writers have had a bash at this most difficult job. Alice Miles was wonderfully acerbic, but her dislike of the Tories was writ too large. Let's face it, they don't need any help looking ridiculous these days.
The latest to take up the reins is Ann Treneman, and I have to say, I like what I read. It is more daunting for a woman to enter the world of parliamentary sketch-writers than for her to take a wrong turn at the Garrick Club. It is strictly Boy's Own, with their little rituals and jovial clubbiness.
The club also contains some of the finest and funniest writers in the business - the Telegraph's Frank Johnson, the Guardian's Simon Hoggart, the Independent's Simon Carr and the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts. To start in this company is like taking fifth spot in a penalty shoot-out after Beckham, van Nistelrooy, Owen and Ronaldo.
However, Treneman brings to her sketches a slightly open-eyed quality. The other sketch-writers possess and flaunt great knowledge of the workings of parliament; she writes for the common person rather than for the aficionados, of whom there are few. She has a wry, homespun wit, such as when she describes watching Iain Duncan Smith's performance at Prime Minister's Questions as "how I used to feel watching my dad dance at parties. You just want it to be over."
She also possesses a rather elegant irreverence, a healthy disrespect I have not seen much of since the death of the irreplaceable and unspinnable Tony Bevins. If Treneman manages to keep a bit of that alive, she will be doing us and him a great service.
You always know the political season is back with the return of David Frost to his big yellow armchair, presenting Breakfast With Frost. He always comes armed with a former president or two to prove his unbeatable pulling power. With the graciousness afforded only those in television who know their tenure is secure, Frost was magnanimous - and I have to say genuine - in his praise of his regular sit-in, Peter Sissons, and the one-shot Andrew Marr.
There is no doubt that, in BBC terms, Frost's big chair has become the equivalent of a casting couch, the place where talent spotted is later rewarded. Sissons is a proven performer, one of the finest broadcasters the BBC has; Marr demonstrated that his brand of quirky intellectual analysis also works in the sofa format.
Most puzzling is the graveyard slot still given to Andrew Neil's This Week (Thursdays on BBC1 at 11.35pm). Neil deserves better, as do his co-hosts, Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott. I never thought I'd say it, but they really are a terrific combo. Portillo brings grace and wisdom, coupled with Abbott's big-bosomed, big-hearted, broad-of-the-people style. They are fast becoming the Cary Grant and Mae West of late-night TV. Their hands-on appreciation of each other is something to be seen, and it should be seen earlier in the evening.
The transition from failed politician to broadcaster is not easy, as shown by Clare Short's reports from the World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancun. In theory, it was a great idea; in practice, it produced the most grating radio I have heard in a long time. Listening to her reports on Today was like waking up with a crowd of irritating women in my bed, all sneering and whingeing - part Anne Robinson, part Heather McCartney, part Kat Slater.
Short has zero warmth when talking to ordinary people and sub-zero skills when interviewing politicians. She may have a face for radio, but she certainly doesn't have the voice.
Ulrika Jonsson is the latest newspaper celebrity signing. After her first outing in the News of the World, it looks like another case of investment journalism: by offering a celeb a big-paying column, even though he/she has nothing interesting to say, a paper builds a relationship that bears fruit the next time the celeb is in the news. (I assume the revelation that Jonsson's former lover Sven - she doesn't even use his surname - has tiny feet is a reference to his manhood. But it was big enough when you thought he'd dump Nancy, Ulrika.)
Investment journalism worked a treat for the Mail on Sunday, which was first out of the blocks with the story that its columnist Carole Caplin believed she was being persecuted by the No 10 spin-machine and that her bank accounts had been interfered with. Even though I recently dismissed her column as sleep-inducing, it is money well spent by the MoS editor. We haven't seen the end of it.
