I wanted to be a judge on the new Richard and Judy's Wine Club - it's my specialty subject

A case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time saw me about to board a flight to Manchester when the call came. Would I take part in Richard and Judy's Book Club? Eh, surely a joke, I thought, only to be told Bob Geldof was doing it. Well, that alone would put a lot of people off, but my reason for declining was one purely of location. And then R&J's Book Club went on to be a huge success and the coolest thing in publishing. So I was determined not to miss out on their Wine Club. The launch was at Channel 4 and a fine evening was had by all, from what I can remember. I was, however, disappointed not to have been asked to be a judge. After all, it is one of my specialty subjects.

Poor old Prince Harry got more than one lesson about the modern media when he was photographed roughing up a photographer outside the Pangaea nightclub in central London. This venue is so downmarket, albeit expensive, that it was favoured by at least one frisky Tory I knew, on the basis that no one who's anyone would ever spot him there.

A few days after the incident, the alleged object of the prince's affection that night, the model and aspiring actress Anne-Marie Mogg, appeared in the Mail on Sunday, explaining that she had refused an offer of a drink, and perhaps more, from the Prince. "I'm not one of those girls that celebrities can pull just because they're famous," said the pouting beauty, posing in what can only be described as a tasteful crutch shot. Overnight, Ms Mogg becomes a page-three girl. Imagine what would have happened if the prince had actually scored.

And a word of advice from one spin-doctor to another. When I worked for William Hague, it was commonly accepted that my task of selling the Tories to an unappreciative nation was only marginally more difficult than that of trying to sell the modern royal family.

Royal PR Paddy Harverson's attempt to explain that Harry was "a good lad, really" on Radio 5 Live was a spectacular PR blunder. It invited more questions than it answered. Most of the TV and radio polls revealed public sympathy was strongly with the prince, so why did his spin-doctor have to go public? There is something unseemly about a back-room boy trying to hog the limelight himself by riding on the coat-tails of his charge.

Speaking of PR, the BBC could have used some when it announced its planned 6,000 job cuts. The news was released at the same time as details for the Beeb's coverage of the American elections. It intends to send 300 people. Now, I have no problem with James Naughtie, David Dimbleby, Huw Edwards or even Jeremy Paxman going out, but journalists from BBC Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Newsround and, wait for it, the Asian Pacific Rim? It's not hard to work out how many jobs those expensive little jaunts will all add up to.

Usually, my favourite correction section is the Guardian's, but on 26 October the Daily Mirror trumped it: "Thankfully, Fidget the obese cat weighs 20lbs not 18 stone, p 14, October 18." Glad to hear it.

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