For one person at least, predictions that Monday 24 January would be the most depressing day of the year came true, and that was Radio 4's Sarah Montague, temporary lead presenter on the Today programme. It was also true for all of us listening during both the Michael Howard and the Norman Tebbit interviews on the new Tory immigration policy.
Suffice it to say that Montague was lost for words on more than one occasion, lost the argument on several others, and lost control of the interviews even more times. She was so hostile to Howard that she left herself open to charges of partisanship.
Even when faced with an uncontroversial, self-evident truth by Tebbit, that "there are literally millions of people in other countries who would like to come and live here", she snapped back: "What evidence is there for that?"
Her repeated accusation that Howard's "language" was inflammatory, and his arguments simply "about race" and "a question of skin colour", were as insulting as they were puerile.
It was irresponsible of the BBC to leave a fledgling presenter in charge of its flagship news programme and unfair to Montague to expose her in such a way. She's good, but hopelessly out of her depth leading the show.
Even John Humphrys admits it took him years to get Today right, and with all due respect, Montague is no John Humphrys. She has her fans, but the rumour inside BBC management is that those who want her out have decided to give her enough rope. Last Monday she may just have accommodated them.
But it was a jolly Monday for our broadsheets as they pondered "Reasons to be cheerful". They shared a headline, but that was it. The Times urged us to look out for snowdrops and console ourselves there was nothing to buy in the shops until the new collections arrived, while the Guardian suggested searching for daffodils and taking advantage of the sales, I guess by buying a poncho. Yes, they came back into fashion - for a week.
Three thousand pounds for a helicopter to fly him 50 miles when a train could get him there for £97 - it's the profligate prince, the one-man anti-monarchy machine. Even more appalling than Andrew's abhorrence of public transport (and, one suspects, of the public) is the ineffectiveness of the National Audit Office. It investigated his truly obscene £325,000 annual transport costs, made up almost exclusively of private helicopters and jets to golf courses, the taxpayer footing the bill. The report was excoriating and yet it exonerated the prince, leaving us asking: What is the point of the NAO when it condemns by detail and tone, but not by conclusion?
Robert Kilroy-Silk's first edict on abandoning Ukip and setting up his own party, Veritas, was a cravat ban. Cravats for Veritas are the equivalent of chalk-stripe bespoke suits for the Tories, ie, vote losers. I wonder if any Veritasians will be brave enough to have a word in their leader's tangerine ear and advise him that permatans are an even greater turn-off.
We did not need to know that Tony Blair's new leading light, Ruth Kelly, was a devotee of the weirdo cult Opus Dei to realise she is odd. It's not because she talks like a bloke (and in an unflattering light looks like one, too) or because she eschews the eyebrow tweezers; it's just that she's a bit creepy. And the thought of her ritually self-flagellating, as an excellent BBC news investigation revealed some members of the cult are wont to do, is quite enough to put anyone off their education.
What's the matter with Charles Kennedy? David Frost set the ball rolling on Breakfast With Frost by eliminating the obvious reason why he'd got so fat: that he'd given up smoking. Kennedy explained that he had not. So why is he looking so red, rotund and sweaty? He has not looked this unhealthy since his last leadership scare. If it isn't giving up the fags, what can be the cause? Perhaps he is keeping his heavily pregnant wife, Sarah, company - by eating for two, or three, or four.
And in hypocrite's corner this week is the billionaire daughter and self-made stylist Stella (don't mention my dad and for God's sake don't mention his bloody wife) McCartney.
Sabine Durrant beautifully laid bare the designer and devout vegan's double standards in an interview for the Sunday Telegraph Magazine. Although Stella hurls abuse at anyone who wears fur or skin, she wore leather boots when she met Durrant and justified them on the grounds that they were "vintage".
As Peter McKay wrote in the Daily Mail: "Newly dead cows, bad; old dead cows, OK." Like her father, Stella suffers from selective sanctimony.
