Even for the bravest of women, the thought of going head-to-head with Julie Burchill on Radio 4's Woman's Hour (or anywhere, for that matter) is a daunting one. Yet she had a film to flog, in defence of chavs, and I had my reputation to protect - on indefensible chavs.

The Sky 1 film by the self-appointed Queen of Chavs was flawed but sassy. The basic assumption is that, because all chavs are working class, anyone who attacks them is a nasty middle-class bitch (in my case) attacking the salt of the earth and backbone of the country, etc, etc. Nonsense. All chavs may be working class, but not all working-class people are chavs - far from it.

And then there's that voice! It was described beautifully by Emily Bearn in the Sunday Telegraph as "a beguilingly raw West Country accent, which sounds as though it hasn't changed in pitch since she started shoplifting at the age of 12". Indeed, Burchill has a face for radio and a voice for print.

And yet, against all the TV rules, the film worked: it sustained and it provoked. On Woman's Hour, Burchill was surprisingly funny, frank and frighteningly fast. Which is exactly why she is yeah, but no, but - no chav.

The marvellous Sunday Times Culture magazine could not have put it more succinctly. With the return of my, sorry, our political show Morgan and Platell to Channel 4, viewers will not be the only ones wondering whether Platell "might finally boil over after being interrupted once too often and sock her co-presenter Piers Morgan".

I never thought I'd utter the words, but I sympathise with Prince Charles. I, too, am almost locked in a Morganatic marriage, to a partner of inferior rank at whom people want to throw bread rolls.

Has Relate helped? Will the anger management sessions work? After 13 infuriating weeks together, will Piers come to a bloodier end than Dirty Den? I can but dream. Tune in at 6pm on Saturday to find out.

There comes a point in the career of many journalists where their craven desire to please their contacts exposes them to ridicule, and that moment came for Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer this month. Rawnsley is arguably the commentator closest to Tony Blair, so his observations are usually useful. Yet on 20 February he tried to convince us all that the Prime Minister's mauling at the hands of a Channel 5 audience was all part of a master spin plan, No 10's "masochism strategy". Rawnsley's sycophancy strategy, more like. He went on to argue "it is vital that people are rude to Blair" so that he can, like any fallen celebrity, "submit to a dose of ritual humiliation" and thereby show his humility.

Rawnsley writes like a teenage girl drooling over the lead singer in a boy band: love has made him blind. If there were one shred of truth in his analysis, then surely Blair would have humbled himself in front of a larger audience than that attracted by Channel 5, a great little station with equally little ratings.

Instead of a strategy, perhaps it was just payback time. Let's not forget, Channel 5 was the only channel prepared to take on Alastair Campbell and give him his own TV show after he was booted out of Downing Street.

And while we're on the dark master of spin, we now have incontrovertible proof that the Prime Minister is plotting to topple the Queen. According to the Sun's impeccably sourced Trevor Kavanagh, Blair has offered to lend Campbell to Charles and Camilla to help turn around public opinion over their impending marriage. Perhaps Campbell can make Camilla as popular as Cherie.

From the sublime to the ridiculing, within one newspaper stable. On the Saturday, the Times gave over its entire page three to the gay couple who "have made history by announcing their engagement in the Times today". Mark Jones and John O'Connor plan a civil union, which will be blessed in an Anglican church in west London. How Times have changed. Yet not for the Sun. Only a couple of days later, after it was announced that the navy would be advertising for sailors in gay magazines, the red top ran a full-page spoof of the "Your Country Needs You" poster under the headline "Hello sailor". This caller to arms had an earring, Village People moustache, bling ring and an unmistakably limp wrist.

It was like watching a Carry On film, outdated and just not very funny any more. Yet a vast number of potential recruits will be from the working classes, the very people who buy the Sun in their millions. Is it really such a smart move to be so patronising to them, and their mums and dads and brothers and sisters?

Or perhaps they think all gay people read the Mirror.