I keep reading and hearing that I have been "axed". So I want to start by assuring you - or is it myself? - that reports of my imminent demise are somewhat exaggerated. It is true that in its unfathomable wisdom the ITV Network Centre has decided to kill off the Jonathan Dimbleby programme, which it bills as ITV's "flagship" political show - and which I like to think has evolved rather well to meet changing times. It is also true that it has invited a number of independents, as well as ITV itself, to bid for the successor programme. But I have been reliably informed - by the relevant panjandrums - that they wish me to anchor the replacement. Yet I hear that someone called Andrew Neil believes he has been asked to do it in my stead. Could this be true? Who is this man, anyway? I think we should be told.
I am up at 5.15am on Wednesday to be on GMTV's sofa alongside my brother David. Our double act is to promote Dimbleby Cancer Care - a new offshoot of the family charity set up after our father's death from cancer very nearly 40 years ago. As more of us get one or another cancer (one in three at the present rate) and as more of us live longer with the disease (earlier diagnosis and better treatment), the contrast between the national "spend" to finance research into cures rather than care (95 per cent to 5 per cent) becomes ever more glaring. As a result, millions of people live with a level of pain, anxiety and fear that is devastating. Dimbleby Cancer Care aims to redress that balance of funding and (in decorous ways) to shout the odds in favour of this Cinderella service.
Our GMTV hosts treat both of us with less ribaldry than might otherwise be the case. Nevertheless, our double act reminds me irresistibly of the moment a few days earlier when we both skived off to the Southampton Boat Show. As we paid our entrance fee, the girl on the till did a knockabout double-take and exclaimed loudly: "Look, it's the two Ronnies!"
Speaking of which, the bad-taste headline of the week is on the front page of the Daily Mail. Ronnie Barker, it declares, "died from a broken heart" - an excuse for the prurient "revelation" that his son disappeared a year ago while under investigation by the police in connection with child pornography. I wonder what the great man's family must have felt when they read that on the first morning of their bereavement.
On the plane to New York for my Sunday programme, I read the tabloid cuttings about my interviewee. She emerges as a rather dubious character: a topless dancer turned gold-digger who lost a leg and then made the most of it - even to the point of persuading a deluded Paul McCartney to fall in love with her while on the rebound from Linda's tragic death from cancer. But so far from being a manipulative monster, Heather Mills McCartney strikes me as an informed and compassionate woman using her "celebrity" status exceptionally well to campaign for issues that matter. After all, landmines and the Chinese practice of skinning cats and dogs alive to make cheap furs for western fashion houses do not exactly add to the gaiety of nations. You have to be tough to fight vested interests and their satraps in the media - and she is. Good on her.
I feel decidedly self-righteous as I turn down a ticket for Paul's gig in Madison Square Garden that evening to fly straight back to London for VSO's Annual Supporters Meeting - I'm El Presidente - the next day. So many more people want to come than last year that we have to change the venue to the 600-seat Mermaid Theatre. The reason: we have a new patron, the Princess Royal, and this is her first engagement for us. Who says the royal family is a waste of space? No one who has to raise funds for good causes in a hard season.
Thank goodness parliament is back. The Today programme has the Home Office minister Paul Goggins in the headlamps. Under persistent but courteous pressure from Jim Naughtie he tries to explain that the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill is not incompatible with the government's urge to criminalise those who "glorify" terrorism. As I understand the minister, the bill is designed to protect believers not beliefs. So what if your faith tells you to glorify terrorism? "Well, um, I think I'd better repeat the answer I have just given," the hapless minister seemed to be saying to himself, "until this inquisition is over." I'm glad it doesn't yet count as "glorifying" terrorism to say "Thank God for Today".
