Set your videos for Mandy: the Movie. I hear that the resurrected Prince of Darkness is to star in a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Eager to share his transformation from Labour outcast to potential saviour, the shy and retiring Lord of All-He-Surveys is being followed everywhere by a camerawoman.

Visitors to an eighth-floor lair in the Department for Biz are surprised to be co-opted as extras, while Mandy is permanently wearing a microphone. The great panjandrum maintains that no deal has been signed with any channel. One Labour cynic outrageously suggested that it's because Mandy's unable to accept a fee while a minister.

MPs are a gullible lot. The Maid of Morecambe, the mischievous Geraldine Smith, enlivened a dreary afternoon in the tearoom by claiming to have been crowned Miss Morecambe in 1980. Drooling inmates demanded photographic evidence.

Enjoying the jolly jape, Smith popped to the local library in Lancashire's answer to Las Vegas, and photocopied a picture of her head on to the swimsuited body of a young lovely. The photo was a big hit at parliament. But Smith 'fessed up when an appreciative minister asked for a peep.

Broadcasters are putting the finishing touches to their election night plans. Andrew Neil will be skippering Auntie's bash on a boat. The gin palace is to be moored on the Thames, presumably so that guests can hop over the side to Mary Nightingale's ITV party at County Hall.

A source at Sky announced that Adam Boulton will be presenting its coverage from the studio, before sniffily accusing "gimmicky" terrestrial rivals of dumbing down. This from the channel that threatened to leave an empty chair if Gordon Broon refused to join its televised leaders' debates. Miaow . . .

I bring you the secret of how friends-turned-foes Mandy and Nick "Newcastle" Brown are managing to rub along, although the cabinet comrades are unlikely to be spied chatting amicably. A snout overheard the Chief Whip explaining how he and the First Minister avoid rows. "We get along fine now," boasted Newkie Brown, "because we never talk."

A Commons flunkey complained that Tory MPs are requesting extra telephone lines. Increased casework? More likely the looming showdown.

Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror