I gather that Denis MacShane, the former Europe minister, is the latest MP to be informed by Inspector Knacker that his mobile may have been hacked when the No 10 spinner-in-chief, Andy "I Knew Nothing" Coulson, was editor of the Screws of the World. The Met notified Denis the Menace that his number was found in the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's files. That makes nearly a dozen MPs and ex-MPs, including Tessa Jowell, Peter Mandelson, Chris Bryant, Simon Hughes, George Galloway and Lembit Öpik. I wonder if George Osborne has checked. The Chancellor was, after all, embarrassed during Coulson's editorship by the publication of a photograph from his days as a young freelance hack. Boy George was pictured with his arm around a self-confessed prostitute and drug user. I recall Osborne denied any hanky-panky, or that the white powder in front of them was cocaine. Perhaps Jeremy Hunt should also ask the Met whether his phone was hacked, particularly as the Culture Secretary will now rule on Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB bid.

Ed Miliband is to be the first Labour leader since Neil Kinnock to address the Durham Miners' Gala after agreeing to attend July's "big meeting". It's very much an Old Labour event, with brass bands and mining union banners, and the right will no doubt revive the "Red Ed" tag. Which makes all the more intriguing Mili Minor's dithering over an invitation to speak at the 26 March anti-cuts rally in London. Union big guns mutter darkly that they will open fire if he skips the TUC demo.

The unlikely things you discover: Yasmin Qureshi, the demure Bolton MP, is a mean whistler. The Labour lawyer, who last year became one of the first female Muslim MPs (along with Shabana Mahmood and Rushanara Ali), can hail a taxi from 50 metres. Her style is a finger in each side of the mouth to emit a shrill pitch. I'm told that even Frank Dobson, the parliamentary man's man, felt emasculated on hearing Qureshi's signature tune. She sounds ideally placed to be the first woman Speaker, using a thweeeeet instead of an "Order, order".

To the BBC for a seat on the Breakfast sofa. In the green room, your correspondent bumped into Öpik, who was accompanied by a young lady I took to be Merily McGivern, his latest cheeky girl. She must be smitten to accompany the recent I Wannabe a Celebrity . . . Get Me In There! contestant to a studio so early in the day. Öpik no longer has a constituency surgery for the Torygraph to secretly record his Lib Dumbs, but I report, without resort to subterfuge, the Yellow Peril Party has postponed the selection of a London mayoral candidate until the summer. Öpik was the only wannabe to qualify for a preliminary shortlist. I hear Nick Clegg will move heaven and earth to halt the crooked-toothed Lothario.

Names in the frame to succeed the ennobled Ray Collins as Labour generalissimo: the tweeting GMB politico Iain McNichol and Luke Akehurst,
a member of the party's NEC. My tuppence is on the amiable McNichol.

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