Who's been caught by No 10’s candid camera? All the gossip from the Westminster Village

Who's been caught by No 10’s candid camera?

Brrng, brrng. A Deep Throat claims to know the whereabouts of the Tory Trot David Davis's missing ice axe. The broken-nosed SAS reservist's equipment-cum-weapon, you may recall, vanished when he switched offices. The caller muttered they'd heard the pick was hidden by a practical joker who had crept into his room. Concealed, indeed, above the ceiling tiles in Action Man's own lair. The trickster's ears are sure to burn if Davis tracks down the scoundrel, particularly if the culprit turns out to be a Cameroon. At the time of writing, DD was preparing to order an underling to stand on a chair and take a peep. I'll keep you posted.

Chaps straightening a tie or ladies applying lipstick in the reflective glory of the Downing Street lift are advised to smile. Visitors are, I hear, on candid camera. What we in journalism tend to call a "well-placed source" murmured that the ups and downs of No 10 are recorded for security purposes by a lens behind the mirror. So any lustful ministers who've groped a colleague or lunged at a private secretary while in the elevator should start sweating now. Every indiscretion has been observed and stored on digital disk.

The anti-third runway Guardianista Martin Linton's vote against the Tory motion opposing Heathrow's extension followed a torturous phone call. The hack-turned-lobby fodder was eavesdropped in the cloisters off New Palace Yard, snarling: "If I do that we will get a Tory government" into his mobile. He didn't, but we might still do. Linton's constituency of Battersea - which he holds by the slender majority of 163 - is blighted by aircraft noise. No greater sacrifice can a loyal backbencher make than to lay down his seat for his leader.

Problems with low-watt doors at the Energy Department. Guests walk into a glass cell, the door in front opening only after the one behind's closed. Security guards have been heard giggling that fat people regularly get trapped, an anti-intruder sensor translating bulk into the smuggling of a second person into the building. Praying mantis-thin Ed Miliband is personally unaffected but heavyweight Eric Pickles would be a liability should a Tory victory see him in the Whitehall power station.

Sniggers in Strangers' when a Yorkshire MP sneered that the Radio 4 programme Beyond Westminster should be renamed Inside Westminster. The provincial was dismayed to discover that the "politics outside the bubble" show is produced, erm, within the bubble - recorded in Auntie's Millbank Studios all of 200 yards from the Mock-Gothic Fun Palace. The truculent Tyke wondered whether BBC metropolitans believe passports are required to leave SW1, let alone undertake expeditions outside the M25.

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

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