As was revealed yesterday, the veil-wearing Muslim school teacher Khadija Ravat will be presenting the alternative Christmas message on Channel 4. Regardless of what you think of veils, however, don’t feel bad if you don’t watch it. Because she won’t be watching, either.

“Believe me,” says Mrs Ravat, “I’m going to be watching the Queen’s speech.

I like being British — being British has so much to it that can be shared by many people.” Mrs Ravat, who was born in Zimbabwe, has worn a niqab for ten years and insists that her appearance is not intended to be divisive.

Thanks to her, so much of Channel 4 suddenly makes sense. Maybe Davina McCall and Russell Brand never watch themselves either.

• Charles Haughey (the late Taoiseach) once attacked his political opponent, Garret FitzGerald, in the middle of an Irish election campaign for “having lunch with a trained English spy” — a reference to the Duke of Norfolk of the time.

  How times have changed. The guests at the Irish Embassy’s famously hospitable Christmas party in London on Tuesday night included Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the head of MI5. By all accounts, this trained English spy was made most welcome.

• Jan Leeming — keep reading, it’s good — has been offered a job as a presenter on the Sky channel Playboy One.

  According to Playboy TV UK, the former BBC newsreader “has served as a fantasy figure for millions of men”. During her recent stint in the I’m A Celebrity . . . jungle, Leeming said she would strip for Playboy for £250,000.

  Essentially, then, what is happening here is that Playboy TV is paying her not to.

  Postscript

• William Hague’s trip to Pakistan will enable him to “seek closer cooperation between Britain and the UK” according to a Conservative Party press release. Our source, we tell the Conservative Press Office, cunningly, tells us they are the same place. “It’s a typo,” we’re told. Oh.

  Will Self (a William-only Postscript today) has been appointed writer-in-residence at a writers’ retreat on the island of Jura, in the Inner Hebrides. Self tells The New York Times that he is not sure why people in a profession as lonely as writing need enforced isolation. “It’s all I can do to keep myself from being isolated all the time,” he says, forlornly.

• Catherine Tate, the current belle of British comedy, has been appointed patron of the Royal Court Theatre’s Young Writers Festival 2007.

  Previous patrons are Kathy Burke, Ray Winstone and, erm, the former Arsenal and England footballer Tony Adams.

  The award-winning comedian says: “When they asked my agent I told her to jump on it.” Forgive us, but clearly she was bovvered.

  Remember David Cameron’s trip to India in September? Three months on, thanks to a Freedom of Information request by the BBC, notes on the trip made by Sir Michael Arthur, the British High Commissioner, have been made public.

  “The Indians were very interested to see the new leadership of the Opposition,” he writes, “and struck, of course, (****** ) by their relative youth.”

  What was the blacked-out phrase? There are several others in the letter, but most appear to be names and phone numbers. This one appears to be a comment.

  “It was a comment,” concedes the FCO, explaining that it was removed under Section 27 of the Freedom of Information Act, as it “could have harmed international relations”.

  Cripes! What could it have said? Suggestions, please, to people@thetimes.co.uk. We reckon “aren’t we all”.

• Have you got a story to tell? people@thetimes.co.uk

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