Finally, an unchivalrous end to one of the great mysteries of the age. Or, to be more specific, the mystery of Moira Stuart’s age.

When the long-serving newsreader (who gave a feisty performance on last week’s Have I Got News for You?) was rudely dumped by Sunday AM on BBC One, her many defenders were quick to cry ageism. Yet, at the same time, none of them seemed entirely sure how old she was – a problem compounded by her coy refusal to include her age in Who’s Who and the BBC’s disdain for multiple press inquiries and even, startlingly, two freedom of information requests. Eventually, a consensus emerged at 55, although some have rudely speculated that she may, in truth, be far older.

Only slightly, as it turns out. According to a researcher at the Family Records Centre in London, Moira Clare Ruby Stuart was born on September 2, 1949, at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead. Thus, she is 57. And fabulous.

A glittering turnout of the great and the good at Hampton Court Palace, where Mikhail Gorbachev hosted a gala dinner for the Raisa Gorbachev Foundation, which helps to treat children with cancer in Russia. Sir Elton John sang for the guests, who included Baroness Thatcher, Elle Macpherson, J. K. Rowling and Ralph Fiennes.

Later came the fundraising auction, including the chance to go on a hunting trip in southern Siberia, which went for £28,000. “I couldn’t believe it,” reports one shocked guest. “The social conscience of Britain were there, and a table pays almost thirty grand to go and kill a bear.”

Laurie Green, an eighty-something unrepentant Marxist from Putney, has published The Red Above the Green, a memoir of his political life. In it he recalls a Putney Communist Party meeting in the early 1980s attended by a young firebrand called Peter Hain. “He told us we were a significant force and doing a good job,” says Green. Could the last-minute support of the octogenarian hard Left swing the Labour deputy leadership battle? You never know.

In order “to welcome the London social season”, William Asprey (of William & Son and, formerly, Asprey & Garrard), the luxury Mayfair retailer, is offering free Bloody Marys at his Mount Street store between 11am and 1pm. He hopes to entice passers-by in to browse in the shop.

Something tells us that these new government plans to make middle-class drunkenness as socially unacceptable as smoking may have quite a way to go. Unless, of course, Mayfair upper-class drinking is another matter entirely.

As the world’s major leaders (and the prime ministers of Canada and Italy) gather in Heiligendamm for the G8 summit, what news of those G8 heroes of yesteryear, Bob Geldof and Bono? Both are to perform at a Deine Stimme gegen Armut (Voices Against Poverty) gig in nearby Rostock, with the “well-known” German singer Herbert Gronemeyer. But are they upset to have been left out of the summit proper?

“You’d have to ask them,” shrugs their joint spokesman Yes. That’s why we called.

Hugo Swire (Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport) and Ed Vaizey (Tory Culture spokesman) were the guests at an arts correspondents lunch at the Arts Club on Dover Street. The dessert, we understand, was a strawberries, meringue and cream affair, known as an Eton mess.

“Is that a comment on your grammar schools policy?” asked one brave hack. Frosty silence.

Postscript

— Why won’t Jack White of the White Stripes move to the homeland of his supermodel wife, Karen Elson? “Because you still haven't discovered the art of heating and cooling,” he explains to GQ magazine. “England is a country where you still have two separate faucets for hot and cold. But you turn the hot and, in three seconds, its boiling water – so you pretty much have a three-second window to wash your hands.” Fair point. But Jack, they are called “taps”.

— Manifold are the perils of Facebook, the social networking site on which users inform their friends of their every move, beloved of, among others, politicians and journalists. “Status update, 2:12pm: Jim Knight is trying to avoid having to read the submissions on his desk.” A schoolboy error from the Schools Minister.

— Low expectations from a young Sir Paul McCartney. “I wrote When I’m Sixty-Four not expecting to be here,” he tells Newsweek. “Little did I realise that I would not only reach that mark but still be here working.” He’s still working?

— Could Piers Morgan’s charm be evading the Americans? “Piers reduced a six-year-old girl to tears,” says the moral beacon that is Jerry Springer, host of NBC’s Got Talent, the programme on which Morgan is a consistently nasty panelist. “First, you do not attack a six-year-old,” he tells America’s TV Guide. “You also can’t invite [kids] on the show and then attack them for coming. I went out on the stage and said, ‘Stop it! That’s wrong’.”

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