A chilly Bank Holiday in Derbyshire found me by the fire, reading (for review in Saturday’s Times) Gordon Brown’s new book, Courage – Eight Portraits. His choices (Bobby Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, the Archangel Gabriel etc) are hardly controversial, and if an apple pie had ever committed a brave act then it would have been profiled too, along with motherhood. But the Chancellor has overlooked one extraordinarily courageous woman, the victim of bullying, whose spirit of duty and self-sacrifice should be an inspiration to us all. And she sits beside him in the Cabinet.

Ruth Kelly discovered, on becoming Communities Secretary last year, an intolerable object in her in-tray. It was the Government's home information packs legislation, the pet project of the junior minister Yvette Cooper (married to Gordon Brown’s friend, Ed Balls). The legislation was obviously barmy. Ms Kelly proposed to jettison it. Ms Cooper objected, threatened (it has been reported) to resign, and complained to the Chancellor.

Down came the great clunking fist. Ms Kelly was ordered to let Ms Cooper’s scheme proceed.

So when, this month, its doom could no longer be averted, was the Minister for Housing and Planning (Ms Cooper) asked to make the necessary Commons statement? No: Ms Kelly had to. Was Mr Brown in the chamber to support his Cabinet colleague? What do you think?

An isolated figure, and to the jeers of MPs, Ms Kelly blustered loyally. She took head-on the ensuing media attack and never once complained that she was the one who had tried to stop the project.

“What separates these people of courage . . .” writes Mr Brown in his book, “is that they were prepared to endure great sacrifices . . . in the face of the greatest adversity. They are for us exemplars and icons. Their stories live on and inspire us.”

How true. Here’s hoping Ruth Kelly gets a mention in his next book.

On the way to the Hay Festival to record a programme about George Bernard Shaw for my Great Lives series on Radio 4, I missed my connecting train in Newport, Gwent.

The connection was tight but I had two minutes and saw what I guessed to be my train waiting a few yards away. Unfortunately the platform announcement of its destination was in Welsh, so I hovered alongside for the English version that would follow. The Welsh announcement took an age. Just as it finished, the carriage doors closed and the train left the station without me.

Oh, I know. Another grumpy Englishman grumbling about bilingualism. And I do realise the use of a language can be out of courtesy and respect, not mere practicality. But in my enforced wait at Newport I never heard a single passenger speak Welsh. Ears rang with a constant stream of announcements repeated in two languages, taking twice as long to convey. There were twice as many notices stuck on walls and steel posts: these too had to be in both languages – the clutter of signage confusing the eye. Network Rail was doubling the time, space, noise and visual nuisance of public announcements, and hampering access to information, for whose benefit? The largest group of non-English-speakers using Newport station are probably Poles.

Respect for the sensibilities of a language group is, I agree, a public good. But so is the efficiency of public-service announcements; the need to curb proliferating signage; and the fight against noise pollution and constant interruption. Should the first of these public goods always trump the others?

Anyway, if you’re ever trying to depart Newport in a hurry, remember the Welsh for Manchester is Manceinion, and for London Llundain.

In my continued quest to make the contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party interesting, may I suggest a Big Brother House in which Hazel, Peter, Hilary, Harriet, Jon and Alan will be confined for the next month?

We can watch them try to bond (sex would be, mercifully, unlikely), drink too much, gossip and bitch about each other; and we can see who is the second to be ostracised by the group (Peter Hain would be the first). We, the audience, can play our interactive part, while the light, matey voice doing the round-ups would be Tony Blair’s.

I can see it now. Hazel tap-dancing round a pile of lager cans; Peter blow-drying on the sun bed; Alan strumming his guitar and boring the housemates with his Seventies discographies; Jon reading socialist tracts with furrowed brow; Hilary organising a communal folk-based singsong and a daily good deed for each housemate; and Harriet alone in the corner with a bottle of alcopop, repeating in evermore Estuarial tones: “I’m just a working-class girl, me.”

The deep, burred voice of Big Brother will be Gordon Brown.

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