James Purnell, the culture secretary, is a quite remarkable man. He is a little like those extraordinary particles you read about in quantum physics, capable of being in two places simultaneously. A useful ability for a politician, especially one as ambitious as Purnell.

Look, there he is standing with a big grin on his face at the Tameside and Glossop NHS Trust. And yet we know that at the time the original picture was taken, Purnell was somewhere else entirely – in the back of a car, according to some reports. In a parallel universe according to others. Anyway, how did he manage that? Can he travel back in time, or beam a suitably smug image of himself through the ether, so that he always appears in the right place at the right time even when he isn’t? Let’s look back through the archive; perhaps there are photographs of him with Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta. Or sitting with a very serious expression, in between Jesus and Thomas at the last supper. He is the Zelig of new Labour.

What actually happened back on Tameside seems to be rather more mundane and low tech. When Purnell couldn’t get there for the group grin and grab, a photograph of him was cut out and “merged” with the earlier shot. Snippety-snip-snip went the scissors, out came the glue, and within a trice Purnell was doing what his constituents expect him to do, grinning importantly alongside a bunch of MPs. A bit misleading, you might think.

And the mystery deepens. The doctored, if you’ll pardon the pun, photo was spotted by a local journalist who jubilantly blew the whistle. The NHS trust admitted doing the cut-and-paste job but are adamant that they did so with Purnell’s consent. Purnell disputes this, saying he knew nothing about it – despite having agreed to pose in the same place as the earlier photo precisely so that the deceit could be more easily effected.

What else do we know about Purnell? He’s a former BBC bureaucrat who led that mass exodus from the corporation to new Labour in the middle of the 1990s. His rise through the ranks has been uncannily swift: he is the youngest member of cabinet. And – get this – he was the chap who led the government’s recent assault on broadcasters who deliberately mislead the public. It is a terrible thing to mislead the public, to suggest to them things which are not quite true.

Here’s precisely what he said on the issue at the time: “In both politics and television you devalue the only currency you have if you forfeit the trust of the public. Lessons need to be learnt. The right lesson is that broadcasters and producers need to respect their audiences.” No kidding, Jim. There’s probably a photo of him saying this very stuff in the House of Commons. Come to think, there’s probably a photo of him standing alongside Lord Reith, cutting the ribbon at Broadcasting House in 1932.

Brigitte shows the right way to age

How do you like your sex kittens to age? Gracefully and with the aid of botox injections and prosthetics, so that she can still turn in the occasional dignified cameo appearance in some Hollywood blockbuster as the vaguely glamorous matriarch? Or as mad as a box of frogs, with the appearance of a scorched bag lady on methamphetamine, surrounded by hundreds of yapping stray dogs and supporting a fascist political party? Give me the latter, and Brigitte Bardot, any time. At least it implies a refusal to go gently into the good night, a raging against anything and everything, a certain wantonness of the spirit.

Bardot, at 73, is still as breathtakingly magnificent as she was in And God Created Woman, although in a rather different way. That gallic pout is still there, just about, but now it is deployed as a feral warning, rather than a feral come-hither. Since giving up stripping down she’s immersed herself in animal welfare issues and supporting Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National. Truth be told, I’ve always had a thing about very right-wing women – Leni Riefenstahl, Eva Peron, Alessandra Mussolini and Eva Braun. Rather belligerent women who know what they want. Add Brigitte to the list.

Bashing Boris may backfire on you, Ken

Before Boris Johnson was officially adopted as the Conservative party candidate for mayor of London, allies of the incumbent, Ken Livingstone, were alleging that Boris was a buffoon and so right wing as to make even General Pinochet wince.

But Livingstone is a bit of a gaffe-blowing political extremist himself. It was probably a faux-pas to liken a Jewish journalist from the Evening Standard newspaper to the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz. We remember his besotted courting of Sinn Fein/IRA when its members were busy trying to maim Londoners. And, recently, his scampering around Latin America to pay homage to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. Truth is, Johnson’s gaffes – Liverpudlians have a tendency to immerse themselves in self-righteous grief, etc – strike an agreeably candid note.

Johnson is liked by the public because he has a sense of humour and is averse to mouthing politically correct shibboleths. So keep drawing attention to his “mistakes”, Ken, and see where it gets you on polling day.

- The two activities this strange, puritanical, government most disapproves of are smoking and driving; now, the millions of people who every day cheerfully combine the two simultaneously may face prison as a consequence. There is not even the slenderest shred of evidence to suggest that smoking a cigarette while driving is dangerous and leads to accidents. The government merely assumes that because both things are wicked, when combined their wickedness must be squared and should therefore be punished. It is a politically correct assault on two groups of people who are assumed, these days, to be fair game for victimisation.

Every action the government takes against smokers has about it the whiff of opportunistic vindictiveness and is based upon prejudice rather than scientific evidence. Soon it will be a crime to smoke while being in the passenger seat of a car, smoking while simultaneously spitting upon a photograph of David Miliband, etc. I assume the government wishes to catch everyone out with the use of CCTV cameras; in which case I would urge all drivers to pretend to be smoking whenever they pass a camera, even – out of solidarity – the nonsmokers. Just wind the window down, exhale happily and bring your hand to your mouth once or twice. Keep the CCTV spies occupied – and confused.

- Last week a Sky News reporter said that the outbreak of bluetongue had been caused by “biting midgets”. I always knew there was something not quite right about these sinister little bastards. Let them out of sight for a moment and they gather in swarms around our cattle, snapping away with their sharp, disease-encrusted teeth. It’s time they were taught a lesson. If you see one in the high street, swing out with your boot immediately and send him flying, shouting, “Leave our cows alone!”

Sky News, gripped by some PC spasm, later said that the reporter had mispronounced the word and placed the blame for bluetongue upon some defenceless insects. Yeah, right. We know the truth when we hear it.

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