There is a fearful symmetry to the world. Last Thursday evening we broke out the champagne because we were finally rid of Sir Ian Blair as boss of the Metropolitan police.

I actually pulled a muscle in my neck jumping up and down in delight; we rang the neighbours. They came round, already half cut, with gifts. There was a sort of carnival atmosphere – we put the central heating on for the first time since July and got the vodka out.

It was, for a brief moment, a bit like when Nelson Mandela got released from prison, bunting everywhere and glorious statements. This country has not seen a more politically craven copper, a policeman more willing to do whatever ludicrous nonsense was asked of him by the government, than Sir Ian Blair.

Never mind his penchant for having innocent Brazilians shot on the Tube – it’s the other stuff, his desperation to save his own skin, the fatuous pronouncements about Islam or the Soham murders, his delight in lucrative contracts going to a close friend.

It was more the notion that no matter how spectacularly useless they might be, monkeys such as Blair are somehow immune from censure and discipline. They live in a world beyond the one that you and I inhabit, where the state of being utterly hopeless does not remotely impinge upon their tenure or their salary. Until Boris Johnson, the new mayor of London, came along.

However, then we all awoke, the hangover not remotely having receded, to the news that Peter Mandelson was, astonishingly, to take up a place in the cabinet.

Listen: I’ve got a theory. It’s the Quantity Theory of Awful People; one goes, another comes along to fill his place.

Graham Norton has been thankfully absent from your television sets for the past few months – not to worry, here’s Jimmy Carr with a new series. Frank Lampard dropped by England? Well, here’s Ashley Cole back in the side. The Quantity Theory of Awful People – no matter what happens there will never, ever, be fewer of them in public life. The total number of people you see on your television screens every day who you wish might be suddenly evaporated by an alien death ray or consumed in some terrible conflagration will remain absolutely constant.

Blair bows out, here’s Mandelson back, grinning from ear to ear, unable to believe his luck, pledging his utmost support to a man we suspect he still can’t abide and whom he will undermine – subtly at first and then without restraint once the election has been lost – back in power.

The commonly accepted thing to say about Mandelson is that he is repulsive, yes, but clearly highly intelligent and a capable man and so on. I think that’s about half right. If pushed, I would say that the earlier part of the sentence carries the burden of truth, if I'm honest.

The notion of him being an adroit and brilliant politician has always mystified me and not simply because he once, in the foyer of a hotel, removed his trousers in front of me while being interviewed. I can cope with that and in some cases – Caroline Flint, for example – I would actively welcome such a development.

However, I think that a clever politician would not have been sacked twice from government, nor contrived to make himself loathed by the entire Labour movement.

I keep being drawn back to Alastair Campbell’s diaries with their reports of Mandelson’s perpetual scheming and borderline wacko hissy fits. You know, I’m not certain that Keir Hardie would have hit it off that well with Mandy. I suspect they would have rubbed one another up the wrong way.

They have a lot in common, Sir Ian and his replacement Peter. Too keen an interest in how they were viewed by public opinion and, paradoxically, too scant an understanding of why in the end they were so disliked. Two sides of the same coin, really.

Two of France’s most prominent intellectuals, the vacuous philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy and the delightfully misanthropic novelist Michel Houellebecq, have written a book together complaining about how appallingly they are treated in their home country. Vilified in newspapers, public whipping boys and so on. They should be so lucky: if they were English intellectuals they’d be ignored entirely.

It is true that some people wished to chop off Salman Rushdie’s head, but most of those were fanatical Muslim jihadists (and a few fellow British novelists, obviously). By and large our intellectuals live their lives entirely free of even the briefest consideration in the national press, which is far too busy with nonintellectuals such as Amy Winehouse, Jade Goody and Giles Coren.

It helps that in France the parents of intellectuals get in on the act – Houellebecq’s mum recently called her son a “stupid little bastard”. His mum, has become the French equivalent of Sharon Osbourne, a lionised egotist who owes her fame entirely to her son. But rather Mrs Houellebecq than Mrs Osbourne. And rather, by a million miles, Michel than Ozzy.

The wrong sort of vice girl

Sarah Palin, the Alaskan-separatist-pig-in-lipstick, had not the slightest intention of allowing her complete lack of knowledge about almost everything to spoil her debate with the Democrat vice-presidential candidate, Joe Biden. “I may not answer the questions in the way in which the moderators or you want to hear, but I am going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record,” she said, straight-faced, her make-up not cracking. And so, by employing the clever strategy of not answering anything properly, and then winking in the manner of a mid-market call girl, she emerged a sort of victor. Despite revealing the intellect and political experience of a whelk. A heartbeat away, remember.

Er, sorry: Tories’ rail apology is delayed

The Conservative party has unveiled an exciting new transport initiative – a high-speed rail link which will whisk commuters at the speed of light to a railway siding near Didcot Parkway where they will wait while “Railtrack carries out essential engineering work. We would like to thank you for travelling with First Great Western and wish to apologise for ruining your entire life and any inconvenience this may entail”.

It is true that Labour has not yet apologised for the invasion of Iraq, but we should remember, too, that the opposition has yet to apologise for having privatised British Rail and chopping it up into little bits. One assumes it was attempting to outdo the previously most spectacular act of state vandalism – that recommended by another Conservative appointee 45 years ago, Dr Beeching.

A tacit acknowledgment that John Major’s rail privatisation was a hideous mistake would not go amiss, preferably before they start telling us about glitzy new schemes which will not remotely improve the lot of ordinary commuters, who are sick of being told that the chief steward is called Bob and that no sensibly priced tickets are valid on this particular service and we’re really sorry for the delay/lack of seats/smell of dried fish and that there’s no buffet because the dog ate my homework and so on and so on.

A lady in Ohio has been jailed for dressing up as a cow and chasing “terrified” children. As we have learnt from the credit crunch, what happens in America is eventually repeated here. What shall we do when huge herds of women converge on our town centres, lowing?

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