History hovering on eBay

An extraordinary result for our colleague Daniel Finkelstein and his Comment Central blog on Times Online, where he has been asking readers to identify the most expensive pieces of political memorabilia they can find for sale.

On offer on eBay, it appears, is a Volga 70 — the hydrofoil presented to President Nixon by his Russian counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, in exchange for a Cadillac and a Lincoln Continental, during talks in 1972. Bids for this fascinating piece of history (if you are into that sort of thing) start at $1 million. The exchange is discussed between the President and his Chief of Staff, H. R. Haldeman, on Nixon’s secret White House tapes, which were at the heart of the Watergate scandal.

British buyers, granted, would be left with the tricky problem of how to get the thing home. Originally registered in Richard Nixon’s Florida residence, the hydrofoil is being stored in Brooklyn. Mind you, it is a boat.

- What has happened to the “Office of the Deputy Prime Minister” sign that John Prescott has spent £645 replacing with a new “Deputy Prime Minister’s Office” sign? “No idea,” muses one of the (very few) people in Prezza’s new office. “I’ll find out.” Five minutes later, the telephone rings. “We’re going to give it as a prize,” we’re told, “to whichever journalist comes up with the silliest question of the year. Hope your postbox is big enough.”

Crikey. Us too.

- Mysterious methods of diplomacy in the Middle East. People hears that Tony Blair’s aircraft was held circling above Abu Dhabi for 15 minutes, while the United Arab Emirates President wearily paced the red carpet below. The problem was that Blair had flown from Israel — a country that, to UAE eyes, does not actually exist. Until the emergency paperwork had fully crossed his desk, as far as the Abu Dhabi air traffic controller was concerned, the big metal bird might as well have come from Narnia.

- Although nothing should surprise us about the Liberal Democrats by this stage, we were slightly thrown by the behaviour of Sir Ming Campbell on the BBC Westminster Hour last week. Asked for his views on tax credits by the improbably named Mark D’Arcy, Sir Ming waffled for a moment, before saying, “Sorry. Can we do that again? 3, 2, 1, the thing about tax credits is . . . ”Didn’t the old boy know he was live?

- Are People the only people in Britain not to have received a Christmas card from Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury? Most of our colleagues have. Have we done something wrong? It is, we note, enviously, a wonderful thing, with no fewer than six photos of the man himself. Mr Malik opens a children’s centre. Mr Malik sucks some rock. Mr Malik dresses as Santa. Etc.

In the Commons yesterday, the Tory MP Andrew Selous even mentioned, approvingly, that Malik, who is Muslim, had sent him a Christmas card.

“And me! And me!” chorused a thousand other Tories.

All them, but not us. It hurts.

- A few final words (for now) on poor Lembit Öpik (touch his bum). According to the Cheeky Girls’s thoroughly terrifying mother, Margit Irimia, who gave a helpful interview to GMTV yesterday, Öpik wooed her daughter with chocolates and a trip to the Science Museum. We find ourselves thinking of Öpik’s admission on BBC Radio 5 Live a few months ago that he may have “skeletons in his closet”. How ungallant! They’re not that thin.

Postscript

A dreamlike experience on board a Virgin Atlantic flight to London last week, when one lucky passenger found herself seated next to Courtney Love. “We started chatting, and, of course, she didn’t hesitate for a moment to ask me for some Valium,” the passenger told celebrity blog Mollygood.com. “So we both took one, maybe two, and had a totally stoned conversation about the usual, ie, music, Germany, drugs and sex.” But Love snubbed her companion on arrival in London. “I realised it was the Valium she loved, not me,” the blogger lamented.

Jarvis Cocker writes with touching sympathy on Charles Kennedy (t. h. b.?) in this week’s Time Out. “The rest of the population are getting hammered all the time, so why not the leader of a party? I’m not saying politicians should be tanked up all the time, but I just think this thing of expecting people to be paragons of virtue doesn’t work.”

Footballers’ Wives is to be adapted for American audiences, despite being axed from ITV1 last May. Says producer Brian Park: “We can’t wait to see Tanya, Jason et al as red-blooded Americans.” Instead of the paragons of Britishness they always were.Got a story to tell? people@thetimes.co.uk

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