Just when you thought things could get no worse for Lord Black of Crossharbour . . . Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, is considering extending the proposed change in the law that will force peers convicted of a crime to give up their seats in the House of Lords. He now wants it to cover offences committed abroad.

Under the current proposal, peers sentenced to prison for 12 months or more will be barred from sitting and voting in the Upper House.

But Lord Falconer, QC, is seeking advice as to whether the Government can make the law apply to peers imprisoned overseas.

His intentions will be viewed with deep suspicion by Lord Black, who recently stood down as proprietor of The Daily Telegraph and who is under investigation in the United States over allegations of £18.8 million in misreported or unauthorised payments.

Lord Black’s Hollinger International, the Telegraph’s Chicago-based parent company, is being investigated by US securities regulators for information related to the payments. Anyone convicted in such cases faces two to five years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000.

A spokesman for the Department for Constitutional Affairs said that no single individual was in Lord Falconer’s sights in the drafting of the Bill, which is expected to be brought to Parliament in March.

The spokesman added: “The Bill will apply to offences committed here but we are looking at whether the provision should be extended to peers who commit offences abroad if they receive sentences of 12 months or more. The ban will apply whether or not the sentence is suspended.”

Lord Falconer raised some eyebrows in the House of Lords when he announced that the planned change to the law could be made retrospective. This would ensure, of course, that a certain Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, who was jailed for perjury, is forced to give up his seat.

Lookalikes

Joanne Whalley is a front-runner to play Princess Margaret in Channel 4's Margaret Rose, an irreverent dramatisation of the late Princess's troubled life. Having all but disappeared from view after the collapse of her marriage to the actor Val Kilmer, of Batman fame, Whalley made a comeback last year in the stylish British drama, Before You Go.

Oh granny boy. . .

Underneath the hellraising exterior, the Irish film star Colin Farrell is a real softie. He loves nothing more than to fly his nonagenerian grandmother to film shoots: he has done so on his past three locations. Having got his mum a walk-on part in The Recruit, it is rumoured that Farrell has secured his grandmother, Elizabeth Monaghan, a part as an extra in his current project, Oliver Stone’s Alexander, in Spain.

Uplifting suggestion

Kate Adie reveals a racier alternative suggestion for the title of her bestselling book, The Kindness Of Strangers, in a letter in today’s Times Literary Supplement. Adie says “A Grenade In My Bra was one of the more appetising suggestions.” As for the eventual title, that came out of “the seconds of sharp awareness when an anonymous figure shoved me through a doorway as the snipers grew active. It just popped up out of experience.”

Prince cashes in on marriage

Never complain again about the taxpayer-funded allowances for British royals. While the hard-working Princess Royal receives £228,000 a year, the Danish Government plans to triple the annual allowance paid to Crown Prince Frederik to almost £1.4 million after his marriage this year.

Frederik, the eldest son of Queen Margrethe, is marrying Australian-born Mary Donaldson on May 14. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Prime Minister, said that the increase was intended to cover the royal couple’s extra expenses and “significantly higher level of activities”.

All this is small beer, of course, compared with the Prince of Wales, who enjoyed an income of £10 million last year from the Duchy of Cornwall.

• So which car did Jim O'Donnell, managing director of BMW Great Britain, drive to the conference yesterday on green motor fuel with Stephen Timms, the Energy Minister? Only the 4.4 litre BMW 7 series, one of the worst gas guzzlers, which does only 18 miles to the gallon around town.

  PS...

• It is questionable whether the Danish film director Lars von Trier has a firm grasp of the English language, or all his marbles. In town to promote his latest shocker, Dogville, the enfant terrible told Time Out that lawn bowls — a “fantastic sport” and the “worst sport ever” — proves the British are perverted. He added: “When you see stuff like that then you KNOW. That and Emmerdale Farm.”
  
  

  E-mail: people@thetimes.co.uk

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