Will the newspaper baron Richard Desmond extend his fabled powers of tolerance to yet another of his tactless journalists who have managed to malign an entire nation? Robert Kilroy-Silk may have lost his BBC chat show after insulting Arabs in his Sunday Express column, but he continues to enjoy the confidence of Desmond, who owns the newspaper.

But will Desmond prove to be as forgiving to Yvonne Ridley, once his most famous hackette, who made international headlines when she was captured by the Taleban having gone undercover in Afghanistan? Ridley, who is now a regular freelance for the Express magazine, told a Belfast audience last week that child victims of Palestinian suicide bombers were not innocent because they grew up to join the Israeli Army.

She also said that the phrase “suicide bomber” was insulting. “Let’s call suicide bombers by their proper name, which is martyrs,” she said.

Ridley, who recently converted to Islam, said that there was no such thing as an innocent Israeli, because they were either in the army or supported it.

Her remarks, to the Islamic Student Association, will cause fury among Jews living in Britain. “There are no innocents in this war,” she told the audience. “The big shame about suicide bombers is that they rarely target their tormentors and kill innocents.”

Ridley, 45, who used to work for the Arab television station al-Jazeera and has written a book about suicide bombers called Ticket to Paradise, insisted that the remarks were not anti-Semitic. She said that she enjoyed a good relationship with Richard Desmond.

But will that still be the case once Desmond, who is Jewish, has studied the text of her speech?

• Let’s hope that Michael Portillo’s acumen for theatrical criticism in his new aisle-sitter’s job at the New Statesman is somewhat stronger than his gifts (or not) as an Oscar prognosticator. He ended his column in ES magazine with an encomium to the young American actress Scarlett Johansson (Lost In Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring). “An Oscar at age 19,” gushes Portillo, “would cause a sensation. I cannot think of anything more appropriate.” Or unlikely. Johansson, poor love, failed even to get a nomination. Still, Portillo’s poor judgment probably qualifies him to be Chairman of the BBC.

  Absolutely powerless after Hutton

  ABSOLUTE POWER, the Radio 4 series about a political PR company, starring Stephen Fry, will not be censored after all. The BBC changed its mind last night about shelving Thursday’s episode, in which Prentiss McCabe PR wins a contract to represent the Government as well as the BBC, and which refers to the Hutton inquiry. It will now be broadcast, even though a spokesman conceded that it might be “possibly slightly inappropriate ”. Who said the BBC had lost its nerve?

• Mark Byford, the BBC’s acting Director-General, can seek advice about handling damaged organisations from his father, Sir Lawrie Byford, a former chief inspector of constabulary, who investigated why the police took so long to catch Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. His report is still a secret 20 years later.

JUNGLE DRUMS

ALEX BEST broke down in I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here, but it had nothing to do with the driving ban imposed on George, her alcoholic husband, of which she is blissfully unaware, deprived as she is of news from home.

• The tears came before the ludicrous bushtucker trial to win supper for her fellow contestants. This involved placing her head in tanks containing eels, maggots, cockroaches and spiders, turkey feathers and the inevitable harmless snakes. She had a minute in each to pick up stars in her mouth. She ducked the snake challenge.

  For one contestant it was the last supper. Viewers decided that Mike Read, the 51-year-old former Radio 1 disc jockey, was the most boring of the bunch and sent him packing last night. He was second favourite, at 9/4, to be voted off after Diane Modahl, who lives to see another day in the jungle.

  PS...

• Barry Manilow said that chest pains which put him in hospital for 24 hours in Palm Springs were the result of a “broken heart”. The crooner, 57, who was released after tests yesterday, blamed a case he is fighting to win back rights to his musical Harmony from the producer Mark Schwartz, whom he blames for its cancellation. Manilow said that watching the creative team enduring testimony “literally broke my heart”.

  people@thetimes.co.uk

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