The day the Mail forgot

The latest book of memoirs from the former Daily Mirror Editor Piers Morgan ( Don’t You Know Who I Am?) has been serialised in the Daily Mail. In last weekend’s extract, a curious ommission.

In a sort of Mobius strip of self-referential egotism, the serialised bit of Morgan’s latest book incorporates diary entries that he made about the time of the launch of his last book, The Insider, in March 2005. On the 16th, Paul Dacre, the Mail’s formidable Editor, sent Morgan a letter.

“I have done some terrible things as an Editor,” it read, “but making you a hero must be the worst! Seriously, though, a rip-roaring, tantalising read. Dinner on me soon. PS: please don’t reproduce this letter in the next volume of your diaries.”

Morgan, being Morgan, there it is, on page 48.

The Daily Mail, however, misses out March 16 altogether.

- Hello? Iranian Embassy? Yes, us again. We just wanted to congratulate you on securing the release of those 15 Brits. Oh. Wait. We’re confusing you with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, aren’t we? It’s in Whitehall. About, ooh, 1.7 nautical miles away. Sorry. We didn’t mean to congratulate you at all. Bye.

- Unhappy residents have launched a petition against Damien Hirst’s plans for his “factory-style” studio in Stroud. “We are animal lovers,” says one, disturbed by the intended “abattoir rail” and “fish preparation area”.

- We can’t help feeling that the Department for Communities and Local Government’s Preventing Extremism Action Plan is a touch limited in its scope. A press notice today announces that it will address “growing radicalism among young Jewish Muslims”. There can’t be many of those, we tell the DCLG. “I’m not working on that,” shrugs a spokesman. No. Listen. Jewish Muslims. “Like I said, I don’t know anything about it.” Clearly.

Ian McEwan may have ruled himself out of the Booker Prize ( à la Martin Amis) by describing his latest novel, On Chesil Beach, as a “novella” on BBC Radio 4. Not necessarily a bad thing. “He used to be one of our finest short-story writers,” muses Alex Linklater, founder of the National Short Story Prize. “McEwan is a master of precisely that kind of contained narrative structure.”

As one door closes . . .

Postscript

Liz Hurley tells this month’s Style magazine what, for her, makes the perfect wedding. The best champagne? The food? Elephants? No. “You need 19-year-olds snogging and vomiting,” she says. Classy.

James Doohan, Scotty in Star Trek, who died last year, is boldly going where the series creator Gene Roddenberry has gone before. On Friday his ashes will be loaded into a rocket and blasted into space. The rocket, which takes off from New Mexico on its postmortem missions, will include the remains of three others. Let’s hope the warp drive can take it, captain. Speaking of ashes, a slap on the wrist for all those gullible fools who believed

Keith Richards’s claim to NME that he mixed those of his father with cocaine and dispensed with them in true rock ’n’ roll style. It’s not true, Jane Rose, his manager, tells MTV.com . “Said in jest,” she says. “Can’t believe anyone took it seriously.” Indeed. What were they on?

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