Madonna has bought the house next door. The singer lives presently in an eight-bedroom terraced house in Marylebone, Central London, with her husband Guy Ritchie and their three children. Now she has bought the next one along. The new property has ten bedrooms and, according to reports, set the couple back more than £6 million. They also own two nearby mews houses, and two other buildings in Central London.

The Ritchies are believed to have battled over the house with Jennifer Saunders, the comedian, and Mario Testino, the photographer.

“She has said she’d like to buy the whole street,” a “source” apparently told the Evening Standard.

What a lot to spend just to be able to choose the neighbours.

Staff at Labour’s London HQ are grimly preparing for life under Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the party, and Douglas Alexander, Gordon Brown’s newly appointed “general election co-ordinator”. We hear that, even before the pair have turned up for their first day, they have acquired a joint nickname. How much will the Scotsman Alexander and the relatively thin Harman mind being referred to, collectively, as “Jock and the Beanstalk”?

A fickle thing, the limelight, and not least for a ginger child star. How wise, then, of Rupert Grint, the flame-haired Harry Potter actor (who plays Ron Weasley), to have invested his wealth already in something nice and solid for life postHarry.

“It’s really cool and it’s got a freezer in the back,” he says of his new ice-cream van. “I already drive it around, so if things don’t work out, I’ve still got the van.”

Shock news. A wisely anonymous source gets in touch to allege that Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP and a staunch opponent of the impending smoking ban, has been seen smoking French cigarettes. Highly unpatriotic. Decent British cancer not good enough for you, eh? “I smoke Rothmans,” wheezes an indignant Farage, when we call. “Although I wouldn’t say no to a Gitanes.” Non, surely.

Cameron Diaz has apologised to the people of Peru after wandering around Machu Picchu, an Inca “lost city” and the country’s leading tourist location, with a bag emblazoned with the Maoist slogan “Serve the people” printed on it in Chinese. Internal conflict against the Shining Path Maoists in Peru killed about 70,000 people in the 1980s. “Like ohmigod,” Diaz probably said, adding (this bit is real) “The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China. It was certainly never my intention to reopen what I now know is a painful wound in this country’s history,” Diaz said.

She is in Peru to record a TV programme celebrating Peruvian culture. Seriously.

An exhibition called Guitartown begins today in the building now known as the building formerly known as the Dome. It will feature 10ft (3m) replica Gibson guitars signed by the likes of Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller and Brian May.

According to the advance puffery, the special guests at the launch will be the entirely guitar-less band Keane. Idiocy or irony? You decide.

Hilary Benn, in answer to a written question in the House of Commons from Mark Hoban, a Conservative MP: “I made no regional or overseas visits in an official capacity between May 17 and June 17.”

A very surprising admission indeed from the famously hard-working International Development Secretary. Was his mind on certain other things, perhaps?

Glastonbury-script

Like many others (and, quite possibly, like trenchfoot and cholera) People spent the weekend at Glastonbury. How middle class has the festival become? This middle class: in the 50 seconds that we spent chatting to a passing Andrew Marr, two mud-streaked punters stopped to praise his History of Modern Britain.

— The BBC, of course, had its own extra-exclusive compound in the already exclusive backstage area. Still, hardly The Ritz. “Just seen Alan Yentob,” one colleague texted. “Mud up to his a*** like a Tour de France cyclist, saying he was off to see Lily Allen.”

— Many sightings of Lily Allen, meanwhile, going incognito around the festival disguised in a mushroom suit. Several other sightings, strangely, of her actor-father, Keith, also in a mushroom suit. Do they both fit into the same suit? Or is this a family with two mushroom suits? We need to know.

— Finally, Iggy Pop, we salute you. Glorious chaos erupted on Saturday when the stringy punk-rocker invited fans onstage. Dozens took him up on the offer, with our People spy even finding the time to swat the half-naked singer's backside as he sought shelter at the drumkit. Rock-hard, since you ask. Could be marble.

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