SIR GULAM NOON has kept a low profile over the past few months. His nomination for a peerage was blocked after the House of Lords Appointments Commission found out about his £250,000 loan to the Labour Party late last year. Since then he has refused countless requests for interviews and teased the press with only a few terse, considered comments. Today, finally, he is holding a press conference.

Although not about that. Sir Gulam’s company is to sponsor the first ever India versus Pakistan polo match in Britain this weekend. He will be announcing this at a press conference this morning, in Westminster.

Organisers may be surprised at how many political hacks are suddenly into polo.

• On Wednesday night, People was invited to cover the opening of the Mayfair club just launched by the businessman Dave West, the man who spent more than £100,000 on a ticket for the Beckhams’ World Cup party, then didn’t go because he was worried that all the beautiful folk might not be nice to him.

  The poor lamb. An hour after our People agent arrived to cover his party, West marched up to him, called him a “little f***in’ freeloading press ****” and had him bundled out of the door by bouncers.

  Our man’s mistake, we suspect, was to strike up a conversation with the one vaguely recognisable face in the room: a perplexed George Michael impersonator who confessed he had been hired solely to get photographed being thrown out himself a few minutes later.

  Mayfair. Probably not as chic as it used to be.

• No sign of the last ever producer Andi Peters at the BBC's private Top of the Pops party near Kings Cross on Wednesday night. A fairly sombre affair all round, we're told. Penultimate producer Chris Cowley was heard to remark that it was like going to a funeral, without a corpse.

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