The public stance has been one of constant support in the face of blistering worldwide condemnation, but behind the closed doors of his offices in London's fashionable district of Kensington, Bernie Ecclestone is turning up the pressure to resign on Max Mosley, his old friend and the president of the FIA, Formula One's governing body.

Ecclestone, who could claim to be the creator of the modern Formula One, is increasingly alarmed at the reaction to tabloid tales of Mosley's alleged Nazi orgy with five prostitutes. The Mosley affair even cast a shadow over the funeral on Wednesday of Richard Lloyd, the motor racing entrepreneur who died in a plane crash last month. Some of the most famous names in motor racing - including Damon Hill and John Watson, the former drivers - were in the church in Brackley, Northamptonshire, and then met in the British Racing Drivers' Club (BRDC) at Silverstone, where there was one hot topic of conversation.

Overwhelming opinion at the BRDC was that Mosley must stop fighting his corner and go with some dignity. One close friend of Ecclestone said last night: “President Mosley is in danger of becoming motor racing's President Mugabe.”

The drip, drip of unrest from within the boardrooms of some of Formula One's big sponsors is also having an effect. Ecclestone did not become a billionaire building Formula One into box-office business without being astute and his soundings tell him that the time has come for Mosley to accept defeat.

Lost for words

We hear that Uefa has produced a trilingual pocket dictionary annotating more than 2,000 football terms in German, French and English. Michel Platini, the Uefa president, says that it will “facilitate multilingual communication in the football world”. But, alas, The Insider seems unable to find any of the words most commonly used in England's football grounds. Must be some mistake.

Princess rallies help for sake of horses

The Princess Royal has been drumming up cash for Britain's Beijing-bound athletes. The British Olympic Association (BOA), of which the Princess is president, has no government funding and has to raise £5million. The total is some way off and the Princess went to a black-tie dinner in Glasgow to put her case for cash to a high-profile audience that included Allan Wells, the 100 metres gold medal-winner at the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and Chris Hoy, the gold medal-winning cyclist in Athens in 2004.

The BOA needs £13,000 simply to get a single horse to China for the equestrian events - 14 are expected to go - while more than 100,000 items of equipment and clothing are needed for the athletes, she says.

Cafe society not what it was

Could standards be slipping at the National Sporting Club? Scions of the Professional Darts Corporation, holding its first event under the club's auspices at the prestigious Café Royal in London, were surprised to be greeted at the door by a bevy of, er, lap dancers from an establishment called Spearmint Rhino. The darts boys were expecting only a string quartet and tinkling sherry glasses. What is a Spearmint Rhino anyway?