DAVE 'n' NICK 2

There's an important thing to know about working with comedy double acts and it goes like this: one of them is quirkier, more eye-catching or just plain funnier than the other. As a producer your initial contact with the Double is via the other one - the pretty/straighter/more accommodating and approachable one. But beware - let them know this is how you see it and the relationship can quickly sour. They can decide this is how it is - you can't. So don't give all of the funny stuff to one half of the pair cos in this day and age NOBODY WANTS TO BE THE ERNIE.

Which brings us to the Clegg. Did this hapless patsy really want John Prescott's job? The eternal shadow, the man with the ever-lengthening job title and the ever-shrinking job? The man whose dissident political army is being led by a Corporal Jones with his "permission to speak" catchphrase.

Like I say - nobody wants to be the Ernie - nobody, it would seem, except this compliant Muppet.

Cowell at Sea

So Not-So-Simple Simon has taken his ball back - both balls and the rest of his 80s styled self to be more precise. He may have been the star and Svengali of America's most successful-ever Talent Show and the Highest Paid Male Performer on American TV but he wants MORE. He wants America, The World, The Universe and beyond and he doesn't want to share it with anyone. Except, apparently, the lovely Philip Green. But how long will this marriage of self-love and self-interest last? How long before little SC fills PG's ample boots with concrete and deposits him from their beautiful dollar-green boat? How long, in other words, before the All-Conquering Tsar of Talent TV rolls his eyes heavenward and compares his partner of convenience to a Karaoke Businessman and presses the eject button...

The Almighty

Watched one of those great little ZigZag stitch and blow jobs on the telly last night all about Cowell. If no advertisment for fashion, taste or music it turns out that SC is the perfect poster boy for the Rule of Nepotism. To whit: if at first, second, third or fourth time you don't succeed, get daddy or mummy or a combination thereof to touch up their wealthy and influential friends to deliver you a plum opening - or, in the Great Man's case, a whole pie full of plum openings. Then just hang around dressed as a blue dog or record executive (you can hardly tell the difference) until Opportunity Knocks and you become the richest and most powerful Talent Show judge in the History of Television. Baftas, knighthoods, the Legion d'honneur, Nobel Prize and a seat in the Upper Chamber are sure to follow. 

DAVE'n'NICK

The first in a new series that could run at least until the Autumn without a major row. How could one object to having the Nation's lives and livelihoods ruined by two such lovely, well-brought-up chaps?