Natasha Kaplinsky wins clothes battle

Less than a week until Natasha Kaplinsky begins her new job on Five News and still no answer to the big question: what will she wear?

Station bosses are known to favour informality. And yet, while Kaplinsky is well under 40, her screen clothes have hitherto always had a whiff of that unsettlingly cleavagey friend of your mother’s. Can she dress her age? “It’s been an horrendous experience!” she wails to Radio Times, after a visit from the station’s stylists, adding that her shoes were mocked. New clothes were bought, and she has returned them all.

“Natasha will be deciding what she wears,” says a spokesman, grimly.

— Daniel Craig, above, has his make-up touched up on the set of Quantum of Solace, the worringly named new James Bond film. And we thought he only did that Derek Zoolander pout on camera.

— Supermodels — even better than big dogs. According to the Camden New Journal, crime has fallen around Kate Moss’s new home.

“With her security cameras and all the photographers out in the street, it has stopped altogether,” says a neighbour.

— A lengthy feature in the current New Statesman is called “How the rich keep the Revenue at bay”.

And, falling out of the same issue, a loose banking advert booms: “Are you using your tax-free savings allowance?”

How socialism has changed.

— At a party for Orion’s authors at the Royal Opera House, we learn that Lord Hurd of Westwell is writing a book on former foreign secretaries with his old research assistant, Edward Young, who now works in Tory HQ. “I spend my days with David Cameron and my nights with Douglas Hurd,” sighs the co-author. Ah yes. Every woman’s dream.

— Sage words from Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, on her tour of Washington. Speaking to journalists at the British Embassy, she declared that Gordon Brown “combines the best of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama”. Well, of course he does. He is a young black woman, married to a former President. That much is obvious.

Postscript

Dolly Parton is delaying her US tour because of backache. “You try wagging these puppies around a while and see if you don’t have back problems,” she said, reasonably. “I have been breaking my neck and bending over backwards trying to get my new Backwoods Barbie CD and world tour together but I didn’t mean to hurt myself doing it.”

— Our thanks to the ingenious reader who suggests that Hillary Clinton’s liking of strong peppers (People, yesterday) may help to explain a difficult period in her marriage. Ahem. Family newspaper. Enough said.

Got a story to tell? people@thetimes.co.uk

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