Taking liberties
Tony Blair
Turns out the attorney general warned him that going to war with Iraq would be illegal. Several times. But really – what do lawyers know? He lived with one, he was one – he knows what they're like. Anyway, things change. Not facts or anything but ... things. And eventually Lord Goldsmith came round to his way of thinking – sort of – and popped a more helpful note through the door of No 10 suggesting that what Mr B wanted and had just promised George W would be OK after all.
And that was surely right. Why else would our Tone have received this week the 2010 Liberty Award (lovely medal, plus 70 grand to stick in the account) in the US for "significantly furthering the expansion of freedom, self-governance, equality and peaceful coexistence" in the world. Really, it's enough to move you to tears, isn't it?
War over Wall Street
Diandra Douglas
Ah, semantics. Always the first casualty of divorce. The first wife of Michael Douglas went back to court this week to claim that she is entitled to half of whatever he earns from his upcoming movie Wall Street 2.
Their $45m (£30m) divorce settlement 10 years ago provided for Diandra (named after the Greek goddess of legally sanctioned shakedowns) to get 50% of the money from any future spin-offs of films made while they were together. But is Wall Street 2 a spin-off or a sequel? Who can say, who can say? Surely only lawyers – gosh, them again! – at $500 an hour. Remember everybody – greed is good!
Playschool to parliament
Floella Benjamin
What's the day? It's the day we find that the former doyenne of Playschool presenters has become Lady Benjamin of Beckenham in Kent! So, let's go ... through the neo-gothic oriel window!
For anyone with eyes to see and a television to be parked in front of by benignly neglectful eighties parents Floella is of course best known for her exuberantly dungareed presenting work on Playschool and Playaway. But she has been producing TV programmes since 1987, received an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2001, is vice-president of Action for Children, Barnardo's and the Royal Commonwealth Society and a cultural ambassador for the 2012 Olympics, though she might need to enlist Hamble's Machiavellian talents to make a goer of that last one.
So congratulations to Floella. And the campaign to knight This Week's first crush Stuart McGugan, by the way, starts here.
What they said
"It's like marrying the Parachute Regiment with a Brownie pack – bound to be messy." Labour MP Austin Mitchell sums up the coalition government.
"You need to have a regional dialect to get anywhere these days." And acting ability, Roger Moore. That might be holding you back a tad too.
"Didactic, discursive and sporadically incoherent. " Reviewers of Fox News host Glenn Beck's new thriller.
"I hate England and the fucking people." A message from Ashley Cole to his friends on Facebook.
What we've learned
• Twilight's Robert Pattinson is No 50 on Forbes list of powerful celebrities
• 52% of people are not saving enough for their retirement
• The Open University has had 20m downloads since putting its material on iTunes in 2008
• A quarter of internet users are now over 50
• £20 notes showing the composer Sir Edward Elgar are no longer legal tender
... and what we haven't
• How many Russian spies there might be lurking in every suburb
