✒ Last week's farewell party, or in effect funeral service, for the Press Complaints Commission offered a sad contrast with the PCC in its pomp. Lord Hunt, one of several sometime chairmen and directors attending, wandered around with a tray of canapes as if looking for a new, humbler role. Solemn speeches were ill-advisedly backdropped by a slideshow rich in PCC party snaps, including one of a former bigwig playing Santa Claus. All a far cry from the body's glitzy apotheosis, its 10th birthday party in 2001, when guests swigged champagne amidst display cases of jewellery at Somerset House and mingled with Prince Charles, Camilla, Prince An drew, Prince William and, for some reason, Donatella Versace. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be regulating was very heaven.
✒It dragged on far into the night. Several of the participants rambled on embarrassingly or said stupid things. Almost everyone was drunk or acted drunk. Parts were intended as entertainment but didn't come off. And Peter Bazalgette was in charge. Last week's Royal Television Society programme awards inevitably recalled Big Brother in its Channel 4/E4 prime, with Bazalgette – formerly the show's godfather in its British incarnation – obliged to preside over the ceremony, emperor-like, as the society's chairman. As dinner was served before a single gong was handed out, the ceremony proper only began well after 9.30pm, and some wordy contributions pushed its finishing time to past 11.30pm as restive, red-eyed guests devised alternative versions of what RTS stands for (really tedious soirees?). Sort it out, Baz!
✒ Monkey's unlikely quote of the week: "'He is just f- amazing! Absolutely f- amazing!' – she is momentarily lost for words, shaking her head almost in disbelief – 'It's just amazing. He's amazing'" - Keira Knightley, not on one of her leading men Johnny Depp, Michael Fassbender or James McAvoy, but Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville, in Stella magazine.
✒ Responding to readers' questions in Radio Times, Radio 2 controller Bob "Shennandour" Shennan is naturally asked about the lack of female daytime DJs and hints at a future tweak to his current stag policy: having women sitting in if "the men are off", he says, develops potential replacements for "when we need to make a change". Don't get your hopes up, though. Even Ken Bruce, the oldest of the blokes, is 63, still frisky by Radio 2 standards. Terry Wogan, the last daytime host to depart, was 71 when he did his final breakfast show.
✒ Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman caused a press and Twitter flutter last week by declaring "nobody wants to see a real person looking like a real person on the cover of Vogue": ie only celebs will do, and they should be given every help to look at their glamorous, confident best. But does she really believe that? Her latest cover star, April's Nigella Lawson, is shown with straggly, uncombed hair, a hurt or insecure expression, one shoulder bared as if she's too distracted by worries to notice, and a strange, grey-ish skin-tone suggesting no or minimal touching-up, particularly around the mouth – looking like a real person, in other words.
✒ In replacing Adam Boulton as political editor with Channel 4's Faisal Islam – who did not figure at all in the initial betting, and is thought to have seen off a host of press and TV pol eds and deputy pol eds – Sky News made a bold choice, as Islam's entire career has been spent as a business or economics reporter. If Robert Peston does harbour ambitions of eventually replacing Nick Robinson, as is often rumoured, that might give him encouragement. Meanwhile, Channel 4 News editor Ben de Pear marked Islam's appointment with an email to staff mixing praise with wryly noting his qualities as a "dedicated follower of fashion" and his "impressive" ability "to match editorial assignments - to Manchester, Milan or Munich - with Man United matches". It ended with an unflattering reference to his new workplace: "congratulations, Faisal, we wish you well. At Fraggle Rock."
✒ As the predictably sluggish race to be BBC2 and BBC4 controller staggers on into its ninth week, speculation so far has centred largely on female in-house factual executives – perhaps on the basis that one such exec (Charlotte Moore) got the BBC1 job, and that factual dominates the channels' output. Less talked about, though a credible contender if he applies, is cerebral, spiky former BBC4 controller Richard Klein, who is thought to have long coveted the better-resourced, more high-profile BBC2 controllership. Neither his improbable defection to ITV, nor the fact that his name means Little Richard in German should be seen as slashing his chances.
✒ This week we will apparently be told the name of the BBC's new head of human resources (apparently an outsider), replacing "Lipgloss" Lucy Adams, who decided to move on after getting caught up in the row over humongous pay-offs. Monkey can't tell you that name but can confidently predict that (a) they won't wear sunglasses on top of their head, or be liable to give their expensive coat to an aide to mind on camera just before a committee hearing (b) they won't have a private life interesting enough to make a double-page spread in the Mail on Sunday, and (c) they won't have come from an organisation that has felt the lash of Margaret Hodge's tongue. Appointing anyone like that would be a red rag to a bull.
