WANTAGE MP Ed Vaizey has pulled off a remarkable feat. In the year he entered Government and became Minister for Culture, his influence has diminished.

That’s according to GQ magazine’s list of the 100 most influential men of 2011.

Last year, X Factor fan Vaizey was placed at number 19, but in the list published this month he has slipped seven places to 26.

And we’re not sure how he will take the following praise, “Never Better Than: When playing the affable chappie. In contrast with the intellectual razzle-dazzle of some Cabinet members, Vaizey, right, puts people at ease with his self-deprecating charm.”

So who leap-frogged him? His boss, Secretary for State for Culture Jeremy Hunt for one, along with Sir Elton John and David Furnish...and Vince Cable.

Even PM and Witney MP David Cameron was knocked off the top spot by George Osborne.

But will Ed take any notice of a glossy mens’ mag? Nicknamed Minister for Fashion after his role in promoting British Fashion Week, we think he might.

  • The ever-helpful Health and Safety Executive (HSE) came knocking at the Oxford Mail’s door last week with a press release urging businesses to “redouble their commitment to health and safety” in 2011 after a rise in workplace accidents.

But we couldn’t help but raise a mild smile when a reporter attempted to interview Mike Wilcock, the HSE’s head of operations for the South East.

A proposed telephone interview had to be bumped back a couple of hours because Mr Wilcock had himself suffered an accident and was at a physiotherapy appointment.

  • Surgical experts in Oxford use a variety of felt-tipped pens to mark bones to be cut during facial and head surgery.

But according to thrifty, Scandinavian-furniture loving surgeons in the city, the cream of the crop is the little pencil stolen from Ikea stores.

According to a report in the BMJ health journal, Dr Karen Eley of Oxford University and Dr Stephen Watt-Smith of the John Radcliffe Hospital said the pencil more readily makes a mark on bone and the mark is less likely to be washed away by irrigation and tissue fluids.

The only problem is that repeated sterilisation of the pencil has a tendency to split the fibres, but even this problem has been overcome by wrapping silicon cuffs around the pencil.