"Darling, who is that girl wearing the slip?" The question was asked of me at a long-ago summer party by the grande dame always known as the Duchess of Osney. Her tone, as she surveyed the miscreant through narrowed eyes, managed at once to combine disapproval and bewilderment. Why would anyone appear in public so strangely garbed? I wonder the same whenever I see the picture of journalist Celia Walden that sits beside her byline at the top of the Daily Telegraph's Spy gossip column. The idea, I suppose, is to reflect the character of a writer the newspaper styles "sultry and sassy". To me, Celia merely looks as if she has forgotten to get dressed.

Her column is usually more entertaining and better written than those of her rivals. Does anybody still read the whimsical nonsense dished up in The Times by Hugo Rifkind? His main qualification for the job would appear to be that he's the son of one-time Tory leadership hopeful Sir Malcolm Rifkind oh, and that he's not his predecessor Andrew Pierce whose gay agenda in the diary had become tiresome. In the Sunday Times, gossip hack Jasper Gerrard offered two howlers in as many lines this week when he wrote (apropos an alleged coolness between Sir Paul and Lady McCartney): "Normally we may regard quotes attributed to 'friends' as fiction. But having interviewed McCartney and Heather the quote almost rung true." To compound matters, he hadn't even said what 'the quote' was. Full marks to Jasper, though, for a fine joke when he said the McCartney marriage appeared "about as harmonious as Macca's first wife Linda when she did backing vocals at Wings gigs".

Celia hit the comic jackpot last week with a story concerning a recent meeting between the International Development Secretary Hilary Benn and Nelson Mandela. I was surprised that the tale wasn't picked up elsewhere. Simply stated, Mr Mandela asked after 'Tony', which Mr Benn took to be a reference to his father, the pipe-smoking firebrand of the Labour left formerly known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn, whereas the person clearly meant was our increasingly unpopular Prime Minister. "Oh, he's fine," said Hilary, "but he's 83 now, you know." Mandela replied: "Is he really 83? My goodness, who'd have thought it?" Celia concluded: "There was a moment's silence before the two went their separate ways, both wearing equally bemused expressions."

I find it a hoot that 87-year-old Mr Mandela should have been under the impression, however briefly, that Tony Blair was nearly as old as him. It is amusing, too, to consider what the great South African would have thought if Hilary had spelled out the thoughts of 'Tony' on such topics as the ghastly George Bush and his invasion of Iraq.

Another mix-up to raise smiles this week was the one involving the taxi driver who found himself being interviewed on the BBC's News 24 channel instead of the internet music business expert he had gone to the studio to collect. The baffled cabbie put up a pretty impressive performance, as could be seen from the full interview published in the Mail On Sunday. By this I mean that the replacement Guy Kewney seemed to be spouting the sort of gibberish expected of any 'expert'. When interviewer Karen Bowerman asked: "With regard to the costs involved, do you think now more people will be downloading on line?" he replied: "Actually if you can walk everywhere you are going to see a lot of people downloading the internet and the website and everything they want. But I think, eh, it is much better for development and, eh, to inform people what they want and to get the easy way and so faster if they are looking for."

It all rather reminded me of the celebrated occasion, on February 9, 1944, when Winston Churchill mistook the visiting American songwriter Irving Berlin for the Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin (who had been working for the Government in New York and Washington) at a lunch party in Downing Street. The whole occasion passed off without the error being realised. Priceless moments included Churchill's asking Berlin when he thought the war would end. In his thick Brooklyn accent, the composer replied: "Mr Prime Minister, I shall tell my children and grandchildren that Winston Churchill asked me that question." Churchill next asked what was the most important thing Berlin had written. His answer was White Christmas.

"We are not meant to resign ourselves to what fate happens to throw up." Thus spake the Bishop of Oxford last week in his Thought for the Day slot on Radio 4's Today. How true, I thought; and how appropriate to the current debate on euthanasia. But the Rt Rev Richard Harries was not discussing euthanasia; his subject was the work of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, of which he is a member. He was expressing his support for this body's decision, in principle, that pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and selection of embryos should be allowed for certain kinds of breast, ovarian and bowel cancers when there is up to an 80 per cent chance of a child inheriting them.

But where there is a 100 per cent chance of someone dying an agonising death, the Bishop insists that she or he must go along with what fate has happened to 'throw up'. He remains a determined opponent of Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill. Inconsistency, or what?

My views on the subject were cogently expressed in a letter in The Times on Monday from John Radford, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology. He wrote: "I want, in certain circumstances, to be able to end my life at a time of my choosing. I entirely accept that many other people do not want this. I have no wish at all to impose my preference on them. Why do they insist on imposing theirs on me?"

To which Bishop Harries would reply that he has to think of his, and my, immortal soul a concept which seems to me to be superstitious tosh.

I was sorry to miss Tuesday's Oldie Literary Lunch at the Randolph at which Princess Michael of Kent was discussing her salacious account of the lives of five kings' mistresses. Since I was off to Stratford, I asked colleague Reg Little to stand in for me, but he declined, claiming he had neglected to shave that morning.

In the end, Christopher Koenig went along. He reported that Reg needn't have worried: on arrival at the Randolph, he found that self-styled celebrity barber Daniel Rouah was giving free shaving demonstrations in the St John Room. (I, of course, being as hirsute as Prince Michael would not have needed his services.) Chris returned utterly smitten by the Princess, delighted when she sang a little song about Lola Montez, mistress of King Ludwig of Bavaria: "Whatever Lola wants Lola Gets . . ."