Nigella Lawson keeps mum on what comes after Kitchen

But intriguingly a spokesman declines to elaborate on the plans for next year's show. "Nigella Kitchen is currently on air and it's too early to be talking about future projects," the apparatchik says.

Sources close to the goddess are more straightforward: after a book and a TV series (not to mention moving house), she wants a year off.

King's crown will fit, reckons Piers

To the ballroom of the Mandarin Oriental for the
send-off for Piers Morgan as he goes to the US to step in to chat show host Larry King's large shoes on CNN.

Gordon and Sarah Brown were among those that gathered there to bid him farewell.

The former Mirror editor, characteristically, is taking the 350 million viewers in his stride. "Some might say it's daunting... or long overdue," he observed.

Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, who flew in for the party, quipped: "OK, we've read the emails, we've listened to the phone calls, and we're taking him off your hands."

Ralf Little gets off the sofa

As Anthony Royle in The Royle Family, Ralf Little just sat around, picked on by the rest of the gang but happily he has just been commissioned by the BBC to get off the armchair and do some writing.

They've commissioned a comedy series written by the actor which is closer to the grittier early series of The Royle Family. For their party the Royles have just reunited to film a Christmas Special.

TV slot would be champagne moment for film awards

The British Independent Film Awards were bankrolled this year by a tidal wave of Moët & Chandon.

But, given the increasingly stellar draw of the awards from Ralph Fiennes and Colin Firth to Liam Neeson and Carey Mulligan, some industry execs are baffled as to why the awards aren't televised like the Baftas.

"The Bifas are always very funny. It would make great TV and you can't expect champagne to pay for everything," says producer Frank Mannion of Swipe Films.