Morning:
8°c
A photograph in the Daily Mail of George Osborne appears next to one of Piers Morgan, inviting readers to spot the likeness.
I am proud of spotting a superior resemblance between Osborne and the heroine Dame Ellen MacArthur, who have both had adventures in boats.
The reason for fastening onto these idle pleasures is that we have been soundly warned not to expect any fun from the Tory Party Conference.
If Gordon Brown's favourite word last week was "choice", the word of the week in Manchester is "austerity".
The sunshine politics of President Reagan have been replaced by the hair-shirt. Osborne boasted over the weekend that even his son is braced for his daddy's unpopularity.
During the years that Northern Ireland was engraved on Tory hearts, as Europe still is, I was warned by a Conservative newspaper editor against being seduced by the Kennedy/Clinton romantic view of the nationalist cause.
He told me that there was a simple rule in life: the southern Irish were the best companions for a night out but you always wanted a Northern Irish bank manager.
Cameron is displaying all the melancholy integrity of David Trimble this week.
No wonder Conservative Party chairman Eric Pickles has called for ostentatious sobriety - a demand that was immediately defied by our irrepressible champagne Tory Alan Duncan.
The Tories are in step with the mood of business. A report in the Guardian on the latest International Monetary Fund meeting is headed: "Look forward to a jobless, joyless recovery."
Even the Turner Prize shortlist features dust from an atomised passenger jet engine. There go our holiday plans.
Daring to be dull is admirable. Many blame the banking crisis on the financial sector trying to be glamorous.
The excellent Peep Show on Channel 4 last Friday hinged on the comi-tragic attempt by David Mitchell to avoid taking up a job as a loss adjuster and a life of "horrifying dullness".
Actually, loss adjusting is the job of the moment.
But it is human nature to look for a little escapism when times are grim and to warm to those who provide it.
We defer to the Northern Irish bank manager while listening to the singing outside the window.
I know that one can simultaneously embrace financial rectitude and resent it.
I have just bought a new handbag, which is workmanlike and in the right Harriet Harman prescribed price bracket.
I take a sour satisfaction in its functionality. I don't love it at all.
Cameron and Osborne have made the right calculation that the country should be run by sober men and women in suits.
But doesn't the Party still love their Falstaff and the glimpse of Boris Johnson's merry England?
Bras get you good press
It is no surprise that the invention by a distinguished female scientist of a bra that converts into a gas mask has proved an enduringly popular story on the BBC's website.
When I worked for another newspaper, its online success turned out to be reliant on a report by a fashion writer about having a bra fitting.
So how wise of the designers at the Paris fashion show to have kicked off with some adaptable bras, thus getting the kind of coverage usually reserved for Chanel.
If I were trying to drum up interest, say, in the slightly-hard-going Tory fringe meeting yesterday on decentralisation and social action, (Caroline Spelman and Sayeeda Warsi) I know what I would do.
Iranian protestors need our support
The sense of mission drift in Afghanistan continues.
General Stanley McChrystal has reportedly been rebuked by President Obama for telling the Institute of International and Strategic Studies in London that the less-is-more drone missile strikes and special forces strategy proposed by Joe Biden would lead to chaos-istan.
By comparison, Iran starts to become clearer. A persuasive article in the New Yorker about the courage and will of women in Iran in protesting against tyranny made me believe that internal change is still possible.
Leave Afghanistan to the experts. Let us stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the protestors outside the Iranian embassy in London.
They cannot do it alone.
• I had quite a night out celebrating the launch of Patrick Bishop's book, Battle of Britain, at Shepherd's Bush Library but it lacked the scale of Simon Cowell's 50th birthday.
The £1 million bash included a 30ft tall image of Cowell and £500 bottles of Cristal.
Curious that David Cameron must cringe over his wealth, while the billionaires' club shows no recession sensitivity. The wealth is certainly earned — but is it deserved?
