Dukes and duchesses, D-listers and despots will attend the wedding. So why no room for Dacre?
✒So Kanye West is in but Mr Tony's not invited. Gordon's not invited. Fergie, overlooked, is going abroad. And we note that save for the 28 accredited correspondents, there do not appear to have been any invitations sent out to the British press. ITN's Tom Bradby got the nod, but in a personal capacity. And there is logic to this, given William's lack of regard for Fleet Street over the hounding of his late mother. But it does mean that on the event of this very unique fusion between the aristocracy and middle England, Paul Dacre, the voice of middle England, will not be there. Certainly this is noted at Mail HQ, and lieutenants wonder whether this explains the ferocity with which the Mail is combing through the guest list, shining a harsh light on deadbeats. A "petty snub" was how yesterday's paper described the treatment of messers Blair and Brown. Too many snubs risk ruining a joyous occasion, thundered a venomous leader. And really, what would it cost them to accommodate the voice of Middle England? One extra vol-au-vent. Couldn't we just smuggle him in?
✒Why was Big Dave so keen to rubbish the idea that Gordon Brown might ascend to the top job at the International Monetary Fund? Kicking the corpse? That's not like the PM. But he is not above doing a favour for a friend, and the word in Paris is that Anglophone Christine Lagarde, Sarkozy's minister of economic affairs, likes the look of the IMF position and as a fellow rightist, her friend George Osborne, would like her to have it. Papers have taken to printing photos of the pair cooing during summits. L'Express talks of the GO-CL "complicity", and reckons Cameron will support her candidacy. So Gordon may not have been the main target at all, especially now he's at the World Economic Forum. Merely collateral damage.
✒We tried to be bold, for as Mr Tony used to say, we are best when we are bold, but sometimes one is overwhelmed by the enormity of the undertaking. And that's about what happened to our attempt to mediate between the former prime minister's father-in-law Tony Booth – star of the film Confessions of a Window Cleaner – and Booth's own window cleaner, a bluff chap called Leeming. They fell out and Leeming apparently withdrew his services. The world is a darker place; especially when viewed through the windows in Booth's front room. We pledged on Friday to intervene, but while Leeming was kind enough to return our call, he didn't appear to have reached that stage where reconciliation seems possible. "I don't want to talk about it," he said. With that, we're stumped. But then this does seem a task better suited to Mr Tony himself. He led Sinn Féin and the unionists toward peace, and hopes to achieve the same in the Middle East. And the Booths: they are his people.
✒For this is a time for reconciliation. And that was Easter Sunday, the most important event in the Christian calendar, when church leaders proclaim the faith. Shame, then, that the archbishop of Canterbury's website chose Sunday to pack it in.
✒Ping! An email arrives, and it's communities minister Andrew Stunell responding to last week's item about the government underestimating to parliament the loss of spending power experienced by local councils. It was, he confirms, an honest mistake. "In my defence, I would say I've got it right first time the other 40 or 50 times I've spoken in public and in the House on the topic," says Andrew. "But mistakes can always happen, as you illustrated by spelling my name wrong." That we did. Still, our deficiency didn't amount to anything like his underestimate of £150m.
✒Finally William Shatner, as James T Kirk, never did boldly go where no man has been before. Star Trek was mostly filmed in southern California. But he has made it into the Ealing Leader newspaper in west London. Would he love to return to James T Kirk in the next Star Trek film? "I'd be delighted," he says. "Especially because I've become acquainted with (director) J J Abrams, and he's smaller than I am. I like to find people I can stand next to that I can tower over." Actors! Dear Johnny Gielgud was the same.