24 MARCH 1973, Page 9

Corridors . . .

PUZZLE IS A GENIAL fellow and doesn't mind other journalists pinching his stories though, being only human, he would like them to acknowledge his own percipience. In Monday's Daily Telegraph, Peterborough reproduced sub stantially Puzzle's story about the Duke of Devonshire's ham-fisted attempt to interfere both with Enoch Powell's invitation to lunch (congratulations to Enoch on his victory, by the way) and with Chesterfield's selection of a new Tory candidate, with a portentous air, as though he had discovered the significance of the event all by himself. Even this, however, Puzzle could put up with were it not for the fact that Peterborough made again the elementary blunder made by most reporters who referred to this story — that of spelling wrongly the name of the Chairman of the Chesterfield Conservative Association. It is Billinge, Peterborough, not Billings.

PUZZLE DISCOVERED THE OTHER DAY that Harold Wilson is an excellent mimic (though not in the class of Jeremy Thorpe) and that his star turn is a take-off of Willie Whitelaw.

WHAT A SPLENDID FELLOW the Lord Chancellor is. On the day of the London bombings he felt he ought to go to see the Old Bailey, and commiserate with the fellows of his profession. In order to cause the minimum inconvenience to the police he went, not in his official motor-car, but on his bike. Asked if he still used that machine as much as he used to when Shadow Home Secretary, he replied: " Oh no. It's right that the Lord Chancellor should look funny sometimes, but not always, and not too often." Tom Puzzle