I don't think Ken Livingstone was being racist when he called an Evening Standard reporter, who happened to be Jewish, a concentration camp guard. His remarks would have been offensive to anyone, and the fact that the reporter was Jewish is, to my mind, an irrelevance. Livingstone was doing what he's done for years, precisely what the hell he likes secure in the knowledge that he'll get away with it because he always does. He surged to power in 1981 after a coup to depose the moderate leader of the Labour group. He got away with it. At the height of the IRA's bomb outrages in London he invited Gerry Adams to tea and proposed giving ratepayers' money to the Troops Out of Ireland campaign. Michael Foot put a stop to that. He stood against the official Labour candidate in the first mayoral election knowing that his inevitable expulsion from the party would be a charade. His invitation to Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who supports suicide bombers, would throw homosexuals off cliffs and approves the beating of women, was outrageous, but he still got away with it. This time may be different. When the reporter allegedly asked an ordinary question: "How did it go in there?" Livingstone lashed out. Challenged later, he issued a statement saying the reporter had sworn at him and he had retaliated. The trouble is that the reporter had a tape of the incident which allegedly shows that he did not swear. Since news of the tape emerged, the claim that the reporter swore has not been repeated. The mayor's office now says "no comment" on that particular issue. I can't wait to hear the tape in full and learn who is telling the truth. I don't think the complaint of racism will be upheld. Livingstone is guilty of many things but I don't think he's anti-Semitic. The allegations of boorishness and then trying to weasel out of it may stick, however. In addition a collection of undoubted anti-Semites are flocking to his defence. Historian David Irving, branded a Holocaust denier by a High Court judge, says: "I never really liked the man until now." David Duke, former leader of America's Ku Klux Klan, thinks our Ken is a hero. "The Jewish supremacists are as capricious as any tyrannical rulers in history. It is time to depose them." These are surely odd supporters for the leader of the greatest multicultural city in the world. With friends like these he hardly needs enemies! * Denise Robertson cannot enter into any personal correspondence. ********** Wrong 'facts' on the Beeb I remember the exact moment when I realised the BBC didn't always tell the truth. I had grown up believing that if the Beeb said black was white black WAS white. And then, in the frenzy of the miners' strike in the 1980s, I heard an announcer say: "The Durham coalfield is at a standstill." I'd just driven past miners fighting to get into their pit and other miners fighting to stop them. Whatever that was, it wasn't a standstill. Since then I've treated everything I hear from the BBC or other newscasters with a pinch of scepticism. An event last week confirmed my caution. The Reverend Dr John Bell was giving the Today programme's Thought for the Day. He spoke movingly of meeting an Arab soldier conscripted into the Israeli army who rose to the rank of corporal and was then jailed for refusing to shoot unarmed Palestinian children. Shock and horror all round, and rightly so. Except that the wronged soldier never existed. Now the BBC has apologised and admitted there is no evidence to support the story. Israeli Arabs are exempt from conscription and, at 19, the boy could not have attained the rank of corporal. Okay, both the BBC and the Reverend have said sorry, but the damage is done. And not only to the reputations of the BBC or the Israeli army. A genuine wrong taking place in the Israeli/Palestinian arena will be easily brushed aside now on the grounds that "Oh, these things are all made up." ********** Reason beats me..... Sharon Osbourne's porcelain tooth veneers cost $60,000; her hair colour is re-touched every 10 days by Daniel Galvin at an estimated cost of £1,000; a burglar robbed her of £2m-worth of jewels - and she still had some left; she owns an estate in Buckinghamshire, a mansion in California and a home in London. Now she's to be the face of price-cutting supermarket giant, Asda, whose previous figurehead used to slap the back pocket of her jeans in elation at the coppers she'd managed to save. There must be some PR reasoning in there somewhere, but it beats me.Twiggy - face of Age Concern Twiggy is 55. Now she is to be the face of the charity Age Concern. I love Twiggy. I've known her for quite a long time and have had the pleasure of working with her. She's honest, kind, funny, has a ready and gutsy laugh and is naturally beautiful - in my opinion more beautiful now than she was when her face dominated the Sixties. She loathes plastic surgery. "It's absolutely terrifying. It's becoming an epidemic. "We're going to have a group of people who don't look young but don't look old. It's peculiar." Twiggy's beauty comes from within, and I don't think she'll ever lose it. Age Concern are lucky to have her. ********** Apparently the Queen thinks the Guildhall, Windsor, where Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles will marry, is "common" and Prince Charles has called it "squalid." These comments may be total fabrication on the part of people who claim to be "in the royal know," because the Guildhall is not just the odd place "with a smelly carpet" the media seem to imply. It was completed in 1690 by no less a person than Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul's Cathedral. He stepped in when the original architect died. Its grand chamber is hung with portraits of Charles's ancestors and was the scene of the 19th Century trial of Roderick MacLean for an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria. And on March 12 this year it will host Princess Michael's signing session for her new book, The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King. Now there's an interesting title! | 
