Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings fire, collision, and political paralysis in quantities sufficient to exhaust even the most devoted observer of society's theatre. A prime minister gets on with the job - but which job, and for how much longer? And one rather loud television personality has news that is, for once, entirely welcome.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Sunday brings a transatlantic telephone call of splendid bluntness, a defence plan as absent as good sense in certain quarters, and a kebab scandal so audacious it deserves its own chapter in the annals of culinary deception. Plus - a royal wedding to restore one's faith in the possibility of a happy ending, if one can only get past the fraudulent mutton first.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Author writes to you from beneath a sun so unseasonably ferocious that the very social calendar has begun to wilt. His Majesty the King has been spotted laughing at a replica crown - and that is merely the most dignified item in today's dispatch. A politician campaigning against unsafe streets whilst harbouring a rather personal relationship with a criminal conviction is a detail that deserves your fullest attention.