Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings a mother's sacrifice in the Bahamas, a contract killer lurking in the corridors of the Conservative Party, and the Metropolitan Constabulary investigating its own conduct in the most tangled of royal affairs. If you had hoped the month might close quietly - this Author must advise you to abandon that hope at once.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings grief from the skies above Loch Lomond, a Chancellor pronouncing on runways from Bangkok of all places, a First Minister counting stars over Aberdeen, and a nurse whose definition of familial devotion runs to three-quarters of a million pounds and a campervan. Whether the nation's appetite for drama is quite equal to all of it - or whether, like the contestants of a certain castle-based entertainment, we shall simply yawn and be done with it - is a matter This Author leaves entirely to your discernment.

Dearest Gentle Reader, this Saturday brings dispatches that range from the gravely troubling to the gloriously absurd - and this Author has attended to every last one. Certain members of the Jewish community are hiding their faith beneath a baseball cap, a Prime Minister is performing remarkable feats of political gymnastics, and twenty-one celebrities are preparing to betray one another in the Scottish Highlands for our entertainment. Read on, if you dare.