Matthew Norman's Media Diary

IMAGINE THE rapture of the art-lover who goes to an imaginary gallery containing the life works of Van Gogh, and while standing in front of his Sunflowers is approached by a curator whispering: "I never told you this, but if you nip up that staircase and turn left, you'll find the secret room with all the paintings Vincent thought too good for general consumption."

Imagine this, and you get a sense of the treasure trove that is the website of Melanie Phillips. Her weekly column in the Daily Mail is a gleaming jewel itself, of course. There last week, moved by the Cameron dope story, she informed us: "The official blind eye turned to cannabis has provoked in turn an explosion in all drug use." (It would be churlish to mention last October's Home Office findings that overall drug use has fallen, with cannabis use sharply down to a 10-year low.)

But the website, oh that website... through some cyber version of Stendhal syndrome, I almost faint with joy at the sight of the home page. An entry dated 11 February, arguing that it is opposition to the war rather than the war itself that "threatens to completely destabilise and destroy Iraq", concludes with a restatement of her conviction that there were WMD in Iraq all along.

But only when she unleashes her full might on Israel does Mel paint her most compelling portraits, and the 8 February entry about Independent Jewish Voices, the new grouping of liberal British Jews, is an authentic masterpiece. Subtly entitled "Jews For Genocide", this delicate analysis makes two fundamental points: 1) that it's self-indulgent nonsense for IJV signatories to claim they are demonised by "mainstream Jews" for criticising Israel; and 2) that those who criticise Israel are a "Jewish fifth column for Arab and Muslim terror", and "prominent accomplices of those who wish to destroy the Jewish people". What a talent she is, and so long as the Daily Mail seems oddly unwilling to publish such pricelessness, thank heaven for the Aladdin's Cave that is madmelphillips.com.

* MIXED EMOTIONS at the Porchester Spa Turkish baths in London's louche Bayswater, where this column does much of its exhaustive research. While one regular, Mitch Winehouse, celebrates the Brit won by his elegant daughter Amy, another finds himself embroiled in a battle with both the BBC and ITV.

Lee Balch, the world's only officially recognised schmeisser (schmeissing is a practice whereby a person lies headlong in a steam room and is beaten with a soaped-up raffia brush), was filmed in action for a report on ITV's London Tonight. Having never signed a release form, Mr Balch - who weighs some 24 stone due to a thyroid problem, and has a disabled car-badge - was startled in January to find the clip on Have I Got News For You, accompanied by a gag about having someone's breasts thrust in your face in a brothel, at which both audience and presenter delivered an elongated "yeeuucch".

It does seem peculiar for the BBC, without permission to use the clip at all, to broadcast footage recorded for a straight news report on another channel to ridicule someone with a chronic illness, and we hope to clear this matter up soon.

* WORRYING NEWS of my favourite columnist. Yet again, Jon Gaunt of The Sun suffers a recurrence of the gastro-intestinal problem that causes him to vomit at the slightest provocation. The latest vertical eruption from Gaunty's guts was provoked by "snooty, London-based journalists" who made him sick by moaning about the travel chaos wrought by snowfall. This must be the 10th such incident in recent months, and it's time he saw a doctor. If the problem is an excess of bile, the removal of the gall bladder is a relatively simple operation.

* IN THE Mirror, Paul Routledge struggles to come to terms with a tragedy in the US. "I really must get out more," writes the old boy. "Until I read the reports of her death, I had never heard of Anna Nicole Smith." Far be it from me, Routers, but perhaps you need to stay in more, and follow what used to be known as the first rule of journalism. Read the newspapers. It's all there if you take the trouble to look.

* ALSO BEWILDERED by the banality of modern life is that splendid professional Yorkshireman Michael Henderson. Michael, who writes primarily on sport but justly regards himself as an absurdly underused commentator on high culture, is a perpetual delight. However, impertinent pieces in The Daily Telegraph about Dominic Cooke, the new artistic director of the Royal Court, overstep the mark. Mr Cooke is my cousin by blood (not to be confused with my cousin by marriage Kevin Lygo, whom I have never met), and further attacks by Michael will not be tolerated. As for a profile in The Times, Mr Cooke's mother - Mr Lygo's stepmother-in-law and my aunt Gloria - asks me to point out that, while she did work for many years in the NHS, she was never a nurse. Why will these people never check their facts?

* FINALLY, OUR headline of the week, from the Daily Mail. "Can A Marriage In Which The Woman Earns More Than The Man Ever Be Happy?" it mused. I didn't find the strength to read the piece by Lauren Booth, or the following day's riposte from her underearning spouse. If anyone did, perhaps they'd let me know the answer.

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