Matthew Norman's Media Diary: Matthew v David: no contest!

RARE INDEED it is to find something truly novel and refreshing in a newspaper, so when we do the event must be noted. I refer to what I believe to be the first rap-single-style mock confrontation on the pages of a quality title. It came on Friday in The Times, a paper in urgent need of reinvention after its triumphant decade as New Labour's official newsletter. "David Aaronovitch v Matthew Parris" was the tag line, which brought to mind Run DMC vs Jason Nevins, or Sugababes vs Girls Aloud.

This open letter symposium about Mr Tony Blair's record proved a catchweight contest, portly cruiserweight Aaronovitch taking a hell of a beating, a hell of a beating from whippet-like heavyweight Parris. No shame there (there's barely a political columnist alive whom Matthew wouldn't dismantle within 500 words) - and if some will question David's tactics in slugging it out, let's not forget that Tommy Hearns is more revered for being knocked out by Marvin Hagler inside three rounds than for any of his wins. So let it be for David, a man who may never throw in the towel on Iraq, but came closer on Friday than ever before.

"The invasion of Iraq has been a disaster, maybe even more of a disaster than not invading," he wrote to Matthew, and you have to thank God for that "maybe" because it's comedy platinum. "We still don't know." To borrow from a key architect of that catastrophe, there are some things we know we know, and this is surely one. Anyway, let's not harp on about that when, as David recently pointed out, it's high time we all grew up and moved on to more important matters. What those might be, time alone shall reveal. But to David, for 10 years as one of our three top-ranked Blair hagiographers, I'd like to express the gratitude of us all.

* THE SAME goes for the other two leading disciples. Martin Kettle of The Guardian and The Independent on Sunday's Jon Rentoul have also maintained an increasingly difficult line with great stoicism, much as the late Woodrow Wyatt once did for Mrs Thatcher. We will be examining their work more closely than ever in the months ahead for the first stirrings of the anti-Gordon guerrilla campaign some of us anticipate.

* AS FOR David Blunkett, fears mount that his lucrative Sun column may not long survive the change of regime. But he plugs on gamely (as does guide dog Sadie, whose weekly snippet remains such a whimsical delight). What I admire about his work, almost more than the prose style, is how rigidly he resists the temptation to use the space for personal ends. Take "Brown Must Use Age And Experience," last week's lead. "I just hope that, in this era of the worship of youthfulness, Gordon will also be able to rely on experience and maturity," wrote Blunkers. "Gordon ... knows that his Government must be fresh and bursting with energy, whether the ministers are young or not so young." This was "not a bid for office", he pointed out, but there was no need. No one could have read it that way. It's a recall for the late Merlin Rees he clearly has in mind.

* AFTER LAST week's celebration of Richard Littlejohn's new opus, we turn to his Nabokovian tour de force from 2001, "To Hell In A Handcart." "A few years ago, I wrote a novel which featured a Romanian gangster who came to London pretending to be an asylum seeker, and set about mugging people on the street," he recalls in the Daily Mail. "Fast forward to 2007, and the news that Met policemen are being issued with a translation guide to help them cope with a crime wave among Romanian immigrants - especially street robbery..." The headline, "Roughly Translated - I Told You So", gives me an idea. Would any promoter be interested in staging the inaugural I Told You So Championship, between Richard and Mary Ann-Sieghart, at Wembley Arena? That two such gifted soothsayers should be continually denied public recognition, obliging them to subdue their innate modesty and refer to their own astounding prescience, seems perfectly absurd.

* STILL WITH Richard, why is his Mail column so bereft these days of those screamingly funny song parodies that we once enjoyed so much? You know, when he adapts the lyric of "My Old Man's A Dustman" or "My Way" to illuminate a news story of the day, as if auditioning for the Richard Stilgoe role in an imaginary revival of That's Life! I used to love them almost as much as those sub-Sweeney, shut-it-you-slaaaaaag pastiches, in which he assumed the argot of the hard man copper to infuse a news story with the adrenalin of satirical genius. And we don't see nearly enough of those either any more.

* I AM distressed, finally, about a recent edition of Channel 4's "Get Your Act Together With Harvey Goldsmith", in which the fabled rock promoter - probably the very man, on reflection, to stage the I Told You So Championship - visited ailing AM radio station Big L at its base in Frinton, Essex. Among the victims of what we suspect to be wilfully malevolent editing were that majestic veteran of the airwaves, Diddy David Hamilton, and Mike Read, not only the Stephen Sondheim de nos jours but also a top ideas man with the realistic ambition to become mayor of London. I will investigate further, and hope to report back soon.

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