Huhne comes out fighting over 'green fascist' claim

* The brouhaha over Channel 4's screening last Thursday of The Great Global Warming Swindle - which poo-pooed the idea that mankind has anything to do with the heating planet - has spilled over into the Palace of Westminster's dimly lit cloisters.

Nigel Evans, a Tory backbencher, has sought a formal reprimand for the Lib Dem environment spokesman Chris Huhne, accusing him in a parliamentary motion of "writing to Channel 4 executives to ask them to stop the broadcast of the documentary". Evans "further notes that one of the contributors received a death threat" (he doesn't accuse Huhne of having any hand in that, mercifully) and "deplores any attempt to stifle this free debate".

Huhne is fizzing. He says that the claim, alongside others that he was abetting McCarthyite persecution and was a "green fascist" seeking to crush freedoms, is cobblers. "Now, I'm broad-minded and broad-backed, and can take this stuff," says Huhne. "But I am a liberal and a Liberal Democrat. The allegation is total rubbish.

"I tried to get another newspaper to print my letter, but they haven't done so."

Huhne threatened to smash a box of energy-saving lightbulbs over Nigel Evans's head. Evans, "being an honest sort of fellow", has gracefully backed down, withdrawn the motion and written Huhne an apology.

"I was sorry to have brought Chris Huhne into it," he said, "but I praise Channel 4 for showing this programme because I think it's very healthy for there to be some debate about climate change."

* Yes - it really is Tony Blair's former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, taking a pummelling in the stocks. Several political scribes and MPs will sleep sweeter this weekend.

Tessa Jowell won an auction to throw sponges at her former colleague: see the Comic Relief charity special of Sir Alan Sugar's The Apprentice, on BBC1 tonight and Friday.

Campbell tells me: "Yes, Tessa won the auction. But she loves me so much that she couldn't bring herself to hit me with the sponges, so she kept missing." This is, perhaps, a generous description of the throwing skills of our Secretary of State for Sport. Adds Campbell: "Then her son Matthew [23] took over. He smacked me pretty hard."

Pandora has struck a deal with Campbell. If a reader donates £10,000 to Comic Relief, Campbell will go back in the stocks and let them sponge him. We will, of course, be there to record the occasion for posterity for you.

Messrs Andrew Gilligan, Greg Dyke and Michael White, take note!

* Bob Dylan's hissy fit over Sienna Miller's new flick Factory Girl - about the abrupt life of Edie Sedgwick, with whom Dylan is rumoured to have had an affair - was awkward for the film's director George Hickenlooper.

Dylan objected to a character played by Hayden Christensen - a singer who "wears a leather coat, uses a harmonica brace and performs solo". Dylan feared the portrayal falsely implied he had contributed to Sedgwick's suicide.

It landed Hickenlooper in the glue, as he's friendly with Dylan's eldest son, a director. "I know his son Jesse well," Hickenlooper told Pandora at the Factory Girl premiere on Tuesday evening. "I haven't spoken to Bob about it and I probably won't. I think he's portrayed favourably in the movie, so I don't know why he's angered." All good publicity.

* Behold! The man Private Eye calls "Ealing North's Tattooed Bruiser" has descended from The Mount.

Stephen Pound MP yesterday quit the Government over its plans to replace our Trident nukes. He signed off his resignation letter with a mention of Jeremiah 12.7.

For those readers who have not crossed the contents page of their King James Bible, the passage reads: "I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage; I have given the dearly beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies." Dramatic stuff! Perhaps Pound has spent too many nights on the sofa watching Pulp Fiction. (Samuel L. Jackson: "You will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee" - Ezekiel 25:17.)

Labour whips: watch out!

* Jolly hockey sticks! The saucy high street sex-retailer Ann Summers has infiltrated the lofty heights of UK academia (just a month after the firm's comely MD Jacqueline Gold won a cucumber buffet audience with the Queen - Pandora passim).

In a deal likely to cause claret-spluttering in the oak-panelled dining halls of Oxford University, Gold has signed up Ann Summers to sponsor the college hockey team at St Anne's/Somerville.

Two male players approached Gold when she addressed the Oxford Union last year. "It was very cheeky of the boys," she says, "particularly as they were the only boys in the audience. But how could I refuse?" The team shirts now promote the purveyor of "dildos", and players are expected to sport a lacier line in jockstraps.

pandora@independent.co.uk

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