Hostage crisis: it was the Pope what done it

* Every man and his uncle wants credit for solving the Iran hostage crisis: Blair, the Foreign Office, the UN, the EU, Syria, Russia, Iran's president, the Revolutionary Guards - although the Whitehall rumour that Margaret Beckett's husband and office secretary Leo took the crucial call from Ahmadinejad, putting him on hold while he found a pen and dipped his digestive biscuit in cold tea, turns out, sadly, to be untrue.

But we may, I hear, have an unlikely and unsung hero.

On Friday morning, Pope Benedict XVI handed a letter to Iran's ambassador to the Holy See, appealing to Ahmadinejad for a "goodwill gesture before Easter". Mr A subsequently released the 15 British sailors as an " Easter gift to the British people". Yesterday, sources in the Middle East insisted privately that the Pope's intervention had been " important " in securing a pre-Easter escape.

Back in September, His Holiness angered Muslims by heavy-handedly quoting anti-Islamic remarks in a speech at Regensburg, Germany: he cited a Byzantine Christian emperor who believed that Mohamed had brought the world only "inhuman and evil" things.

The Pope afterwards met the Islamic ambassadors to the Vatican to patch things up between the Cross and the Crescent; then in December he welcomed the Iranian foreign minister.

"John Paul II was a great one for dramatic diplomatic gestures," says one Vatican observer, "but up to now this new guy hasn't done anything of the sort. Quiet diplomacy will be welcome."

* Some people mark Good Friday by eating Hot Cross Buns, going to church, stumbling about the pub ... Others find that all a bit traditional: why not, say, post internet videos of yourself being crucified, instead?

The artist Sebastian Horsley fired as a newspaper sex columnist last Easter Sunday for his article that morning about "suburban" sexual practices, has for six years found this Christian festival tedious; prompting, as it does, comment about his trip in 2000 to the Philippines, when he was nailed to a cross. ("How can you paint the crucifixion without being crucified?")

Horsley's contribution to Easter 2007 is a video of the crucifixion, and an online essay comparing Jesus and Sebastian, who "have a few things in common". Eg Jesus "had profound style. He was the ultimate dandy. He created a stir through force of personality and example alone." Jesus' life was "an awesome study in self-destruction ... As a great religious stylist, he knew that, without his crucifixion, he would be no one. "

Horsley adds: "I didn't die on the cross, which was disappointing."

* The choirgirl group All Angels, below, up for Best Album at the Classical Brits next month (in the middle of their A-levels), ran into Johnny Depp at the Dorchester. Depp has stayed at the hotel while filming the Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd at Pinewood.

"When he came over and said 'Hi' I nearly lost it!" says singer Charlotte Ritchie - who, despite meeting Daniel Radcliffe when she played a Hogwarts pupil in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, "nearly fainted" in front of Depp, above.

"He's not at all like the rock'n'roll image you hear about - more bookish, with his glasses. He had a cup of tea, and said he loved our singing. He said that having once been a rocker he thought he could hold a tune, but singing musical theatre made him wish he'd gone to choir classes like us." The old smoothie.

* Blairite John Hutton, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is introducing lie detector tests to tackle benefits fibsters. The technology calibrates one's "normal voice", then spots wobbles caused by stress.

Might Mr Hutton demonstrate this technology himself for us, I asked his office? Naturally Pandora would be happy to provide the minister with a couple of questions for the occasion.

Hutton is not pally with Gordon Brown; I'm told that he considers having to share a cabinet with the incoming PM akin to swimming with snakes.

Strangely, Mr Hutton's office did not seem all that keen on him trialling the lie detector for us.

* The Iran hostage crisis may have been resolved without bullets, but I hear of a Caribbean conflagration which will require no less diplomatic handling. Guests on Jamaica's seven miles of Negril "paradise sands" were thrown out of hotel bars, pools and beaches yesterday: the corporate suits at Sandals in Miami had demanded a publicity photoshoot.

Pandora's hairy-chested Brit with the rum reports: "They want miles of empty beach in the pictures, not sweaty oiks like us. A load of heavies threw people off the sand. They're sending in a helicopter in a minute apparently, to drive us away." I am proud to hear that, although no Germans were harmed, we're not taking this lying down: "A few brave Brits are dragging sunloungers to their regular spots under heavy enemy fire (of jerk chicken and Red Stripe beer). We're incensed. The lost day of sun bathing cost me $3,000." Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights...

pandora@independent.co.uk

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