David Davis and the shadow home office assault course

* When David Davis was campaigning against Cameron for the Tory leadership, Jeremy Paxman put it to him that close colleagues described him as "a thug, bully, an adventurer, disloyal, congenitally treacherous and winner of the Whips' Office shit of the year award".

The former SAS soldier disputed every charge, but he does seem to have had difficulty holding on to his staff this past year or so. Since early 2006, six have spun through DD's revolving door in the Palace of Westminster: Juliet Donnelly (secretary), Marc Williams (researcher), Kate Hall (chief of staff who quit after a week), Katy Taylor-Richards (researcher), Gloria Nicholl (secretary and ex-manager of the drugtastic Happy Mondays) and Amy Selman (researcher).

I hear that a seventh name will soon be added to the roll of those missing in action; indeed, the shadow home secretary is already advertising for a new researcher.

"Davis isn't a good people manager," claims an insider. "He thinks he's Mr Crusading Action Man, too big for office matters. He makes junior staff sit separately in a dingy bunker with no natural daylight. Lunch breaks are militarily monitored. Morale's miserable.

"If he can't handle his own office, how could he run the Home Office?"

A source in DD's office said that several of those quick to leave his employment had "personal circumstances", adding: "It's a young, vibrant place." Davis declined to talk, his spokesman insisting: "We don't comment on office or staff rumours." Time for a team-building exercise in the Malaysian rainforest?

* Last summer, the patrons of London's smoggy East End dug out their socks and sandals for the arrival of a "city beach" near Brick Lane.

The queue for 99 flakes and a pint was not overpopulated with locals, however: they are waging war against the return of 80 tons of sand to the old Truman brewery car park. And buried on page 109 of the minutes of Tower Hamlets council's licensing sub-committee is an objection from Tracey Emin the artist and columnist for The Independent.

"Over my dead body!" she spits. "The City Beach is so disruptive that residents including myself who are not allowed double glazing due to the Grade II listed features of their properties are forced to endure excessive and intrusive volumes of noise late into the night."

The clientele "leave vast amounts of rubbish all over the surrounding streets including half-eaten food, beer cans and condoms, not to mention the urination and faeces... due to lack of toilets".

Emin adds that she is "absolutely opposed" to granting a license to this "anti-social nightmare".

The City Beach management says that Brick Lane is not a residential area.

* Many unhappy returns to Sir Salman Rushdie, who on Tuesday evening held a discreet private party to celebrate his 60th birthday and his knighthood, against the backdrop of condemnation from Iranian and Pakistani nabobs, and renewed death threats.

Never mind all that, though: his son Zafar wants to know whether or not he will be on Dad's guest list for the Palace. "The honoured are entitled to three guests, three passes," Rushdie Jnr tells Pandora at the Regent Street launch for the jewellers Mappin & Webb. "I've not had the conversation with Dad yet, but I do hope I am one of them.

"Actually, you know I should ask him, just to double-check that! God I do hope I'm going!" He adds: "I'm really proud of him and I think it's been a long time coming." That's the spirit!

* The money is on Hilary Benn to become Gordon's Foreign Secretary. Yet the former Foreign Office mandarin Michael (now Lord) Jay tips David Miliband. The great panjandrum was astonished to find Miliband alone on a tour of India: "He was briefing himself on India. I was very impressed."

Hilary Armstrong and Patricia Hewitt are rumoured to be preparing to jump ship.

* Barry Cox, friend of the Blairs, has been talking to Andrew Rawnsley for his Channel 4 series The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair. This Saturday, Cox will tell us: "Peter Mandelson was the man who made Kinnock. And Tony, you know, admired him for that. And Mandelson had an almost homo-erotic admiration for him [Tony]." Cough, splutter. "When he was trying to get Hartlepool, the seat, he would stay in Sedgefield with the Blairs. I remember... it was almost embarrassing the terms in which Peter spoke to me about Tony."

Spill Barry, spill!

* Hissing orcs on pogo sticks, an 18ft walking tree and a giant hairy spitting spider: just another night in the West End. After the Drury Lane opening of the Lord of the Rings musical, Pandora caught up with its producer, Kevin Wallace, preparing to stuff his face with what looked like a wedding cake.

"I'm not an egomaniac," he said. "It's an extraordinary coincidence that the opening night falls on my birthday. It was partly dictated by Tony Blair, as we didn't want the opening to fall on the Tuesday he stands down, or we would have never got the same publicity."

Which political colleague might this be? "Master betrayed us. Wicked, tricksy, false. We ought to wring his filthy little neck. Kill him. Kill him. Kill them both, and then we take the Precious and we be the master."

pandora@independent.co.uk

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