BARON PREZZA UPDATE...

Our newly ennobled Baron Prescott of Kingston upon Hull turned up yesterday morning on Andrew Marr`s tv show. In answer to Marr`s questioning about how he felt about it all, Prezza insisted that he `hadn`t felt a prat` whilst accepting the peerage he always said he would refuse.

I think in the interests of correct reporting, I should perhaps repeat what he actually said on tv yesterday about his `so-called ennoblement.` It went like this:-

"I weren`t feeling a prat.. I think I was chewing a wasp at the time. But basically there is that, when you dress up in that ermine. Why do you have to do that? I have to balance that against having a forum."

Quite so. I imagine the Reading Clerk himself feels less of a prat this morning knowing that the gobbledegook he was forced to read out last week now makes perfect sense compared with Baron Prezza`s version of those events. But the people I feel really sorry for are the Hansard reporters, whose job it is to "record the words of Members of the House of Lords and then edit them to remove repetitions and obvious mistakes but without taking away from their intended meaning." They`ll earn their corn when Prezza gets going.