Monday

It’s in the nature of my obsessive personality to collect things. Everything from Panini stickers to rare books. I have even collected things I wasn’t sure even still existed. After years of collecting all British stamps, I decided to specialise in panes of stamps taken from booklets issued in the reigns of King Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII and George VI. And soon ran into problems, because although there were catalogues listing every variety of panes that had ever been printed, there was no way of knowing just how many had been removed from their booklets and been kept intact. The good news was that this turned out to be one of my cheaper collections as after I had hoovered up all the common stuff, I could go years without finding another pane to add to it. I kept this up for more than 10 years before finally admitting this was a madness too far for me. But I have maintained my love for stamps by writing a regular column for Stamp Magazine, in which I have spent a lot of time slagging off Royal Mail for taking collectors for mugs with dozens of badly designed, meaningless new issues. But credit where credit is due. Royal Mail has surpassed itself with its new Dad’s Army stamps. With slogans of “Don’t panic!” and “We’re all doomed!” it couldn’t have made a better job of trolling all those who had been demanding a special Brexit issue.

Tuesday

Sometimes politicians surprise me by being more competent and in control than you might expect. It doesn’t always make for good comedy but it can be quite reassuring. Other times, they terrify me. I watched the Commons debate the Lords’ amendments to the Brexit bill with a growing sense of disbelief as it became clear the government was literally making up policy in real time. One of the most important pieces of legislation in the country’s post-war history was being cobbled together in front of my eyes. Julian Smith, the government’s chief whip, abandoned all pretence at subtlety and darted around the chamber tracking down Tory backbenchers who might rebel, and began to openly threaten and bribe them. Of course, you can have a new bypass in your constituency! When all his entreaties failed, 15 of the rebels disappeared from the chamber having been summoned to a private meeting with the prime minister. What Theresa May promised is still anyone’s guess, as her recollection of the meeting appears to have been very different from everyone else’s. A great day to be a sketch-writer. Not such a great day for democracy.

Wednesday

The novelist Jilly Cooper has given a magazine interview in which she has said she has been unable to take a holiday for more than 20 years because her dog can’t bear to leave her Gloucestershire home. This strikes me as rather improbable. In my experience, our dog has been quite happy to get in the car and sit in a traffic jam for seven hours when we go to Cornwall. Herbert Hound doesn’t appear to suffer any culture shock when he comes across dogs barking in a West Country accent or is asked to sleep on a strange bed and he is a lot braver about jumping into a freezing cold sea than I am. Even more disturbing for us is that when we go on holiday abroad, our dog seems genuinely excited to be going on an adventure with our friends who are looking after him. As if he knows he can get away with even more with them than he can with us and expects more than his usual share of walks and treats. My guess is that it is Jilly, not her pooch, who finds it hard to leave home.

Thursday

An old vase that had been gathering dust in an attic has turned out to be a rare piece of 18th-century Yangcai famille-rose porcelain from the Qing dynasty and has just sold for more than £14m at Sotheby’s in Paris. No doubt the discovery will send queues for future series of Antiques Roadshow snaking round the block as people rummage through all the bits of old tat lying around their homes in the hope of uncovering gold dust. My own experiences tend to be rather more disappointing. A ticket from the 1901 FA Cup semi-final between Spurs and West Brom (Spurs won 4-0 – just saying) that I had bought at auction was identified as a fake when I came to sell it many years later. The first auction house did do the right thing and refund me the price I had paid for it, but I was still left feeling a bit of a mug. We also haven’t had much luck with furniture. It had always been part of the family folklore that an old cupboard my mother had inherited from her mother was quite valuable. When my mother moved into a home and we had to sell some of her possessions we were told the cupboard was a reproduction and that my granny had been duped. Gullibility is clearly something I inherited from my mother’s side.

Friday

After Jeremy Corbyn’s storming election rallies last year, the idea of Labour Live – a festival of Jeremy Corbyn, several bands whose names sound vaguely familiar but none of whose songs you can remember and Jeremy Corbyn – must have seemed like a great idea. While the Tories bickered over who is supposed to be inside the tent pissing out and who is outside the tent pissing in, Labour would get together to share the love in the sun. Only it hasn’t quite worked out like that, as very few tickets were sold for tomorrow’s event and those who had bought one were demanding refunds when they discovered the price had been reduced. To help save the Labour leader from the embarrassment of appearing in front of just a handful of diehards, the Unite union emailed its members with a special discount code that would enable them to order as many tickets as they wanted for free. To check if it worked I duly went on the Labour Live site and ordered 18 tickets in the name of Tony Blair, c/o Cell Block 8, HMP Belmarsh. Within seconds I was sent an email with 18 tickets. After I tweeted to let people know of Tony’s good fortune – who needs a Qing vase when you can take your extended family to the Jez fest for free? – various Unite members tried it for themselves. One tweeted back to say that Leon Trotsky would also be coming with 59 of his closest friends. It could be a sell-out after all.

Digested week, digested: Theresa tells such dreadful lies ...



Trump to Kim: ‘Tell me the name of your barber.’ Photograph: kcna/EPA

Gareth Southgate, England manager, and striker Harry Kane: ‘We won this in a penalty shootout.’ Photograph: Lee Smith/Reuters



