I know I promised a return to quality on this place, but this is going to be more like Popbitch. Sorry…

Politico spot: John Reid coming out of the Cavendish Square exit of the Oxford Street branch of John Lewis c.4pm this afternoon, arm in arm with a brunette in her thirties. Was this his daughter, or is he following the precedent of his predecessor (but one) as Home Secretary and getting an inappropriate bit on the side?

Ha! Take that, Guido! I can do unsubstantiated rumour as well as the next man – and this isn’t even “recycled Westminster gossip” (copyright David Miliband), but my own, all-original gossip, made from 100% never-before-used scarce natural resources and destined for a landfill near you early next year to be pecked at by seagulls (until they get bored, which seagulls are often wont to do, the demanding brutes) before its excavation in a couple of millennia by confused-looking simian archaeologists from a post-apocalypic world which even a rag-wearing Charlton Heston can do nothing to save.

Like the intrepid reporter I am, I would have asked about the precise nature of his relationship with his much younger female companion but, having caught his eye and been glared at until I felt my very soul begin to wither, I noticed the presence of his two eight-foot bodyguards and thought rather better of it.

Before I knew it he had disappeared into his gleaming ministerial Jaguar, left with the engine running outside Cafe Nero on Old Cavendish Street in a flagrant violation of our dear PM Tony Cameron’s latest green wheeze, and sped off, his minders in tow in a battered old estate. Not literally in tow, though, that would make the subtlety of an unmarked escort vanish rather rapidly. Not that it was an Escort, mind – I think it was probably a Vauxhall Astra, but know nothing about cars, so can’t be certain…

They continued to glare at me through the windows as they went past. Did they recognise the internet’s very own Nosemonkey from my MI5 file (which almost certainly exists if they’re serious about keeping track of potential dissidents), are Reid and his burly cronies simply sociopaths who despise the mere public nearly as much as the eeeevil terrorists hate our decadent western freedom and democracy, or is the Home Secretary’s passion destined not for his charming ladyfriend, but for the scruffy, hungover bloke who was gazing at him from a street corner while smoking a yellowed roll-up with trembling hand?

It could just work – I can be Walter Matthau, staying up late, drinking, having fun; my little Johnny (and he really is little, like a wee Scots Napoleon – only without the sense of style) will be Jack Lemmon, tidying up my mess, making a fuss, then locking me up indefinitely in Belmarsh before deportation for a quick spot of viciously unrelenting torture gentle interrogation in a Libyan re-education facility that somehow doesn’t appear on any maps.

Pug-faced bald authoritarian John Reid and “Internet Website Master” Nosemonkey (copyright BBC London News) – a match made in heaven.