ON TUESDAY evening, I headed for the Westminster Arms pub. After no more than a sip or two, I glanced over at the giant screen in the corner.

Only five minutes from the Commons, it is a favourite haunt of policy spin doctors and even MPs who can just about hear the Division Bell from the upstairs bar.

As a result, it is one of the few pubs in Britain which shows BBC News 24 on the TV, rather than monster trucks, Sky Sports or wrestling.

The noise was turned down, but the TV screamed: "Breaking News: Blair - massive evidence of WMD".

The BBC then cut to an interview the Prime Minister had given to the British Forces Broadcasting Service. I'm no good at lip reading, but Mr Blair appeared to be trying very hard to stifle a big grin.

Next, UN General Secretary Kofi Annan came on screen. He looked as if he was saying something very important indeed.

I turned to my friend, a journalist who went to Iraq to cover the war, and said something similar to: 'Blair's got away with it'.

He was staggered, but agreed - thinking the Allied troops must have found something in the briefcase Saddam Hussein was clutching when he was dragged out of his "spiderhole" which had led to a huge stash of chemical weapons.

We decided that, in the space of a few hours, the whole picture had changed. Saddam had been snared and Mr Blair was in a position to stick two fingers up to his many critics, not to mention Hans Blix - who had said there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found. Even the findings of the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, due in January, would be less daunting now it had been proved the war was not based on a false premise.

I headed back to the Commons but, when I arrived, my colleagues viewed my rantings as though I'd drunk considerably more than a pint.

I had been "News 24-ed". The BBC, Sky and ITN's round-the-clock news channels are in such a rush to broadcast breaking news before each other, they "swoosh" - the wonderful sound which accompanies the bar of text rattling across the bottom of the TV screen - first, and think later.

Mr Blair had indeed said there was massive evidence of chemical weapons laboratories - but he was referring to the findings of an report by the Iraqi Survey Group published early this year.

Not so much breaking news as well and truly broken.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Michael Ancram accused Mr Blair of trying to use "spin" to give an impression that the hunt for WMD had finally been successful.

"I went and looked up what the ISG actually said, and what it actually said was that a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses had been found, suitable for continuing chemical and biological weapons research.

"There was nothing about 'massive' and certainly nothing giving the indication that was given yesterday," he fumed on Wednesday.

A humble Downing Street later admitted no new information had come to light since the report's publication. So, while Saddam's detention will no doubt make Mr Blair's turkey a little bit easier to swallow next Thursday, he still needs to be on the look-out for the wishbone.

For him, Hutton and top-up fees could make 2004 a very big year indeed. Let's hope he has a very merry Christmas.

Parliament is now in recess. James Slack returns on January 9.

Updated: 10:01 Friday, December 19, 2003