We have daily visits from a flock of starlings about breakfast time, waiting for me to dish up a few slices of value, wholemeal bread soaked in water for all the other bird customers. The starlings’ favourite morsel though, is a little block of cheddar cheese which has gone hard. I don’t break it up because it is better fun watching about thirty of them prodding it with their long beaks as it dances around the lawn while they all try to get a bit and the spuggies try to get in for the crumbs.

It reminds me of the feeding frenzies certain characters can generate among journalists; Princess Diane, David and Posh and some politicians, for instance. The favourite news morsel is someone in high places they get the chance to pick to pieces, like the starlings and their cheddar.

Alistair Campbell is top of the menu now. He has played the present generation like trout for a full decade and they haven’t liked it. His book is just the bait needed to really pull them in. Has he given them anything with which they can tear himself, Gordon and Tony apart?

Kirsty lined up to interview him for BBC Newsnight, and when her turn came, you could see the strained concentration on her face as she fixed his face for any slight sign of weakness as she probed. She gathered the Guardian Editor and others around her for the special meal she had prepared for them on Newsnight Review and fed them little tit bits she had prepared from her interview.

Alistair Campbell is enjoying every second of every interview. It’s even better than when he ruled the roost at number ten, and Kirsty’s was no exception. For me, the master stroke was when she suggested that he was obsessed with Diane, Princess of Wales because he had recorded in his diary that he loved her. Obviously to everybody else but Kirsty that it was from afar, as we do. Kirsty is no beauty, far from it, and when he replied, “I have always admired beautiful women; what’s wrong with that?” Kirsty’s face twisted in pain. Lovely to watch.