I am reminded, as we tend to say in the column game, of the spoof version of the Oxford Mail once produced by Isis, the undergraduate magazine, with the headline: "Oxon man killed in nuclear holocaust", and the sub-heading, "Six million feared dead as bombs strike New York."n BLIMEY, there are an awful lot of them out there, you know. This story was introduced in several of our newspapers with the ordeal of two British models being thrown out of bed by the earthquake: "Models' night of terror" and "I fled quake in nightie". Which has now been reached with British models caught up in Japanese disasters. It began with the Kobe earthquake, in which more than 3,000 died and 10,000 buildings were destroyed.

I realise this means little to my many readers from Generation X. All I can offer them is that character created by my colleague Mr Enfield who is always saying, "You don't wanna do that", but it is not quite as exact.IT IS plainly evident that the Captain is a man of wide-ranging interest; a man who takes delight in the bewildering variety of the human condition But even I have my cut-off point. No, the underlying key, it finally struck me, is a character called Blakey, the inspector in that popular television comedy, On The Buses You listen next time. It's a tricky accent, his, isn't it? Very difficult to place Little of the costas about it at all.

What do you mean, it's not much? The Captain says: no matter how big the jigsaw, each piece is vital. Next!n MONITORING the Today programme the other morning to check whether James "Jim" Naughtie has dropped his much-mocked habit of introducing every item with a portentous "So", I found myself listening to Michael Portillo. As Milton so elegantly puts it, "A man who kept his public life extremely private" But wait a minute I almost forgot to tell you I used to work with Mary Ellen Synon. What? What can I tell you about her? Well, she often wore a fur coat.

Then, at the famous Barings press conference, Milton felt a rising excitement when, at one stage, Eddie George turned to Pennant- Rea and said, "That's right, isn't it, Rupert?" And Pennant-Rea nodded. Milton Keynes, my economics correspondent, watched him attend four Treasury select committee meetings at which he uttered not a word. "I am the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment with responsibility for watching developments on the minimum wage," replies Phillip Oppenheim Nice one, Rodders!AH, YES, that Rupert Pennant-Rea. Rodney, as you will know, is chairman of the TUC's economic committee and has about his person the TUC's classified briefing on the minimum wage, which he somehow contrives to leave on the bar Then he spots this unassuming fellow leafing through it "Who are you?" demands Rodney. Apparently Rodney Bickerstaffe, associate general secretary of Unison, you know, the one who looks like what Buddy Holly would have looked like if he had lived, was in. Do you think you could get hold of some tapes of it for me? It's Scarlet and Black, the Stendhal thingie."n BRRNNGGG! It is my political correspondent, Miss Una Tributable She sounds slurred, but this may be due to the connection Miss Tributable has intelligence from the Strangers' Bar.

When that programme To Play the King was on the telly and there was all the fuss about its lightly fictionalised Prince of Wales, an aide received a call from him: "I'm told there's a very interesting programme about royalty on the television at the moment. Meanwhile, if I were a seal, I'd be very, very careful. LIFE with the Royals, an occasional Moonlight series, providing intimate insights into our favourite family And all true. He is pretty sure they do it to keep their noses warm, but, as he says, "Who knows what a polar bear is thinking?" He is about to make another film about them and promises to investigate the matter. But is it true? Are the polar wastes heaving with questing bears on tiptoe with their noses covered? I spoke to Mike Salisbury, the BBC producer of The Kingdom of the Ice Bear. Well, said Mike, polar bears do tend to lie next to seal holes for hours and hours waiting for a seal to come up so they can grab it, and more often than not they cover their noses while waiting. I quote: "Polar bears have been seen to cover their black noses with a paw while out hunting to make themselves less conspicuous." I have appended the photograph to give you an idea of how it might work.