Back in the mists, early 1980s I suppose, I was asked to decorate a penthouse apartment in London for a tycoon who collected large-scale contemporary American art. Decor done, art hung, the porter asked if he could show it to the prospective buyer of the same-layout penthouse next door, a member of the Gaddafi family attending university in London. ‘Sure,’ we said, and a young man in black robes arrived a bit later. He did a quick recce, approved, and said he wanted to have exactly the same decoration, including the art, and ready to move into in ten days. My team pulled together a pretty good replica while Tom Bell and I spent a weekend making the art. Fake Stellas glowed with colour, fake Rothkos brooded. We slashed fake Fontanas, cartooned fake Lichtensteins, popped fake Warhols. Young Mr Gaddafi beamed.

Cut to a couple of decades later. I’m staying at a romantic villa in Corfu. Among the other guests is Peter Mandelson, at the time minister of who knows what, and in the bay below lies the vast yacht of Oleg Deripaska, for whom I had been doing some work in Moscow. At one alfresco dinner, our host blithely announces that Saif Gaddafi will be joining us, and pretty soon, through the olive trees, appears a phalanx of black-uniformed men, Uzis akimbo, surrounding their leader, booted beefcake wrapped in skin-tight fatigues. I see Peter quiver, while the Big Man gives me a quizzical nod. Saif G. is my penthouse pal. After some manly ribaldry and much Mouton, Peter and the Libyan war-prince go off for secret talks. An hour later they’re back, smiling enigmatically, having solved some pressing international problem… Lockerbie? Next day, we are flying back to London. As we take our seats, Peter opens his red ministerial box, looks up dreamily and says: ‘My God I fancy Saif Gaddafi.’

Judging by the photographs of Peter in his skimpy Speedophiles, he hasn’t been at the hyaluronic acid, a substance skiers at the Cortina Olympics are taking to enhance their front botties. The temporarily inflated, and then deflated, todger gives the ski jumper an aerodynamic advantage. Which might have made Mandy’s downfall even faster.

My beautiful friend Cleo Rocos, once Kenny Everett’s tits and bum sidekick, WhatsApps to say she’s upped sticks to a plot of land deep in Brazil’s Amazon jungle. ‘It’s bliss, all orchids and hyacinth macaws, and the chap three clearings down river is a head-hunter. Gotta go, there’s a crocodile crawling up the bank.’ Talk about a handful of bust. Cleo is one of the many stars we recorded on my CD Midnight Matinee. And now, thanks to Spotify, Cleo says she sings along to my latest, One Night, in the rainforest.

Ajaunt to Tangier lifts the spirit. When everywhere easily accessible looks and feels the same, this overgrown village, merely two hours away, seems distinctly foreign, noble and tumbledown and still faintly louche. It also has a hotel which is the most beautiful and superbly run anywhere in the world. The Villa Mabrouka has Jasper Conran’s stamp of excellence on every detail. He’s planning another near Bath – only one hour away.

The swirling floods on roads here in the Couttswolds hide ever deeper and axle-grinding chasms. JCB makes hole-filling machines, sent in their thousands to similarly afflicted countries. None here? No, ’cos local councils have long-term contacts with matey firms that employ a couple of navvies with dodgy tar and a smudge-pot.

My seventh annual Common Tea Towel engenders the usual fun and fire. But I think I have solved the age-old ‘milk in first’ controversy. In the 18th century, delicate porcelain cups would crack when filled with the hot tea, but a smidgen of cold milk (or more probably cream in those days) prevented such damage. So Nanny was right all along.

At Dame Jilly’s movingly arranged memorial service, assorted luvvies read from her sauciest bestsellers. During some, it occurred to me that sex scenes are only that if one reads them oneself. A famous voice doing so somehow removes the subtle innuendos.

I’m helping a new friend, Nadine Dorries, with a charming cottage nearby. Surprisingly for someone with so contemporary an attitude, Nadine doesn’t want beams, kilims or off-white sofas with a ‘throw’. Colour and comfort are more her thing. Retro along with Reform.

My beloved housekeeper June Smart brings the papers. ‘Nothing in ’em except this Mandela business,’ she says.