Mum-to-be Samantha Burke is the 'very sweet girl' with a 'delightfully tacky' past

The parents of Samantha Burke, 24, the Floridian brunette said to have been impregnated by actor Jude Law, 36, describe their daughter as 'a very sweet girl who didn't flaunt her looks and guys tended to keep their distance'.

It now emerges that Miss Burke was employed by the American chain bar, Hooters, where patrons are served by big-bosomed beauties dressed in brief, tight-fitting costumes. The company slogan: 'Delightfully tacky... yet unrefined.' Got the picture!

Samantha Burke

Mum-to-be: Model Samantha Burke is saide to be expecting Jude Law's baby

Forty elderly residents of north Kensington will be driven by coach to a hotel in Folkestone, Kent, so they can avoid the 'hustle and bustle' of the August 30-31 Notting Hill Carnival, which they are said to find 'less then enjoyable'.

Leader of the council Merrick Cockell says, with careful understatement: 'Although the carnival is an exciting event, we do sympathise with older residents for whom large crowds and loud noise make the weekend a difficult time.' ie. they're terrified out of their wits.

Describing himself as an 'EU advisor on language', Tony Thorne has written Jolly Wicked, Actually: The 100 Words That Make Us English. According to the Times Literary Supplement, they include bovver, chippy, crap, fag, frump, gurning, kip, lurgy, slag, twit, yob, yoof and 'a characteristic native utterance' is: 'Oi, fancy a shag?'

Is it any wonder Scotland, Ireland and Wales sought separation?

Historian Andrew Roberts, pictured, says he noticed while meeting the Queen recently that Her Majesty's earlobes are surprisingly long.

He reflects: 'I was surprised until I noticed the vast number of carats they were carrying in diamonds, and have of course had to carry for the best part of three-quarters of a century.' Cheeky monkey!

Film maker Eddie Mirzoeff was at Oxford with Michael Heseltine but later sacked from the Hezza-owned Shoppers' Guide by the former Tory deputy premier himself.

Years later he met Heseltine at Buckingham Palace while filming a meeting of the Privy Council. Mirzoeff recalls: 'I told him that the last time we met he had sacked me. He replied, rather coldly, that he had no memory of me or of the occasion.'

Is Heseltine expected to remember everyone he's wined, dined and sacked?

The publicity drums are now beating for Old Etonian Willie Shawcross's official life of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. We're told by one journal that Her Majesty taped interviews with the then Provost of Eton, Sir Eric Anderson.

Actually I mentioned this in 2002 but it's certainly worth repeating. Anderson might have cherished the hope he'd be chosen as the Queen Mother's biographer but the talented Shawcross endeared himself to the Queen - and to her mother - with his fine book and TV programme, Queen and Country, during the Golden Jubilee.