BLACK DOG: This is Big Ben to Major Tim... Astronaut to become the first person to give evidence to MPs while orbiting earth 

Pioneering British astronaut Tim Peake is poised to become the first person to give evidence to MPs while orbiting Earth. While it’s not quite on a par with being the first man on the Moon, members of the Commons Science Committee are very excited about setting up a live link to the International Space Station to quiz Tim about his zero-gravity adventure. That’s if they can get the taxpayer to stump up the £5,000 for the satellite link.

Pioneering British astronaut Tim Peake (pictured) is poised to become the first person to give evidence to MPs while orbiting Earth

Ex-Army Reservist Julian Brazier – 62 and ramrod-straight – says he is ‘reeling’ at being compared by The Times to doddery Private Godfrey from Dad’s Army – but not for the reason you’d think. ‘I have always rather considered myself a Corporal Jones man,’ barks the amiable Defence Minister.

Andrea tunes up as MPs gently weep 

Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, left – an ex-beauty queen and opera singer – has installed a guitar, drum kit and electronic keyboard in her office to practise The Beatles’ screechy While My Guitar Gently Weeps with MPs rock group House of Cerulean. Given the modest musical talents of most of the line-up, it’ll be MPs in nearby offices who’ll be weeping.

 Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns – an ex-beauty queen and opera singer – has installed a guitar, drum kit and electronic keyboard in her office

Plans by Commons chiefs to set up modern customer service-style checks to show how often MPs meet local voters would have been tricky for revered parliamentary knights of a not-so-distant, laissez-faire age. The late Labour MP Sir Stuart Bell didn’t hold a constituency surgery in his Middlesbrough seat at all between 1997 and 2011, while the late Tory Eric Forth boasted he’d never held a single one in his entire career as an MP from 1983 to 2006. ‘It just encourages people,’ he would say.

Off in a puff of smoke 

A fond farewell to Sir Simon Burns, who is standing down as Chelmsford Tory MP at the next Election. No 10 insiders reckon the main reason the PM gave lowly ex-Rail Minister Burns a gong was for calling the Speaker a ‘sanctimonious dwarf’. When 60-a-day smoker Burns was exposed for using his Government limo to ferry him to Whitehall from his Essex home at a cost of £80,000 a year, there were claims it was so that he could puff on a fag. Classy.

Bob Marshall-Andrews, the Blair-hating former Labour MP and legendary Westminster boulevardier, has written a bodice-ripping political thriller, Camille And The Lost Diaries Of Samuel Pepys. The fictional ‘lost memoirs’ of the 17th Century diarist are full of sex, booze and political treachery, and are grandiosely billed as ‘an allegory of Blair’s handling of the Iraq War’. Sounds more like bawdy Bob’s memoirs than those of priapic Pepys.

Tory MPs tired of watching Jeremy Corbyn flop at PMQs each week are bewitched by the fixed-grin expression of the man next to him – his deputy Tom Watson. ‘It’s a cross between the Mona Lisa and the Sphinx,’ says Tory Stuart Andrew. ‘It’s his way of getting through it without screaming, or he’s secretly pleased Corbyn’s so bad as he’s got his eye on his job.’

Tory MPs tired of watching Jeremy Corbyn flop at PMQs each week are bewitched by the fixed-grin expression of the man next to him – his deputy Tom Watson (right)