There’s quite a good joke here — it must be an old one but I’ve not come across it before — in this week’s Spectator by Robin Oakley. It goes: Asked why he had sent a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt, a friend at the funeral of the

There’s an exhibition on at Compton Verney, 13 November til 12 December, entitled Kurt Tong: In Case it Rains in Heaven. It’s a photographic celebration of the Chinese custom of burning paper consumer goods of all sorts — clothes, cars, iPods — in order to provide for the dead person in the afterlife.

Time spent on a Monday morning in the company of Don unfailingly gets the week going with a smile.