People - Here, There and Everywhere
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Condi proves she's not from the block
DON'T BE FOOLED by the sweet smile and the humble background - the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, can be as blunt as her powerful predecessor Henry Kissinger.
According to Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post correspondent whose biography of Condi is to be published soon, she once lost her patience with a jewellery store assistant who showed her cheap costume pieces.
"Let's get one thing straight," Rice reportedly 
barked at the woman. "You are behind the counter because you have to work for minimum wage. I'm on this side asking to see the goods because I make considerably more."
Stanford professor Coit Blacker, a close friend who accompanied Condi to the store, recalls a manager quickly bringing Rice a more stately selection of baubles.
Oil boss joins Russia's most wanted in London
LONDON'S REPUTATION AS a haven for Vladimir Putin's most wanted men gets a boost today with news that Mikhail Gutseriyev, head of the RussNeft oil company, may be hiding from the Kremlin here.
Gutseriyev (below) is believed to have left Russia after he was forced to sell RussNeft when tax evasion charges were filed against him. A warrant 
has been issued for his arrest. He was last seen in Russia at the funeral of his son, Chingiskhan, a former Harrow pupil who died from a brain haemorrhage after a mysterious car crash in Moscow last week.
The Home Office will not confirm or deny whether Gutseriyev has been granted or sought asylum. But Russia's Kommersant newspaper claims he is in London, joining high-profile exiles Boris Berezovsky and Chechen leader Akhmed Zakaev.
Russia has used Britain's refusal to extradite Berezovsky and Zakaev as an excuse not to hand over the suspect in Alexander Litvinenko's murder. If Gutseriyev is in London, then diplomatic relations, already strained, could worsen.
September 1: Arctic Monkeys play at Bar M, Manumission, San Antonio, Ibiza
September 3: David Schwimmer, Simon Pegg, Thandie Newton and Dylan Moran attend the premiere of Run, Fat Boy, Run at Vue Leicester Square
September 4: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Romola Garai (above) and Vanessa Redgrave attend the London premiere of Atonement at Odeon Leicester Square.
Empty seats in the chapel
WHILE Princes William and Harry are touted as the inspiration for today's memorial service to mark the tenth anniversary of their mother's death, it is Prince Charles who is responsible for the undignified mess behind the service. The soldier-princes chose the text and music - apparently judging the options on (continued below ad)
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(continued from above ad) their iPods - but it is their father who controlled the guest list.
A clear indictment of his organisation was the fact that the Guards Chapel at Wellington Barracks contained only 450 people today when it has a capacity for 700. Most notorious for being absent was his new wife Camilla, whose decision not to attend followed threats from other guests to return their invitations if "the third person" in Charles and Diana's marriage was present.
Camilla instead is believed to have spent the day at her private home, Ray Mill at Lacock in Wiltshire, before jetting off to the Med on her annual holiday with a group of close female friends - but without the Prince.
Mohamed Al Fayed, father of Diana's final companion Dodi, who died with her, was not invited, but his daughter Camilla was present. Also blacklisted were three men who claim to have been closer to the Princess than Charles himself in the last days of her unhappy marriage - Paul Burrell, her butler, Patrick Jephson, her private secretary, and Ken Wharfe, her police protection officer, all of whom have written memoirs about working for the princess.
One man Charles had no control over was the BBC's royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, who provided live coverage for the BBC. Two years ago, Charles was famously heard to mutter through gritted teeth: "I can't bear that man. I mean, he's so awful, he really is." Witchell's presence is likely to have crowned an altogether awful day for the Prince.
In pictures: Diana's funeral, 10 years on 
The life and times of Diana, 1961-1997
Jagger Jr causes a stir on stage
LAST NIGHT WAS press night for James Jagger's professional stage debut at Islington's King's Head theatre, and it must have been years since the tiny pub theatre - capacity 70 - had so many national newspaper hacks in the audience.
The son of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall appeared alongside former EastEnders star Shane Richie in two dark one-act comedies by American playwright James McLure. In the first, the 22-year-old Jagger (below) plays a nerdy village idiot who learned everything he knows about women from a school anatomy book. In the second, he is a stuck-up and suicidal rich kid confined to a mental hospital with fellow Vietnam vets.
With his father's rubbery lips, and his mother's height, the family resemblance is unmistakable. Rolling Stones references got the audience 
giggling: in the first play a fellow actor struts and sings along to Get Off Of My Cloud, and Jagger's character in the second play moans: "You know, you just don't know how hard it is to be rich".
The first reviews to appear are polite, the Guardian saying Jagger "acquits himself decently and doesn't let the side down", while the Evening Standard claims "he reveals himself to be a natural-born,versatile actor". The First Post's spy, however, found him mannered and wooden and - despite his mother's Texan background - liable to let his American accent slip. Mick can judge his son's performance for himself when he and his girlfriend L'Wren Scott attend tonight.
Posh to play self on Ugly Betty
DESPITE CLAIMING ON arrival in Los Angeles that she was not looking to start an acting career, Victoria Beckham has landed her first Hollywood job - playing herself in an episode of Ugly Betty, based on life at a fashion magazine.
Posh will play a celebrity bridesmaid at the prime-time comedy show's upcoming wedding of Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams) and publisher Bradford Meade (Alan Dale).
Producers are taking a gamble, since her first foray onto US television, Victoria Beckham: Coming to America, received such low ratings and scathing reviews that a planned six-part series was scrapped by NBC.
If Posh disappoints again, TV execs will have to queue up for their refund behind owners and fans of the LA Galaxy, where Victoria's husband David has proved an expensive investment in nothing. Already dogged by injury, he is possibly out for the season after spraining his right knee this week in a rare appearance.
Pike gives her man the Wright answer
BRITISH film director Joe Wright is having a good week. Not only has the 35-year-old seen his second film, Atonement, open the Venice Film Festival amid talk of Oscar nominations, but he has just announced his engagement to stunning girlfriend Rosamund Pike, 28, having taken advantage of the trip to Italy to propose to her on the shores of Lake Como.
The pair, pictured above, met on the set of Wright's 2005 film Pride and Prejudice, in which Pike played Jane Bennet. Their engagement was announced at a dinner party at Venice's Bauer Hotel overlooking the Grand Canal. Assembled friends and family, including Atonement stars Keira Knightley and James McAvoy, applauded as the filmmaker said, "I have asked Roz to be my wife. She, thank God, said 'yes'."
The early days of their relationship were complicated by the casting of Simon Woods, Pike's former boyfriend from Oxford, as her love-interest in Pride and Prejudice. The former Bond girl, and now respected West End stage actress, once wept publicly about the difficulties of working with her ex and and her new boyfriend on the set.
Actress Emma Watson (below), who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter films, is donning a school uniform again to play the orphaned Pauline Fossil in the BBC adaptation of the Noel Streatfield novel, Ballet Shoes... Hip producer 
Mark Ronson has vowed never to work with singer Amy Winehouse (above) again after she failed to show up for a video shoot... Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov has paid £75m for a stake in Arsenal football club... George Michael, John Travolta and Vernon Kay are among stars lined up for the final series of the Ricky Gervais TV show, Extras...
New York's punk godfather dies
Hilly Kristal, founder of the legendary punk and art-rock club CBGB's on New York's Bowery, has died at 75 after a long battle with lung cancer. The club, where Blondie with Debbie Harry and the Ramones both got their start, closed last October after 30 years, a victim of gentrification and rising rents.
Kristal is best remembered for godfathering punk by accident - he had planned to specialise in country, blue-grass, and blues (hence CBGB), but nobody came - and for his taste in decoration, which was to leave it to the graffiti scribblers.
