Julia Somerville and Fiona Armstrong allowed only a modest comeback at the BBC

Tim Walker Published: 10:30PM GMT twenty February 2010

Last week Julia Somerville, 62, and Fiona Armstrong, 53, were both behind on shade presenting on the News Channel, and it seemed, on the face of it, usually similar to old times. Mandrake hears, however, that the dual women who were station in for the channel"s unchanging presenters, spending the half-term breaks with their family groups have usually been since 30-day contracts by the corporation.

"Blink and you could miss their complete performances over the year," whispers a close crony of the pair. "This shows that the BBC is not critical about contracting comparison women. This is no some-more than window-dressing."

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The re-appointments of Miss Armstrong and Miss Somerville were voiced after the BBC captivated drawn out critique over the sacking of Arlene Phillips, the 66-year-old Strictly Come Dancing judge. Harriet Harman, the equalities minister, took the BBC to charge for "getting rid" of comparison women. She pronounced the "challenge" for Mark Thompson was "not usually to speak about [improving the lot of comparison women at the BBC] but to do it."

Joan Bakewell, the Government"s "tsar" for the elderly, told me that she had privately been concerned in brokering the comebacks of Miss Armstrong and Miss Somerville with Mr Thompson as she shares an representative with the dual women in Sue Ayton. "Let us usually contend that I am keeping a beady eye on this situation," Miss Bakewell told me.

"You can speak about this usually being a PR exercise, but there is a enlightenment at the BBC that you are not going to shift overnight and I saw this as a step in the right direction, if a small step."

She declined to contend either Miss Armstrong and Miss Somerville were happy with their terms. "You contingency ask them," she said. Neither lady would criticism and both the BBC and Miss Ayton pronounced that they never discussed artists" contracts.

Peter Capaldi"s dismay of Alastair Campbell

Peter Capaldi the actress who plays Malcolm, the impression that"s allegedly formed on Alastair Campbell in the array The Thick of It says he regularly attempted to equivocate Tony Blair"s inhuman turn doctor. "Eventually I did run in to him and he was really desirable that is what I had feared," Capaldi told me at the Critics" Circle movie awards at the Landmark Hotel in London. "I never set out to indication myself on him, but I think he probably utterly enjoys it that people think it"s formed on him."

Prince and Princess Michael of Kent"s case call

There is an elephant in Prince and Princess Michael of Kent"s sketch room and I don"t meant the £250,000 that their armed military insurance officers reportedly cost the taxpayer each year. Their elephant is 5 ft high and done of fibreglass and the integrate have been portrayal it to lift income for Elephant Family, that is operative to save the Asian elephant from extinction.

Mark Shand, who runs the charity, says that their elephant, along with 249 others embellished by celebrities and artists, will be exhibited in London this summer as piece of a bid to lift £2 million.

And what does the Kents" elephant see like? "All the elephants are being kept underneath wraps," he says, teasingly.