PEP talker

Alumnus to be proud of No:72 is yet another fine upstanding (as opposed to the other variety found face-down in Bournemouth sidestreets) Tory gent, Sir Geoffrey Johnson-Smith, until last week chair of that fine Westminster body with "a good Conservative majority", the Commons committee on Members' Privileges.

Before becoming a well-known Tory grandee - the name apparently given to anyone who sticks around long enough in the parliamentary Conservative party without either threatening to break into the cabinet or upsetting the party establishment - he read politics, philosophy and economics at Lincoln College, Oxford.