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"So we sent her to another, less important office, and then when she begged to be let back we knew she was a wrong 'un."Judd's sexy secretsChris Woodhead, the chief inspector turned private schools mogul, will not be among those celebrating the arrival of Judith Judd as editor of the Times Educational Supplement. It was Ms Judd who, as education editor of The Independent, told the world of Wooders' intimate relationship with a former pupil. Owner Rupert Murdoch must hope that her sexed-up approach will halt the TES's sharp slide in circulation, now below 100,000.MP on the ballBafflement over why James Purnell, the newly appointed Minister for Broadcasting, will be staying away from the industry's premier talking shop, the Edinburgh International TV Festival, this summer. The draw will be the BBC charter renewal and a lecture from Lord Birt, but the Lancashire MP will be playing golf.
"I've been up there for the past few years and I've played all the Edinburgh courses," he said Instead he will be cruising the fairways of Norfolk. "I had booked my holiday before I got the job," he explained.. Conrad Black insists he hasn't yet lost his shirt, in spite of the mounting legal and financial troubles stemming from the collapse of his media empire. He is, however, about to lose his beloved 1958 Rolls-Royce, currently mothballed in Essex. And a matter of cardboard boxes and security cameras has put the remains of his dignity on the line too. "This is not a permanent state of affairs," he says in its current issue, referring to his pecuniary peril. He says he'll start again, but this time not in the newspaper business.But no sooner were his words published than new troubles erupted for the one-time socialite and media tycoon.
Scorned by former friends, isolated from old colleagues and allies, stripped of his London newspaper - The Daily Telegraph - and now his London home, too, there may be no end to his humiliations.Indeed, this latest episode in the soap opera of Lord Black of Crossharbour's fall from grace, has bought freshembarrassment.He and two assistants were caught on tape spiriting a dozen cardboard boxes out of offices he once occupied in the headquarters of Hollinger Inc in Toronto. The courts, which are investigating claims that he and other executives looted $400m (£230m) from the company and its Chicago-based subsidiary Hollinger International, had given Lord Black until Tuesday to vacate the building. But they told him not to remove anything from his office.The boxes have been returned, and a spokesman for Lord Black insisted that they contained only personal effects he assumed had not been covered by the court order. But the impression left by the grainy black and white images from the tapes, enthusiastically picked up by media outlets around the world, was of amateur crooks bungling a corporate robbery.Meanwhile, the trappings of the life of luxury once led by Lord Black and his columnist wife Barbara Amiel are slowly being disposed of.
