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Alan Taylor's diary

YET AGAIN Michael Winner, maker of some of the greatest movies of our age, is wronged. The culprit this time is Dame Helen Mirren, who has accused the national institution of treating her like "a piece of meat", possibly a pork chop, when she was a young and ravenous actress. In 1964, she told Richard and Judy, a double act, that Mr Winner made her turn around and show off her assets. "I was mortified and incredibly angry," said the woman who makes the Queen look like a char lady.

More in sorrow than anger, Mr Winner has tried to set the record straight. He was not, he insists, being a randy old dog trying to take advantage of a curvaceous, innocent babe. Au contraire, he was simply acting on behalf of St Mirren's agent, who was worried that she might only get bimbo parts because she wouldn't wear a bra. This gave the Daily Mail a glorious opportunity to show four pictures of St Mirren without a bra, including one in which no clothes at all were visible.

"Her bosoms," slavers Mr Winner, gallantly, "were indeed enormous and, dare I say it, sagging." He hopes now that a line may be drawn under the affair. "Calm down dear," he pleads, "it was only an attempt to make you more employable." Deaf, I fear, are the ears of his audience.

JUST when one was beginning to despair of the panto season, the inquest into the death of Lady Di, Princess of Wails, and Dodi "the oily bed-hopper", turned decidedly fruity, firstly with the appearance on the stand of Fatty Soames, Boney Prince Charlie's best chum, who denied ever threatening to have Di done in. Mr Fatty, a Dodo EmPee, who stopped eating briefly to give evidence, was once remembered by a former flame, now a pancake, who said that being made love to by him was like having a wardrobe fall on top of you with the key still inside the lock. Apropos the oily bed-hopper, Filippo the Greek denied - through his 69-year-old private secretary, Brigadier Sir Michael Hunt-Davis, who lists elephant polo among his "recreations" - that he'd ever called Dodi that. Contrary to his image as a gaffe-prone prune with racialist overtones, Filippo was portrayed as the Marjorie Proops of the Tupperware class, offering his services to Di as a marriage counsellor. Where all this is leading is obvious: nowhere and at Northern Rock expense to you, me and the lollipop lady. Hence the imperative to suck as much amusement as one can out of it while it chunters on. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Raine Spencer, known as "Acid" by her husband's weans, eagerly trying to reject the role thrust upon her of Di's wicked stepmother. Contrary to received wisdom the pair were apparently bosom buddies. And Mohamed al-Fayed shops at Lidl.

AMAZING news! There is a teeny-weeny possibility that Unity "Valkyrie" Mitford had Adolf Hitler's love child. This has been raised in the New Statesman, which suggests that the one-balled fascist may have got Ms Mitford preggers shortly before he waltzed into Poland. Until now historians have believed that the 25-year-old blonde bombshell shot herself in the head when war was declared. Being hopeless at most things, however, she failed to kill herself. With the bullet lodged in her brain, she was flown back to Britain, where she died in 1948.

That she was infatuated with Adolf the red-nosed mass murderer is indisputable. Being beside him, she said, was "like sitting beside the sun". Hence, no doubt, her susceptibility to hot flushes. Whether they actually ever did the deed, though, is open to doubt. Sex-wise, it would appear, AH was no Boris Becker. Even his marriage with Eva Braun was unconsummated but that may have been because they were more interested in planning their suicide pact than their honeymoon. Eva, it goes without saying, did not like Unity, whom she suspected of having designs on her dog-loving vegetarian. Another area of unresolved speculation: did either Eva or Unity have a Brazilian wax? And if they did, would they have been happy to allowed their pubic moustache to be called Adolf - as it is among the defurred doxies of Manhattan?

NEEDLESS to say, I was not surprised that when my dearest friend Alexei Salmonella became Czar of Caledonia his first decree was to build a golf course near his palazzo in sun-kissed Strichen. Some years ago, when he shocked the civilised world by abandoning Hollyrude, there was much speculation over his reasons.

Some suggested his fondness for the Turf was about to haunt him, others that something unsavoury in his personal life was about to be revealed, such as a penchant for wearing pinnies when doing the dishes.

I, however, knew all along that he was stepping down to spend more time on the golf course in a futile attempt to reduce his considerable handicap.

Thanks to Donald Chump and his Kinnockian haircut he may now get a course on his doorstep which is equal to his talent. Bizarrely, a few twitchers and ramblers have responded sourly to Mr Salmonella's inspired decision to query an Aberdeenshire Council committee's rejection of Mr Chump's plans.

Ditto a cackle of ignorant pundits who seem to think that His Chumpness intends to build a replica of Las Vegas at Balmedia. If only. My own suspicion is that Balmedia and its unSaharan dunes are more likely to be transformed into a freezing northern version of Cardrona, the plook on the silvery Tweed between Peebles and Innerleithen. One hears little in the way of protest about that spreading excrescence.

Meanwhile, I am grateful to a loyal reader for informing me of another of Mr Chump's splendid schemes, the Trump SoHo, a 45 story "condominium hotel" in Lower Manhattan, which will dwarf the surrounding buildings and ruin the much-prized skyline.

Michael Sorkin, a designer and academic, writing in the Architectural Record, describes the as yet incomplete tower as "an awful scar on the sky. As urbanism, it's vandalism." Mr Chump's real genius, however, was to persuade the New York authorities to give him planning permission.

Say what you like about him, but when it comes to doing deals Mr Chump always seems to come up trumps.