ROYAL Mail boss Allan Leighton is rethinking the plan to charge customers £14-a-week for early post after revealing the first he heard of it was when it was announced on the radio.

I cannot believe the man in charge of the postal service wasn't made aware of such a controversial proposal in advance. Perhaps someone sent him the news in the post. I expect he'll get it eventually.

CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown has been working so hard on his spending review lately he hasn't seen much of his wife Sarah. Shortly after the couple's daughter was born, the phenomenally driven and highly ambitious Mr Brown announced: "Politics doesn't seem so important today." Months on from the tragic death of baby Jennifer, Brown's uncharacteristically open and joyful revelation must now seem a distant memory to Sarah.

Friends say she has been asleep by the time Brown has returned from late night meetings and is still asleep when, three or four hours later, he is up and back at his desk. Even when he has stayed at the couple's Westminster flat, he has often ignored her, and is glued instead to his computer screen, so devoted is he to his work. While his dedication to duty is commendable, let's hope he can still find time to reflect on the importance of life outside politics - both for his and Sarah's sake.

DRUG smuggler Sandra Gregory, (pictured) who was jailed for 25 years after trying to smuggle heroin out of Thailand, says she is now trying to rebuild her life and forget her "embarrassing and shameful" past. A bit difficult, since the 37-year-old has written a book about her experiences, including her time in Durham Prison, and is now busy promoting it. Her past obviously isn't shameful enough to stop her making money from it.

COMMANDER Richard Farrington, who ran his ship aground on a rock, was quoted in some newspapers saying: "If something comes up in the morning, you run the ship aground, you get court martialled", but in others: "The sun comes up in the morning, you run the ship aground..."

Playwright Tom Stoppard recently complained to The Guardian that he never said: "I am a human nothing", as the paper claimed, but: "I am assuming nothing."

This reminds me of a review I once filed over the phone for The Northern Echo from a Chris de Burgh concert in Newcastle. There were lots of middle-aged women reaching over the front of the stage and de Burgh looked into their eyes, touched their hands and kissed them as he sang songs like Lady in Red. As I wasn't a massive fan, I said that watching it all left me feeling like a gooseberry. Unfortunately, the person on the other end of the phone misheard and thought I said "left me feeling like a good fairy."

THE IRA has finally uttered the word "sorry". This is welcome news. Now, if only they could bring themselves to utter those four little words people in Northern Ireland have been longing to hear for more than 30 years: "The war is over."