SWEATY palms this week for Alan Milburn. Slick and cool he may normally be, but on Wednesday the Health Secretary was making his first-ever appearance as guest of honour at the Press Gallery lunch at Westminster.

The Darlington MP was nervous. It showed. The carefully-prepared jokes went down like lead balloons apart from a nice dig at Peter Mandelson which I do hope, for his career's sake, he cleared with the Hartlepool MP before he made it.

Thank God Mr Milburn decided not to tell a complicated gag involving GP and serial murderer Harold Shipman, Labour peer Lord Winston and Chancellor Gordon Brown. I hear the Health Secretary decided not to risk a jest at Mr Brown's expense.

Bad taste and the mention of Mr Shipman in the joke were apparently not part of the decision.

NERVOUS or not, Mr Milburn still demonstrated his Blair-like ability for not answering direct questions.

The lunch came on the very day that Euro-MPs backed plans to force UK-produced cigarettes to have less tar in them.

This is a well-intentioned, health-boosting plan with just one snag. The high-tar fags - many of them made at the Rothmans' factory in Darlington - are much appreciated in the Far East and the fear is the customers will simply buy their smokes elsewhere. Potential end result: no real health benefits but job cuts in Mr Milburn's very own constituency.

Response from the Health Secretary to The Northern Echo's question about 450 Darlo jobs on the line? Prime rib of ministerial waffle. May be I should have said "450 votes".

MR Milburn also got the dangerous Press Gallery equivalent of the Manager of the Month award.

Press Gallery chairman Trevor Kavanagh said Alan was now "several leagues ahead" of North-East pal and Trade Secretary Stephen Byers in the race to succeed Tony Blair.

Alan did not want to hear this and jokingly pretended to walk away. But as political editor of The Sun, Mr Kavanagh technically outranks a Cabinet Minister and Mr Milburn had to come back and listen.

IT'S more than my life is worth to name the North-East MP concerned here because conversations with Her Majesty must never be repeated elsewhere.

But this week, a number of MPs of a certain parliamentary rank were at Buck House chatting with the Sovereign.

The royal conversation turned to media rottweilers, including BBC Radio 4's John Humphreys. Turns out Elizabeth R revealed she would never, ever, agree to be interviewed by the Welsh firebrand because the blighter never lets you finish a sentence.

Off with his head, I say.

FASCINATING meeting this week held by John Prescott for Labour MPs defending "priority" seats.

Ashok Kumar and his 10,000 or so majority in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland seat was there. The Deputy Prime Minister treated Dr Kumar and the other assemblied priorities to a rousing speech about the need to go out and campaign.

the Tories were also having an election brainstorming session this week. Graham Robb, Darlington public relations magnate and William Hague's right hand man in the North-East, went to London to sit in.

But he missed the 7pm train - virtually the last King's Cross "express" arriving back in Darlington before the milkman gets out of bed. But in a frightening indication of the resources the Tories will hurl into the coming struggle, Graham hired a car to return to the North-East.

Ashok, you have been warned.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/news/ westminster.htm