For the record: 09/03/2009

"We still believe there will be a recovery of sorts in 2010" – the previously bullish WPP sounding less confident as it revised growth predictions on Friday

Risk jockey

Poor old Chris Moyles. He hauls his carcass up Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Comic Relief and show how fit and youthful he is, only for the BBC – his employer – to ask: "If Chris Moyles can make the ascent, is it really easy?" Then, while he's still climbing, Sara Nathan from 'The Sun' whacks out a piece to say Radio 1 wants to get rid of him because at 35 he's too old. Sources at the station say the unlikely mountaineer still has a job to come back to.

The extra smile

Geordie Greig's authored piece last week announcing that the London 'Evening Standard' under his editorship would take a "fundamentally optimistic view of life" recalled the words of Stefano Hatfield, editor of 'thelondonpaper' after the launch of the News International free: "All our research said that the 'Standard' was such a miserable paper and that we should celebrate London." Prepare for happy wars.

No respect

As Jade Goody's tragedy is played out in the full glare of the tabloids, IPC Media's 'Soaplife' – so genre-specific that it's excluded from the Jade story – has produced a charming "death special". "'EastEnders': Danielle to die?!", "'Emmerdale': Jasmine's prison death!" "'Hollyoaks': Double death shock?" run the cover lines. Who reads this stuff?

Nothing like a Dame

Such refreshing honesty from Dame Ann Leslie on Nicky Campbell’s BBC One faith-based discussion show The Big Questions yesterday. Nicky may have thought that the Daily Mail stalwart, sat alongside a Hackney vicar and a progressive Muslim, would take a conservative role. Not a bit of it. Speaking about social networking, the Dame mocked her own paper’s “love of a scare story” and its extraordinary revelation last month “How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer”. Social networking encourages gay relations, she observed approvingly, saying it had ended the isolation of “the only gay in the village”. Paul Dacre would have been proud.