COULD the orangutan be Jeremy Corbyn’s new secret weapon? Earlier this week I reported that transport union TSSA had resolved to “adopt” an orang in Malaysia or Indonesia, as it joins a campaign against palm oil. The union will now push Labour to ban government incentives to companies which use palm oil products. With anti-fox hunting and animal welfare memes being credited with shoring up Labour’s vote in 2017, if Corbyn takes up the cause, he might be onto a winner.

MY WEEK was vastly improved by a surprise visit (thanks, Kirsty) to the Loch Lomond Bird of Prey centre at Balloch. There I met Birkita, a 13-year-old Great Grey Owl, among other feathered friends. The description on her plaque read: “Very curious, wants to look at everything.” I may have found the journalist hero of my first novel.

AMONG my niche collections in my Glasgow flat are several newspaper headline posters, including my favourite, from the Teignmouth Post: “Widow’s shock at ruined internet bouquet”. Now joining them is one from the Courier, which I picked up when on the road for EIS conference: “PERTH DEALER’S FRYING PAN OF COCAINE”. The Courier is a sister paper of the Press and Journal, where Michael Gove was a trainee reporter. So I did wonder if the Tory leadership contender had realised that his confession to snorting the Colombian marching powder would never match Housing Minister James Brokenshire’s four ovens – and decided to reveal more of the story.