LOVE UP THE COOGAN S DUFF alan taylor's diary

Things changed when he became famous, thanks to Mr Partridge, the Simon Dee of Norwich. According to one of a coterie of unnamed, so-called "friends" quoted by the Wail he is "a typical Irish Catholic sensitive soul with a split personality. He is a Jekyll and Hyde character in every way imaginable". While one pondered the ramifications of that, the Wail went on to describe how Mr Coogan was "absolutely gutted" when his wife kicked him out after he'd "strayed" with a lap dancer.

The good news is that he is now living in LA where he has had his teeth cleaned and eats egg-white omelettes. He is so concerned that he is addicted to sex that he sought help from "a psychiatrist priest", after which he managed four whole months of celibacy.

That all appears to have gone out the window when he encountered Ms Love, who is supposed to be in rehab, preparatory to starring in "a biopic of Deep Throat porn actress Linda Lovelace". Mr Coogan, meanwhile, has reinvented himself as "a serious actor" - as Phileas Fogg in Around The World In Eighty Days, a turkey. Whaur's yir Larry Oliviers noo?

Something of a cock-and-Bill story

EVERY Prime Minister gets the diarist he or she deserves. Mr Blair, who is happy to practise playing the ukulele in the Bahamas while London burns, has Piers Morgan, whose diary is as reliable as the newspaper he once edited.

Mrs Thatcher was fortunate to have Alan Clark, a serial fantasist and fornicator but a brilliant writer.

John Major, sad fellow, had Gyles Brandreth.

Some unkind folk cannot understand the point of Mr Brandreth, who in the 1990s somehow managed to become a Tory MP and a junior minister. Since leaving parliament he has reinvented himself as a luvvie, in which capacity he is appearing as Malvolio in a musical version of Twelfth Night on the Edinburgh Fringe. My cultural correspondent says that, when Feste pulls off Mr Brandreth's trousers to reveal him wearing yellow stockings, suspenders and an outrageous black-and-yellow codpiece, one is treated to a sight normally reserved for the denizens of Soho.

In an exclusive interview with this mighty organ, Mr Brandreth revealed that the inspiration for this risque piece of theatre was none other than his former fellow MP, Stephen Milligan. "We were at Oxford together, " he trilled. "We became MPs together in the same year, 1992, and in 1995 I think, or 1994, he had dinner with me - one Friday evening - and my wife. He went home, and the next day he was found dead in his home wearing suspenders and stockings, having accidentally killed himself while playing a sex game.

"I knew nothing about this interest of his. There you had a totally respectable Conservative MP, who had this secret life."

Whether Mr Milligan's untimely demise was a result of supper chez Brandreth we cannot say. What we can confirm, though, is that Twelfth Night: The Musical could be coming to a school hall near you, pronto.

You could always emigrate.

Cooking up a scoop is no bother for McGurk

A WELCOME return to the diary after too long an absence to John McGurk, Hootsmon editor. Mr McGurk, who never knowingly misses an opportunity to promote his partner, artist Fionna Carlisle, excelled himself last weekend, giving over a precious page to drivel about a portrait La Carlisle had painted of Robin Cook. According to the Hootsmon, the National Portrait Gallery is eager to get its mitts on the picture.

Among other works by La Carlisle is one Mr McGurk acquired for the Hootsmon, to the embarrassment of inmates of Barclay Towers. A sensitive, if rather pushy soul, La Carlisle said that she was sad that Robin was deid but glad that he'd seen his portrait before he succumbed to a heart attack.

Apparently, she'd been approached repeatedly by reporters to talk about the painting but had refused, "finally" agreeing to talk to the Hootsmon "as news of its existence emerged".

Weel done, Scoop McGurk!

Table talk becomes Sunday sermon

IT was my pleasure to introduce John Irving at the Edinburgh Book Festival last week. At dinner the night before, we discussed the passage he would read from his new novel, Until I Find You. My preference was for one of the Edinburgh chapters. Mr Irving, however, was not convinced. "The penis must be grappled with, " he said, his eyes gleaming mischievously. He was as good as his word and spared the audience nothing, describing in wincing detail how, as a 10-year-old, his principal character, Jack Burns, is molested by a coven of older women. You could have heard a corpse breath. Two thoughts occurred. First, I wondered how the lady doing the signing for the deaf was managing to convey what Mr Irving was saying. Secondly, how remarkable it was that, it being the Sabbath, nobody stomped out in high dudgeon. Verily, we live in godless times.

The reading festival ... it's no Glastonbury

THE book festival shuts up shop tomorrow. We shall be sorry to see it go. Not the least of its attractions is its nedlessness. Inside Charlotte Square Gardens one generally finds congenial, intelligent and interesting people who are unlikely to turn into raving psychopaths once they've had a Chardonnay or two. It is an island of sanity in an ocean of nutters. Nor does everyone go there in order to catch an event. Many simply chill out. I am always drawn to the bookshop tent which seems to have items on offer not available in ordinary bookshops. For example, Salman Rushdie's eagerly awaited new novel, Shalimar The Clown, cannot be had for love or money in Waterstone's or Ottakar's.

But it was on sale at the book festival, where Mr Rushdie was one of the star attractions.

Houston? We have a problem ?

NOT a moment too soon comes the eighth part of The Herald's riveting series featuring "history woman", Fiona Houston, what has spent the past year living in the 1790s - that is deepest East Lothian. The subject of the latest mustn't-miss episode was "geese", about which I personally can never read enough.

"Geese, " scrieved Fi, "were certainly part of 18th century households."

She has acquired two geese, which she has called Archie and Annabel, even though she can't tell whether they're male or female or AC/DC. She decided that the bigger one, which flopped and "ate from a sitting position", must be male. The toatier, fluffier and more active one, she decided, was female. Rarely have I read such sexist claptrap in a broadsheet newspaper.

Come Christmas, Fi's geese which have been "reared for the table" are doomed. The wanton murder of innocent fowl must not be tolerated. I implore all right-thinking readers to write to The Herald's editor and ask him personally to intervene to save Archie and Annabel. Eneuch is eneuch!

What's the Tory? Mourning glory

WHO will be the next Tory leader? Who cares? Every time one turns on the wireless there is a potential candidate doing his best to avoid answering the simplest of questions.

This does not bode well. David Davis, the poor man's Paddy Ashdown, will surely triumph but, in so doing, he may irreparably rupture the party, splintering it into wee bits like the Kirk. Not so very long ago the Tory ranks were replete with beasts as big as they were ugly:

Tebbit, Parkinson, Heseltine, Hurd, even Ken Clarke, whose Euro U-turn leaves the 21st century Tories bereft of a credible Europhile candidate. The new generation is Thatcher-lite: Oliver Letwin, David Cameron, Liam Fox, the kind of glowing-cheeked chaps you might expect to find clustered round the bar of the Drones' Club.

The last-mentioned was name-checked by my dear friend Andra Neil in his recent trumpet in The Spectator, where he predicted the demise of the Scottish Raj, that is Scots such as himself on the make in London. "He is unlikely to be the next Tory leader, " harrumphed Andra. Get away!

Also noted in despatches was Michael Gove, the recently elected MP for Surrey Heath and a northeast loon. Mr Gove, quoth Andra, could be "the one after next" Tory leader. God help them. In The Times last week, Mr Gove turned both his brains to the question of the moment, namely toast. "Far too often, " he thundered, "the toast [in B&Bs, etc] displays only the most distant acquaintance with any heat source." We will surely sleep easy with midshipman Gove at the helm.

Not enough news, Moore's the pity

OVER the sea to Stornoway, where the Gazette never ceases in its quest for truth. After just one hundred years, it has solved the mystery of what happened to three lighthouse keepers who disappeared without trace on the Flannan Isles in December 1900.

Down the decades countless theories have been proposed, from a freak wave which washed the men over the cliff edge to prehistoric phantoms removing them from the sacred resting place of people buried on the islands, which appeals to me. Neither convinces the Gazette, which thinks that "a dark and evil force" was to blame. The source of its stonking story is 80-year-old James Moore, whose father, Joseph, was a relief keeper at the time of the tragedy. Joseph had a premonition, says James, that something was going to happen.

He got up one night to have a smoke, looked out and saw the boatshed on fire and went to investigate. But when he got there nothing was untoward. "He took this to be a sign that light had gone out."

And so it had. How spooky is that?

aftaylor2000@aol. com