Times Online Levy

I see that the Times and Sunday Times are to start charging for online access to their websites from June. So I heard on Radio Four this morning, whilst listening in bed.

I have said it once and I'll say it again: I shan't be paying one pound, two pounds or whatever they intend to charge. Short of some sensational scoop, like a delectable blonde supermodel doing the splits in the nude at the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus; or Gordon Brown resigning forthwith in order to start a seedy night-club - and one would require cogent, irrefutable evidence of this, photographic or otherwise - I refuse to pay them. Does anyone find the overwhelming advertisements on their website a confounded nuisance anyway?

I last saw Robin Birley, son of Lady Annabel and the late Mark Birley, grandson of Lord Londonderry, at Lady Mairi Bury's memorial service a few months ago. He features in the press today, about to open his first night-club, Birley's, at Shepherd Market in the metropolis. He already runs a chain of sandwich bars. Robin Birley suffered the most horrific injury as a little boy, mauled by a tiger at John Aspinall's private zoo and badly scarred for life. Some shall recall the Clermont Club in Mayfair, where Lord "Lucky" Lucan spent his time playing backgammon and eating lamb cutlets; and Jimmy Goldsmith, John Aspinall (the owner) occasionally indulged too, in the sixties. They were known as the Clermont Set.