Copyright 2002 MGN Ltd.
The Mirror

May 9, 2002, Thursday

SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 531 words

HEADLINE: THE SCURRA

HIGHLIGHT:
BOOB: Johnson; GUNNER: Tam

BODY:
TIME to pull up Jilly Johnson, the pensioned-off It Girl who is paid to advertise a beauty device which is "a solution for all of us cowards who hate the thought of the surgeon's knife".

To promote the Cleo treatment, Johnson, 48, poses in ads - with suckers and tubes stuck to her fine features - and the blurb says the ex-topless model has taken over from Gloria Hunniford as "an ambassador for women who do care about how they age but don't care for the thought of cosmetic surgery".

Indeed, Johnson tells punters: "I wouldn't have surgery. It's OK for some people but not for me." Have the suckers erased Johnson's memory as well as her lines? I only ask because in 1986 she visited a private clinic, paid pounds 1,500 to have silicon implanted in her breasts.

She then revealed in an interview: "I've just given my boobs a little support. No woman can defeat the laws of gravity. I am calling it body maintenance, re -upholstery and self-preservation..."

FORMER Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam clearly hasn't forgiven Peter Mandelson for scheming against her.

On LBC radio yesterday, presenter Nick Ferrari asked: "Mo, you're on a two -person lifeboat, you've got room for one other person and Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell are drowning in front of you. Who do you pull on board?"

Mo replied: "Definitely Ali because he's straighter."

"I'm sure she meant politically," Ferrari says on reflection.

THOSE shrinking violets at the Libertarian Alliance are all upset after a highbrow newspaper journalist told them to "f**k off". The over-enthusiastic pressure group emailed so many news announcements about its humdrum activities to Patrick Barclay, football correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, that he finally cracked.

Responding to yet another long-winded missive, he wrote to the Alliance's Dr Sean Gabb: "Dear Mr (nice touch that) Gabb, Would you please f**k off? Yours very sincerely..."

"The chap's just a nuisance," Barclay tells me. "After three months of getting unsolicited mail from him, I just asked them to desist."

SCURRA reader Kevin Ball emails in support of Europe minister Peter Hain's view that voters are too thick to follow the Europe debate.

"While not wanting to defend Peter Hain," writes Ball, "it seems he may have a point. Only last week in my office, I heard two women discussing the euro. Having just been asked about changing money over for a hen night in the Republic of Ireland, one said, 'No, not yet. I have some Spanish euros left over from my holidays so I'll change them to Irish euros'. 'Really?' replied the other. 'Having the euro does make it easier then'. I kid you not."

THE man who fires the 1pm cannon at Edinburgh Castle every day has been telling me about the curiosity of American tourists. Tam "The Gun" McKay, who has performed the ritual for 24 years, says: "When I told one that the castle dated back to the 11th Century, she asked, 'Why did you build it so close to the railway line?'"

FOLLOWING news that the inquiry into the UK's worst serial killer will be televised, ITV wants to save Saturday night ratings by getting Des Lynam to host "The Premier Shipman".