EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Ed Balls is a twitter

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Children's Secretary Ed Balls twitters, i.e., sends a brief message electronically: 'Just cooked stir-fry ... No fish sauce but soy, oyster and v good chilli ... Spoonful of sugar offsets heat v well'. Later, 'it is cool in the dark House of Commons committee rooms buried under the Chamber itself ... Just come out blinking into the sunlight'. And to think the verbally incontinent Balls fancies himself as Labour's next leader!

Down with the kids: Ed Balls is a twitter

Down with the kids: Ed Balls is a twitter

Famous for her unflinchingly sordid memoir about drugs, sex and alcohol, A Nice Girl Like Me, writer Rosie 'Rizla Rosie' Boycott, now 58, is a reformed character who advises The Oldie magazine's hip-replacement set on suitable travel destinations. So when her 'Grow Your Own' column was launched in London's Evening Standard, friends feared the worst. Mercifully Rosie's cultivating household vegetables, not cannabis. Or so we're told.

   

More from Ephraim Hardcastle for the Daily Mail...

 

The domestic life and career of Eddie Murphy 48, pictured, are both going South, say showbiz experts. The comic was embarrassed to be proven the father of former Spice Girl Mel B's lovechild.  He's had two recent film flops - Imagine That and Meet Dave. Now there are fears over his next film project, A Thousand Words. A California critic says: 'If Eddie Murphy's career were an injured horse, it would be shot and the carcass buried in the remotest part of the desert to ensure no one stumbled upon it.' A bit harsh, surely.

Former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, 46, asked by an interviewer to name the most romantic thing she had ever done, says: 'Not make my husband sleep on the sofa for the last six months.' Husband ( and salaried assistant) Richard Timney, also 46, destroyed her reputation by charging on her Parliamentary expenses for porn films. It's too pathetic, isn't it?

George W Bush's bete noire, White House correspondent Helen Thomas, 88 - she called him 'the worst president in American history' - was banished from the White House press room front row during his reign. Now the old gal's back in the front row. Let's hope she sticks it to the over-hyped Obama. Ms Thomas's most quoted (unanswered) question to Bush: 'I'd like to ask you, Mr President - your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil ... it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it?'

The Crime Writers' Association is told by Detective Inspector Ron Jackson that 'grasses', 'snouts', 'CIs' or just plain 'informers' are history. Informants are now officially registered and must visit police stations or use landlines to supply tip-offs. Everything must be admissible in court. They're known as CHIS - Covert Human Intelligence Sources. Thankfully my own society CHIS are immune from such rules.