Nicole Kidman backs Naomi Watts for Oscar glory

Naomi Watts may not be the the bookies favourite to win at the Oscars tonight, but her old friend Nicole Kidman is talking up her chances for The Impossible.

'Id like to see win Naomi win best actress,' she says at the screening of Stoker at the Curzon in Soho. 'Actually, Id like it to be a double-winner, because Id like to see Emmanuelle Riva win, too, on her 86th birthday, for Amour.

Jeffrey is unable to fix it

Lord Dalmeny, who said at a Conservative Party fundraising event that he wanted the lights turned down because they were making him feel like he was in Auschwitz, is not the only auctioneer who has been guilty of a lapse of taste.

Lord Archer now tells me that he was recently invited to stand in for another auctioneer at the last moment after he had turned up dressed as Jimmy Savile. Archer declines to name the miscreant. In the event, I couldnt do it, and they had to get someone else, he says. God knows what this idiot was thinking about. The organisers were appalled.

Sit vac: PR man who 'does God

The 130,000 salary that Tony Blair was happy for Alastair Campbell to be paid as his director of communications when he was in government attests to the importance that he attaches to the role. Blair is now looking for a director of communications for his Faith Foundation. The salary for the demanding role is not disclosed, but Blair wants to increase the public profile of his outfit. Campbells famous assertion that he does not do God would appear to disqualify him from applying.

Poetry in motion

There is little that Daphne Guinness has not turned her hand to over the years, but now the fashionista is about to become a recording artist. Im recording some poetry to music, she tells me a Fashion Week party hosted by Harpers Bazaar. Im going to

bring it out on vinyl. Im a Sixties kind of person.

Still, I know n! othing about the music industry. Until a month ago, I thought X Factor was some kind of porno thing.