There's no pleasing some people. While the prices of housing, fuel and basics like Chateau Monthelie sur La Velle 1990 have been surging faster than a Tory MP's family allowance, I've been serving the Great British Peasantry by keeping the price of swill in check over here at DRIP.

But now some one-man Spartist tendency in the corridors of revolutionary fervour that surround the Gordian sporran is suggesting that I'm a trifle indolent. Imagine that, dear reader! Spreading rumours I've not got enough to do. Suggesting I'm spending too much time in the company of a woman who is not my wife. Not that I'm entirely sure that my wife is a woman these days, not since the good Lady Veronica joined London Irish. But what an insult to my productivity!

Let me set the record straight. I can do nothing in half the time my colleagues take. At the Department of Health, for example, Dawn Primarolo has been in or on the job since 13 July 2007. In that time, the Prima Rolla hasn't managed so much as a trip to her local kebab shop (and you thought it was Jacqui Smith who was scared to go out), let alone dirtying her hands with meatier subjects like, say, obesity.

What to make of her record so far as minister of public health? Well Dawn is Prim, bless her petite cotton socks, and she's certainly no Rolo. But if memory serves me right she was a Rolover when it came to approving the PM's forays into Iraq/identity cards/Northern Rock (we all know who the real Paymaster General was, don't we, Gord?)

So, if you see Lady Primula quivering like a dollop of processed cheese, wittering on about traffic lights or junk food taxes, do ask her to pop into my office, will you? Just say I've got a few tips on fatty matters from my time at Pumsey's Price Palace. But the truth is I just want to see her face when dear old Mrs Rolfe, the DRIP tea lady, chases her out of the building.