Pick of the week’s Gossip

If the music ever dies, Morrissey could always get a job in light entertainment. The gnomic Mancunian singer, formerly of The Smiths, revealed this week that he was once offered a job on Eastenders, playing a character loosely based on himself. “I was invited to be Dot Cotton’s other son, a mysterious son no one had ever spoken about, who returns to the Square, doesn’t get involved with anybody and doesn’t immediately have sex with

anybody, as most characters who come into the Square do,” he told The Sunday Times. “I was also offered a part in Emmerdale. I was to play an intruder in jodhpurs – which I’d longed to be, of course, I had waited years to be an intruder in jodhpurs.” In the end, however, Morrissey (pictured) turned down both offers. But “it’s nice to be asked”.

John Humphrys has a secret talent for water divining. The mysterious method of finding buried water – which involves holding rods as you walk over the land – was one of the subjects discussed on the

Today programme last week, after ten of Britain’s 12 water companies admitted to using it. The presenter revealed that he had tried divining, also known as dowsing, after a plough cut through the water pipe outside his farm in Wales. The man on the plough handed Humphreys “a bent coat hanger” and told him what to do. “I felt a total fool walking up and down this field,” said Humphreys. “And then, kapow, the thing bent forward – I couldn’t stop it – I felt a force, I really did.” When he dug down, he found the cut pipe. “I know it’s not science,” he conceded, “but explain it.”