what will inevitably be seen as tacit acceptance that public interest in the Madeleine McCann story is dwindling.

Clarence Mitchell tells Mandrake that he will be joining Freud Communications, which was founded by Lucian Freud's nephew, Matthew.

"I'm going to specialise in crisis management for a range of clients which might include businesses, football clubs or even showbiz personalities," says the former BBC reporter. "I want to broaden out my portfolio of interests."

Mitchell, 47, told me in July that he had been advising the parents of Jimmy Mizen, the 16-year-old schoolboy murdered in London in May, and Fiona MacKeown, the mother of 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, who was murdered in Goa in February, on a pro bono basis, but wanted to put himself on "a firm financial footing".

He stresses that he will still represent the McCanns, whose daughter went missing almost a year-and-a-half ago, and adds that he will be paid on a retainer basis from the "Find Madeleine" fund.

"Kate and Gerry are happy for me to do this, it became clear that I wasn't needed on a full-time basis to work for them anymore so this move makes sense," he says.

Robinson's foul-up

Most media organisations politely skirted around the expletive that Alistair Darling used to describe the public's attitude to the Government but, two days after the story broke, the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson felt the need to use the word on Today on Radio 4 yesterday.

Robinson tells me that he has no regrets. What if the hapless Chancellor had resorted to the f-word rather than the p-word? Robinson says he would at least have drawn the line at that.

It has long been a problem reporting what the foul-mouthed members on the Labour benches have to say. Chancing upon John Prescott the other day, he described me as "f-ing Bananaman" on account of a pale yellow summer suit I was wearing. Coming from that old bruiser, it was a phrase of almost Wildean brilliance.

No bust for Blairs

There is only one fitting home for Jacob Epstein's magnificent bronze bust of Sir John Gielgud that is being auctioned off at the British Art Fair next week.

Alas, Tony and Cherie Blair, the present owners of South Pavilion, the late actor's Grade I-listed pile in Buckinghamshire, have no interest acquiring it.

The organisers of the fair gave the Blairs first refusal. It would set them back ?28,000 ? the sort of money Mr Blair gets for delivering a single sentence in a speech these days ? but they apparently feel it's a bit expensive. Maybe having paid£5.75 million for South Pavilion in May they are fretting about falling property prices.

Potter's pithy patter

Ren? Zellweger may have given the impression that Beatrix Potter was a sweet-natured woman when she played the title role in the film, Miss Potter, but Mandrake hears that Roald Dahl saw another side to the children's author when he visited her in the Lake District.

With the anniversary of Dahl's birth in 1916 falling on Sept13, his old chum Brough Girling has just recalled how the writer had walked, unannounced, into Potter's garden when he was a child and she was 80.

"She saw Roald and said 'what do you want?' and he said 'I've come to meet Beatrix Potter'. She said: 'Well, you've seen her. Now buzz off!'"