A curious spat has blown up between Heston Blumenthal and Johnny Vaughan. One is a chef reputed to make mousse out of iron filings and rabbits’ ears, it seems; the other is some kind of disc jockey on Capital, a radio station that I occasionally allow the servants to listen to if they have completed their work on time. I am not aware if their paths have crossed before.

Blumenthal is making a TV documentary for Channel 4 about Little Chef and is allegedly “furious” that Vaughan, during some not terribly funny banter on his show yesterday morning, suggested the 170-strong chain was no more. What he actually did was to mispronounce Unicef, the benefactor of some soccer charity event this weekend, as “Unichef”, adding: “Little Chef has gone. It’s now a new company, Unichef.” The chain’s owner, RCapital, is a little sensitive. as Little Chef has a tangled history, and its chief executive, Ian Pegler, heard the broadcast. Various employees of the chain and RCapital then rang Capital to complain. The station accuses Little Chef of “desperately seeking publicity”. I would advise Pegler to switch to Radio 4.

— There has been much debate in this paper about using model and equestrian Katie Price, aka Jordan, as a role model to encourage inner-city children to take up riding before the Olympics. But I am reminded by a colleague that there already exists an unlikely inner-city riding centre at Canary Wharf, attached to the Mudchute Park and Farm. This project, claimed to be the capital’s biggest urban farm, is on the Isle of Dogs and was saved after a campaign to prevent it being developed into flats. The equestrian centre there has links to banks based at the Wharf, and there are special rates for local residents.

— An odd reference to an old friend appears in a gossip column in a rival paper. Sir William Jaffray, whose daughter is getting married, “looks set to end his long-running names battle” with Lloyd’s. Oh, God, no, no, it hasn’t all started up again, has it? It’s like the Hundred Years’ War – just when you think it’s over . . . Jaffray championed names who lost money in the insurance market. Lloyd’s is baffled, not having heard from him since 2002. I can’t trace Jaffray today, and we were never close, because I used to make fun of him. But it can’t still be running? Can it?

— Curious how language evolves. An apparently genuine firm e-mails offering me a “Reputable Cad”. Some years ago, this was an oxymoron. Now it apparently has to do with computer-aided design. And I am told that young people on social sites “poke” each other in greeting. It didn’t mean that in my youth either.

— FirstGroup, probably best known here as the owner of the rail service First Great Western, aka Worst Late Western, has a better image in the US, where 420 of its yellow school buses were used in the evacuation of New Orleans. An estimated 20,000 people were bussed out and are now being bussed back in again.

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