The Sunday Mirror’s strange story that a “senior female TV journalist” had allegedly overheard Dave say to his daughter Nancy ‘you look like you’ve fallen out of a council flat’, is so very full of holes. The un-named source was said to have subsequently denied the story to her intermediary, as does Dave himself most emphatically. Rumours went around that ITN’s Cathy Newman was the ultimate source of the story. Guido put the rumour to her directly, she also said emphatically that she had never been to Sam and Dave’s place and it definitely wasn’t her. So who could it be? The story has not been stood up and probably won’t be, yet it might be if we knew the person concerned. Why was the Mirror so shy?

Speculation has now shifted towards Newsnight’s Emily Maitilis – the glossy leggy totty was briefly a contributing editor to the Speccie before the BBC commissars ruled that to be an unacceptable sideline. Do any co-conspirators know if she socialises with Sam and Dave?

UPDATE : A Guido foot soldier emails to point out that Emily told The Observer last year that “I have decided to embrace the new green strategy as exemplified by the Conservatives. I have worked out I can quite happily jog the distance to work as long as I hail a cab first and leave my high heels on the back seat. In the interest of furthering the green cause, I have put a call in to David Cameron to ask if he wants to do a shoe car pool on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. Surely they wouldn’t mind sharing a back seat? Mine are neat, pointed and well-behaved. The red ones always wear a seatbelt and never get sick.”