Pick of the week's Gossip

David Cameron is often pilloried as a toffee-nosed public schoolboy. But Nick Clegg had a no less comfortable start in life: the son of a wealthy banker, Clegg was educated at Westminster School, where the fees for a boarder are currently just shy of £30,000 a year. He even had a "fag" to wait on him - Louis Theroux. Last week the film maker explained that as Clegg's fag, it was his job to wake the future Lib Dem leader up every morning. This, he said, was no easy

task. "He was a very deep sleeper. I would bend him over and kind of push him." Clegg claimed this week to have no memory of being woken by Theroux.


No one thought Simon Cowell would ever get hitched, but this year he is planning to get married four times. The long- time bachelor became engaged to Afghan-born make-up artist Mezhgan Hussainy, 36, on Valentine's Day, when he presented her with a £250,000 ring. Now Cowell's brother claims that the happy couple (left) are planning to tie the knot in four separate ceremonies: in Los Angeles, in Hollywood, on a yacht in Barbados and in Cowell's home town of Brighton. "Mum's final words to me before she flew to LA were: 'Last year he said he was never, never, never going to get married; this year he's getting married four times.'"
Herman Van Rompuy, the cerebral EU president, has taken a break from his busy schedule to publish a volume of poetry. Mr Van Rompuy became hooked on haiku - a Japanese verse form consisting of three lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively - in 2004. "Since then I have not stopped writing," said the politician, dubbed Haiku Herman. "Not obsessively but enthusiastically." The president's haiku reflect his love of nature. Translated from his native Flemish, one reads: "Birds in concert,/ One sings above all others. / I don't know its name." Experts say they sound better in the original.