Commonsense courage

· My friend Sue Ayling is going to die, probably by the end of next year. Her form of breast cancer has been particularly virulent, spreading round the body with a kind of savage glee, like a tyrant's army picking off territory and laying it waste before moving on.

Sue was always the Zuleika Dobson of my Cambridge days, the most beautiful student, always at the forefront of everything, star of the student press, dating the most glamorous men. I was a spotty grammar school boy, a year behind her, but she was always kind and thoughtful to me, and we've remained friends through what has not been a particularly easy life for her.

I went round to see her the other day. After we'd opened the first bottle she told me the prognosis. Then she allowed herself a few tears, and that was that - for the rest of the time we were talking about the past, shared memories, children, work, colleagues, the kind of conversation you'd have with any old friend.

One of the main problems, she says, has been losing her looks. Even I, who have no looks to lose, can understand that. The steroids have made her put on weight and her face has gone puffy, but if you've known someone a long time it's easy to see the beauty inside the present mask. What must be harsh for someone who for decades had men's heads spinning round is to merge into the background, along with the rest of us.

The cliche is that someone fights disease "bravely". You never read about a cowardly battle against cancer. But seeing the bravery at first hand, displayed by someone you know well, is immensely moving and very heartening. I hope, when it's my turn, that I show half Sue's guts, common sense and even hope. And if you knew her in the past, she would love any pictures you might have lying around. Send them to me and I'll pass them on.

· The dispute over the war makes strange bedfellows, and strange fallings-out. A friend of a friend called Andrew Franklin runs a publishing company called Profile Books. He was at the top table during the "Nibbies" book awards on Monday, and remarked to Iain Duncan Smith, apropos of Tony Blair and the war: "What's it like to be a poodle's poodle?" Organisers hurriedly asked him to move to another table, and as he went he passed Alan Bennett.

"But you, you were on the march, you were carrying a placard," Mr Franklin said.

"Yes, but I have manners," Bennett replied.

· Jennifer Lopez's maddeningly catchy song - "Don't be fooled by the rocks that I've got/I'm still Jenny from the block" - was running through my head when I glanced at the account of her arriving at the Metropolitan Hotel in London with an entourage of 35 people. She had been wafted to Luton from Madrid by private jet, and a fleet of limos brought the posse into town. The hotel allowed her own security team to replace theirs.

I thought it might be fun to hire some Hispanic young person to go up to her floor and explain to the barn-sized bouncers that he was José, he used to live on J-Lo's block, he'd love to chat about the old times, he was sure she'd remember him... He'd be on the block outside the hotel within seconds.

Similarly, the last time I met Sir David Frost, he grasped my hand and said, "Simon, it's been too long!" If I were a better reporter, I would have called his office at the BBC next day and said: "David says it's been too long. Why don't we have lunch tomorrow, you know, catch up on old times, there's a pub round the corner that does a really good lasagne, you can hardly tell it's microwaved... " I didn't, but I can hear the mingled shock, disdain and incredulity of the staff as they explain that Sir David will be in Barbados until the end of the month and that his diary is full until 2011.

· Thanks for many emails and letters about the spooky website, cyberglass.co.uk/ assets/Flash/psychic.swf. When you call it up you see a crystal ball on the left, and on the right all two-digit numbers with a different, curious symbol next to each one. Choose any number between 10 and 99, add the two digits together, and subtract the result from the original number (so 57 gives you 5+7=12, subtracted from 57=45). Ponder the symbol next to your new number, then click on the crystal ball where, after a second or so, the symbol swims up. Every time, however often you do it, the right one appears.

The answer is that the number you wind up with is always a multiple of 9. (Any two-digit number can be expressed as 10a+b. Subtract a+b and the answer is 9a.) Every time you try it, all the symbols change, except that 9, 18, 27 etc. all have the same one. Some people get it right straight away; others remain mystified for ages.

· I'm delighted that knocking Trinny and Susannah, the BBC's What Not to Wear presenters, has become a national sport. I like to claim, in all modesty, that I started it before Christmas. Now they have tangled with Carol Vorderman, which is always a mistake, and all the tabloids have been full of T&S's own fashion disasters. On one occasion Susannah turned up in what seemed to be half a ballgown, topped by Damart Thermawear. Trinny looks in one outfit as if she should be busking, in another involving a diamond patterned sweater she resembles a schoolboy who has no friends.

The world is full of people who have no dress sense. But why should they have their own TV series? After all, I don't claim to teach opera singing or scuba diving.

· I'm sorry about the chef who shot himself when the GaultMillau guide reduced his cooking from 19/20 marks to 17. It must have been a serious blow to someone who put such store by recognition for his craft.

Yet on the very rare occasions that I eat in a starred French restaurant, I sense that the food is designed to impress the guides and other chefs rather than to please the customer. There's too much fussing, too many little twiddles meant to demonstrate how clever the chef is.

A close friend went on a tour of the Loire, eating in a two- or three-starred restaurant every night. She came reeling back to England, desperate for a curry.