Sands' revenge on the Barclays

Revenge is a dish best served cold, it is said. But I prefer: Revenge is a dish best called success.

No better illustration of this can I find than in the current furore over the UK Daily Mail's spectacular interview with the new Chief of the General Staff, Sir Richard Dannatt. He said the British presence in Iraq is aggravating the slaughter and we should pull out soon. Blair's perspiring madly. But that's not the revenge bit.

The revenge is that of the person who conducted the interview with Sir R. Step forward Sarah Sands, some sort of consultant editor on the paper. But her previous job was the editorship of the Sunday Telegraph before she was toppled several weeks ago in humiliating circumstances by its owners, the "Scaramanga" Barclay twins, who gave up on her after just a few months: she had tried very hard to sex-up the old codgers' improvised duvet much to the fury of the incontinent. She was regarded privately as a political bantam weight better suited to lifestyle puffery.

Now Sands find herself as catalyst of one of the UK's biggest political stories of the year and I bet she never saw it coming. Her "revenge" on the Brecquou-bound Barclays is exquisite for its lack of intention: fate handed her an opportunity and did she use it! The Telegraph titles desperately want to muscle in on the Mail market, so ... a piquant moment for Sands.