Amanda Platell and her poodle Andrew Pierce

It's rare that Madame Arcati has a belly laugh - she cackles certainly, usually at so many of her many dimwit commenters - but a legs-in-the-air belly laugh is a rare thing. What prompted this unlikely convulsion was Andrew Pierce's tribute yesterday to his "career muse" Amanda Platell, the moon-faced fascist and backstabber who earns a pretty penny as a columnist on the Mail. Pierce, a gossipy assistant editor on the Telegraph, told the Indy of his first encounter with Platell when she edited the Sunday Express for five minutes: "I met this charming, clever, funny, feisty woman who was completely gay-friendly". He had expected her to be Cruella de Vill, as so caricatured by Private Eye.

Her gay-friendliness to the openly gay Pierce will have been most welcome I'm sure, but I wonder what he thinks of her comment that gay men who seek each other out on the internet are "animals"? She's also an admirer of the hideous homophobe Richard Littlejohn. Alas, I think Pierce confuses gay-friendliness with poodle-loving. He is a very talented reporter with a gift for befriending all sorts of waifs and strays, and judging by his Indy piece, he has a great need to be loved and accepted by his bosses - to an unusual extent. Platell, who is no one's fool but her own, won't have allowed the little matter of where he puts his cock to frustrate the employment of talent. Talent forgives all. Show what you can do and bigotry melts away for professional purposes. Platell saw in Andrew a delightful and talented poodle, anxious to please and to be petted. In such circumstances, who can seriously say they would not have placed a bejewelled collar on the yappy little poppet?

Of course this particular poodle proved to have teeth - his naming of Peter Mandelson's Brazilian boyfriend led to her dismissal.