This will help to resolve a controversy that is already raging over her remains: do her rounded, gorilla-like shoulder blades and curved, chimpanzee-like fingers indicate that she and her relatives still roamed through the trees as well as walking upright on the ground? Or were these features just “evolutionary baggage” that were no longer in use?And why is this significant?Selam is expected to shed more light on our evolutionary voyage. She is expected to be “a veritable mine of information about a crucial stage in human evolutionary history”, as Bernard Wood, of the Department of Anthropology in George Washington University, puts it in the current issue of Nature, where the discovery was announced. The team who made the discovery are cock-a-hoop because it is unusual for the fragile bones and head of a child to survive from remote antiquity. As Professor Wood writes: “One must travel forward in time more than three million years… The NEC is considering a token sacrifice: an end to the serving of cakes at its meetings.”The word is that teas won’t be the same again,” I’m told “Eclairs are the big loss. It seems Marie Antoinette is no longer a member of the Labour Party.”pandora independent.co.uk. What are scientists so excited about?

Scientists in Ethiopia have discovered the fossilised remains of a child 3.3 million years old that represents an intermediate stage between chimpanzees and humans.

Dubbed “Selam”, which means “peace” in the local language, the little girl has a lower body much like a human, well adapted to walking upright, while the upper body is closer to that of a chimpanzee – which may indicate that she was able to climb trees like a chimp. She also has a face, and her chewing teeth are much closer to those of a human than to the large pointed canines of a chimpanzee. One in five employees will be shown the door in an attempt to save £3m in operating costs.To the displeasure of those with a sweet tooth on the party’s National Executive Committee, the belt-tightening may not be simply metaphorical. “Who’s this you brought with you?Your niece?”* With the Labour Party £22m in the red – and reportedly needing to repay the Co-operative Bank £5.5m by the end of the year – bean counters are slashing expenditure across the party. “Armani’s here; great parties; and lots of money splashing about.”Just pour me another G&T. Pint of.* French chef Raymond Blanc says restaurant reality television is “sensational rubbish” for “morons”. Why not try to raise the standard, I ask?”I have more virtue,” says Blanc, below “The people that do this do a disservice to our industry.

I don’t want to be remembered as a ballerina, but as a chef.”Who could he mean? When I bumped into Gordon Ramsay, top, at his wife Tana’s book launch, it seemed only polite to give him the right of reply.”I couldn’t give a fuck what that jumped up little French twat thinks,” he says. “He’s been chasing three stars for years, which one should achieve within six months, or give up.”The only reason he’s in Britain is because he failed in France. When I heard Maison Blanc had gone tits up, it added two inches to my cock!” Bon app?t!* Media beast Kelvin MacKenzie launched his book, The John Prescott Kama Sutra, at Fleet Street watering dungeon Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Wednesday night.This “modern interpretation of the ancient guide to love-making” features such delights as “tantric phone sex with Tracey Temple, which takes many, many hours due to the DPM’s inability to utter a coherent sentence”.MacKenzie told former Mirror editor Piers Morgan: “Your career’s going down the toilet.” To which he replied: “If by toilet you mean Hollywood, then yes, you’re right.” Morgan’s young journalist companion then caught MacKenzie’s eye. I’m looking forward to relaxing and having a drink away from it all.”The editor of Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, has similarly tired of the “witch-hunt for anorexic models”.”This Fashion Week has probably been the best so far,” she says.

* Sir Menzies Campbell basked in a five-minute standing ovation at the Lib Dem conference yesterday – a weightier, albeit more forced, reception than that afforded predecessor Charlie Kennedy (see Pandora passim). The old dog’s clout does not, however, extend to knocking into line the pointy heads at immigration authority headquarters.
The Lib Dem’s deputy head of press, Mike Zorbas, will this week “be disappeared” – sent back to his native Australia after strangely failing to secure a new visa.Sir Ming was worried about losing one of his party’s most able media operators, and wrote to immigration officials protesting his man’s case, asking they reconsider.”Ming wrote Mike a reference and we thought that would be enough,” I’m told “But unfortunately not. Pandora’s brain is fried (too much late-night drinking) and ribcage bruised (pushy models swinging their sharp elbows in crowded bars).Reassuring, then, to hear that British fashion’s youngest star, Lily Cole, has had enough.”I’m looking forward to a break from this,” the 18-year-old tells me – in The Dorchester Bar – of her plans to study social and political sciences at Cambridge next year.”I’m fed up of talking about skinny girls I’ve been listening to that all week. We can’t afford to lose one of our best press people.”Zorbas says the Lib Dems were “keen to keep me, and I sought some help”, adding: “I’m not happy about it, but due to the scrupulous and fair nature of your system, I didn’t get the visa.” (Scrupulous and fair?)Awaiting him is the famously forthright world of Australian politics, where political opponents meet over the dispatch box to exchange ideas (“scumbag”, “you fat so-and-so”, “take your tablets”) and occasionally land physical blows.Controversial idea, but might that be what the Lib Dems are missing?* Fashion Week can be exhausting.