Recently by George Tyndale

ANOTHER celebrity baby, another picture on Twitter ... as if we hadn't had enough of these blatant self-publicists.

Telly cook Jamie Oliver celebrated the arrival of his fourth child by posting an image of the shrivelled thing on the micro-blogging site, there to be gawped at by all manner of freaks, geeks and weirdos.

Oliver is walking a dubious, well-trodden path, with TV airhead Dannii Minogue using Twitter just recently to display pictures of her new sprog.

Of course, these people know full well that the pictures will be picked up by newspapers and therefore sent around the world on websites.

Poor little Buddy Oliver. Not only has he be saddled with a ridiculous name but he's also had a picture of his bum splashed around the worldwide web.

His dad's life may be a media circus but I really cannot see the point in subjecting a child, let alone a newborn baby, to such intense scrutiny.

Isn't it enough for celebrities to be joyful at the birth of a healthy baby?

Do they really need to bask in the reflected publicity and wallow in some bizarre display of virility?

Give it a few months and Oliver and wife Jools will be complaining, like they all do, about press intrusion. Total twits.

WORRIED about your over-worked, under-stress GP? Don't be.

A staggering 950 family docs now earn over £200,000 a year.

There's a super-rich set of 700 gold-plated pill dispensers who were paid between £200,000 and £250,000 in 2008-09 - and that's an increase of 50 on the previous year.

The size of the West Midlands means that a substantial number of GPs working here have to clock in for only five years in order to earn £1 million.

The figures, released by the NHS Information Centre, also reveal that the average salary of a practice medic is now a very healthy £105,300.

This is a drop of £800 on the year before so thousands of impoverished GPs will have had to cancel orders for Versace medical bags and golden stethoscopes.

The size of GPs' salaries is an affront to workers throughout both the public and private sector, where cuts and belt-tightening are the order of the day.

The coalition Government is to impose a two-year pay freeze on NHS staff earning more than £21,000, but it is unclear how this will apply to GPs.

The genie was let out of the bottle by the discredited Labour government, which bungled the renegotiation of doctors' contracts and introduced a performance-related bonus scheme that was so generous it would make a Premiership footballer blush.

But wait. We now learn GPs aren't up to the job when it comes to dealing with the most vulnerable patients. A Government-backed review, led by Prof Sir Ian Kennedy, has concluded children's service are a "sea of mediocrity".

Ever feel like you've been taken for a ride?

HAS there ever been a more blatant disregard for the loyalty of customers than the strike action being proposed by British Airways' trolley dollies?

The airline's deluded, badly advised cabin crew are poised to launch a programme of spring misery that is designed to foul up the holidays of thousands of passengers.

Led by their belligerent union bosses at Unite, workers are set to down ice-cube tongs and perfume testers for a total of 20 days.

The protest is aimed at stifling BA's cost-cutting plans - plans the airline must introduce if its jets are to remain in the skies rather than corroding on the Tarmac.

During the last nine months of 2009, BA made a pre-tax loss of £342 million. It made a profit of £70 million for the corresponding period in 2008. It's in big do-do.

Something has got to give if the company is to survive in the face of low-cost competition from budget carriers such as Ryanair.

And the cash-saving changes BA has implemented - including a pay-freeze and jiggling with shift numbers on long haul flights - are no different to those being introduced by other major employers as they, and we all, wrestle with the recession.

Unite should cancel the strike, tell workers to buckle down and win back some customer respect - while it's still got some.

JOAN Collins is to appear in panto in Brum.

At the age of 76, she should be tucked up under a blanket, doing word searches, not playing Queen Rat at the Hippodrome.

Gentleman of a certain age will remember the nubile actress whipping her kit off in The Bitch.

Why ruin it now - and trample on our dreams? When it's over, love, it's over.

THERE has, quite rightly, been a frenzy of Labour-baiting.Deluded Socialists have been the dim-witted victims of the most audacious election con in British political history - and they didn't see it coming.

MRS Ashley Cole got in a strop after being papped without her wedding ring.

Chezza says it's nonsense to read anything in to the fact that she hasn't been wearing her adulterous hubby's £165,000 sparkler.

First, she was snapped in Paris, dangling her ringless finger at the snappers.

I RECENTLY had a dig at Birmingham council workers for staging a demo outside the annual budget meeting, protesting against feared job losses.

I suggested that these employees should count themselves lucky to have jobs in the public service, which has proved to be the most stable environment for workers throughout the recession.

RELATIVES of Ronnie Biggs say that the release of the Great Train robber will make a big 'spiritual' difference to the family.

Well, that's nice.

I'm sure that the family of train driver Jack Mills, who never recovered from being beaten up during the 1963 robbery, will be delighted.

Mr Mills, you may recall, was 58 at the time of the attack.

He was battered with the handle of an axe, and handcuffed.

He never returned to work. In 1970 he died of leukaemia.

Biggs was handed a 30-year sentence but escaped after 15 months and went on the run for more than 30 years.

The vicious thug lived the high life in Australia and Brazil, held up two fingers to Britain and was treated like a VIP when he decided to come back for free medical treatment in a stunt engineered by The Sun.

Now he is all over the national news, thanks to Justice Secretary Jack Straw's shameful U-turn.

After previously blocking the release, saying that Biggs had shown no remorse, Mr Straw decided to let the robber go on "compassionate grounds" - because he is frail and suffering from pneumonia.

Michael Biggs says his father has expressed regret for the robbery, but does not regret "living the life he had".

Jack Mills, of course, has been all but forgotten in the mass hysteria.

He did not have chance to live the life he might have had.

THEY say there is no fool like an old fool.

Certainly, there is no fool like an old football manager.

Ron Atkinson, the former West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa coach, did not win many friends when he unwisely uttered remarks about black footballer Marcel Desailly live on television.

The Cafe Latte society immediately labelled him a racist.

This despite the fact that he has been instrumental in encouraging black footballers throughout his career.

Now you might think that the old adage 'once bitten, twice shy' is sensible.

Not Atkinson.

He agreed to appear in a forthcoming fractious episode of Channel Four's Celebrity Wife Swap, which will be aired next month.

The Conservatives want to launch dozens of new TV stations across the nation to broadcast local news.

Why?

If existing regional TV news programmes have any useful function at all it is to demonstrate that television is totally ill-suited to localised news.

In some areas both BBC and ITV regional news is little better than a joke.

And even at this level ITV says it can no longer afford to produce and transmit the service.

Which is why the Government wants to slice £80 million a year off the cash received by the BBC from licence payers in order to keep ITV regional news on air.