James Cook

But I must admit, my jaw did drop when I heard that line from Sir Ollie in front of the select committee.

Now, I've spoken to Matthew Doyle, Lord Doyle as he now is, after...

Sirolli's revelations yesterday, and he was saying it was news to him that this was going on.

But there we had pretty much confirmation.

It wasn't denied yesterday, so there was no suggestion that it wasn't true yesterday.

And Sirolli had been the recipient of these calls, so he was a primary source in this revelation.

But the Prime Minister...

tacitly acknowledging there that this had gone on, that Downing Street had indeed sought to see if there might be any vacancies.

We heard yesterday from Sir Ollie that it was his view that this was, I mean, he put it quite diplomatically, quite a surprise to him and quite uncomfortable, particularly not being able to share this information or this inquiry with anyone.

the then Foreign Secretary, David Lammy.

And in the end, nothing came of it.

And, you know, outwardly, Lord Doyle wasn't sort of wildly qualified, to put it gently, for this kind of job.

I think his interest was more in staying in some role in domestic politics anyway.

And he ended up going into the House of Lords and then being thrown out or suspended, I should say, from the Parliamentary Labour Party because it emerged that he'd campaigned for a friend in a council election who'd been

charged with child sexual images offences, and that friend was later convicted.

And then another twist, an email that we received just after that from the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which says, I'll read some of it, the Foreign Affairs Committee will continue its scrutiny of Lord Mandelson's security vetting with two evidence sessions, hearing from Morgan McSweeney and Kat Cooley.

And it goes on to say that the committee will hear evidence from Cat Little, who's a very senior civil servant.

And we talk about her exact role in a minute tomorrow at 9.30am.

That's Thursday.

And that next week on Tuesday, the former Downing Street chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, will appear in front.