Hilarious column by Marina Hyde…

Jack and Condoleezza – like When Harry Met Sally, only with more foreign policy.

I have no idea whether the foreign secretary finds his opposite number attractive (in my opinion, the spike-heeled-black-boots look is quite hot in a dominatrix-type way, and any guilt arising from a distaste for the politics would arguably make the fantasy more self-loathingly exciting). But it is Harry’s deliciously affectless theory that will be in my mind as Jack shows Condi a good time in Blackburn.

Indeed, the Beatrice-and-Benedict sparring has already begun. You’ll recall that the visit is a return fixture for Jack’s equally “extraordinary” and “highly unusual” trip to Condi’s birthplace in Birmingham, Alabama last year. At that time, a news correspondent described Mr Straw and Miss Rice as “laughing, joking and even completing each other’s lines – it really was as if they were old admirers, rather than two foreign secretaries trying to sort out the world”.