From red-top sinner to election winner?

When Andy Coulson reports for duty as the new director of communications at Conservative party headquarters in Westminster on 9 July, he could do worse than send out for a copy of Alastair Campbell's diaries. For that is also the day that Campbell's memoirs on his decade as Tony Blair's spinmeist-er-in-chief will be published.

Ex- News of the World editor Coulson, 39, is the same age as Campbell was when he quit as political editor of the Daily Mirror. Both wereenticed into political PR by young,charismatic, policy- lite leaders. And each joined the Opposition three years before a general election was due, atime when the political tide seemed to be turning.

While some Tories have baulked at Coulson's appointment - he quit his job in the aftermath of his royal editor Clive Goodman being jailed for four months for illegally intercepting phone messages - party sources are quick to reassure supporters his job will be very different from that assumed by Campbell more than a decade ago. Coulson has been asked to take a strategic role, wooing editors and the commentariat.

And, as the tectonic plates of politics shift with the departure of Blair and the improving fortunes of the Tories, hiring Andy Coulson may prove to be David Cameron's stroke of genius. For he gives the Tory leader one key entry - to Rupert Murdoch and his News International empire.

Cameron desperately needs Murdoch, who has so far been lukewarm. In a United States interview last October, Murdoch delivered a damning verdict: "Look, he's charming, he's very bright, and he behaves as if he doesn't believe in anything other than trying to construct what he believes will be the right public image. He's a PR guy."

Coulson won a great deal of credit within News International for falling on his sword in the wake of Goodman's conviction, and remains a favoured son. He was expected to return to the fold after a decent interval.

In another sign of shifting fortunes, Rebekah Wade, hitherto close to Labour, particularly Tony Blair, invited Cameron and the shadow chancellor George Osborne to be her guests at the FA Cup final last month.

And what of Gordon Brown's team? Brown has announced his own director of communications, meticulous Mike Ellam, 38, the Treasury's head of policy. Like Coulson, Ellam is a south-east Londoner, Coulson living in Forest Hill and Ellam educated there. Both are married, with two children.

PR man Max Clifford, who fell out with Coulson, warned: "It's a world of difference from being a tabloid editor to a spin-doctor. Tabloids, in particular the Sundays, are a cut-throat world and he is going to have to make friends with people he's been in competition with."

The danger for Coulson is that he could share Campbell's fate of becoming "the story". Goodman is expected to sue the News of the World for unfair dismissal. The PCC has cleared Coulson of involvement, but he may not want the details raked over.

Still, if he can survive that, deliver Murdoch to Cameron, - and keep the party out of the type of mess they got in to over grammar schools last week - his hefty salary (the Tories have denied a reported [pound]475,000 figure) will have been well earned.

NUMBERS

8,601 The number of diamonds in Damien Hirst's latest creation, a platinum cast of an 18th-century human skull. The price tag? A mere [pound]50m. And its name? For the Love of God. Quite.

43 The age now of Lucy O'Donnell, classmate of Julian Lennon at Heath House nursery in 1967. It has emerged the inspiration for his dad's hit "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" was a painting the four- year-old boy made of Lucy.

[pound]7.5m The value of Maunsel House in Somerset, family seat of Baronet Sir Benjamin Slade. Childless Sir Benjamin is keen to pass his estate on to his nearest relative - Isaac Slade, front man of US band The Frays.

$1bn The cost of the planned Harry Potter theme park in Florida. An attempt to squeeze the last drops of cash from the boy wizard brand.

[pound]113,000 The amount spent on Dalkeith High School since its 2003 closure. Lights are kept on at night, allegedly, so that no burglar hurt during a break-in would suffer a human rights infringement.

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