LONDON LETTER: "Has Kylie Had a Bum Job?" Yesterday's front page headline in the Sun may have offered some measure of relief to Downing Street's spin meisters as they recoiled from others generally damning their trade and reflecting badly on their political masters
Indeed some of them may have thought here at least was one paper with a proper sense of news values. For while the inhabitants of the Westminster village are agog at tales of civil war within the Department of Transport press office - and the vital question of whether the Transport Secretary, Mr Stephen Byers, lied or was merely economical with the actuality over the Martin Sixsmith affair - many people beyond will doubtless have been more titillated by the question of Ms Minogue's "bum lift riddle".
In an age when more Britons stay at home than bother to elect a government it certainly isn't hard to imagine greater popular interest in the "then and wow" of the star's previously rounded, now pert bottom than in the claim and counter claim of who leaked against whom, and to what end, in a Whitehall farce in which government spin doctors broke their own cardinal rule and themselves became the story.
Others in the business of selling newspapers, however, clearly made a different calculation on Tuesday night following a Commons' statement in which Mr Byers sort-of apologised if previous comments about his role in discussions about Mr Sixsmith's possible redeployment within the civil service had misled people.
Mr Sixsmith was the departmental director of communications whose resignation Mr Byers announced along with that of discredited special adviser Ms Jo Moore in the furore over a leaked e-mail and an alleged plot to bury bad news on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral.
Mr Sixsmith lit a fuse under the minister on Sunday, revealing he had never in fact resigned - claiming he had been cleared of any wrong-doing by his civil service chief and was in effect forced out by a cabal of Mr Byers' colleagues and Downing Street officials while negotiations continued about his possible relocation within the government machine - which negotiations eventually floundered on the roadblock of Mr Byers's resistance.
Repeatedly questioned on the Dimbleby Programme, Mr Byers insisted he had no involvement in "personnel matters" which were for Mr Sixsmith and his employer, the Permanent Secretary, and not for him as Secretary of State. On Tuesday in the Commons, however, Mr Byers conceded he had told the Permanent Secretary, Sir Richard Mottram, "in my view - and this view is strengthened by the events of recent days - Mr Sixsmith should not be given a job elsewhere in government."
Having seen the Tory front-bench blow their attack, and Labour MPs rally to the minister's side, Mr Blair subsequently gave Mr Byers his public blessing in a determined bid to draw a line under the whole sorry affair.
However, it was washed away in a sea of critical headlines showing no let-up in the search for the minister's scalp and a steady accumulation of resulting damage at the door of Number 10 itself.
"Byers admits lie and gets pat on the back from Blair" declared one. "Lying Byers' Great Escape" howled another.
The perhaps predictable indignation of the Telegraph and Mail, moreover, was matched by the Mirror's depiction of Mr Byers as "Spinocchio", his lengthening nose almost stretching off the page.
Nor was there really any consolation from the Sun's ordering of its front page priorities. The paper's highly respected political editor documented the minister's humiliation under a count of four lies while an editorial blasted his Commons performance "an unedifying spectacle that will convince voters they are right to view all politicians with cynicism, suspicion and apathy".
Here is one obvious and potent danger for New Labour - that they come to be seen as no different to "that lot over there". And another, perhaps - that Number 10 is granted its wish to see Mr Byers "get on with the job" and have the voters judge him by his performance in it. He might make a start with the 80-odd passengers stranded for more than four hours on a Nottingham to London service on Tuesday night who yesterday handed Number 10 an impromptu petition demanding his dismissal.