On Caroline

“My fragrant colleague Caroline Phillips was delighted to learn yesterday that Justice Michael Davies, the libel judge presiding over the case of Andrew Neil's relationship with Pamella Bordes, is a student of her matchless prose. Justice Davies asked Neil the meaning of the phrase “ageing bimbette”, which he had read in an article written by Miss Phillips in this paper last May. Neil (who defines bimbo as “a very attractive young woman who isn’t terribly bright”) agreed with His Lordship that the phrase should have been “ageing bimbo”, implying that the use of the diminutive in this paper was incorrect. “I am not responsible for the quality of journalists on the Evening Standard,” he added tartly. However, no less an authority than Dr Robert Burchfield, former chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionaries, has decreed that Miss Phillips is right and Neil wrong. I feel bound to quote his ruling in full: “‘Bimbette’ is quite acceptable; it is similar to ‘whizzette’, ‘flatette’ and ‘hypette’. ‘Bimbette’ is quite a natural and rather chic word, without which the world would be a more boring place.” Quite.”

“Miss Phillips got one of the stories of the year... [she] certainly knows how to get her subjects to talk... Can a leading abortionist ever have been so candid in public about his grisly trade? It is as though Miss Phillips has shone the light more brightly than it has ever been shone before on practises which most of us would rather not think about.”

“He had greatly admired an Evening Standard article with Caroline Phillips with some pit bull owners. “A very fine piece of writing, I thought,” said Baker. “She managed to show them up for what they were, without actually calling them any abusive words at all. It accords with Dryden’s great definition of satire and that is to ‘take off a man's head and leave him standing’.””

“In an article entitled Unkind Words in the Sunday Times Magazine, erstwhile editor Brian MacArthur wrote about provocative copy and how the barbed celebrity interview was back in fashion, and selected Caroline Phillips as one of the country's six leading inquisitors. ‘Will they be kind or will they be cruel? Bylines that have made the famous nervous, sometimes with good cause,’ was the picture caption alongside a photograph of Caroline and the country's other top interviewers.”