IT'LL probably be a football World Cup year by the time the next General Election comes around, but that hasn't stopped the Lib Dems' publicity machine swinging into action.

So keen are they to snatch Oxford East they are trumpeting the news that an independent study has given the party a notional majority in the constituency following boundary changes.

And as if people cared, the UK Polling Report puts the party on 36 per cent, with Labour on 35.6 per cent following the planned movement of central Oxford wards Carfax and Holywell from Oxford West and Abingdon into Oxford East.

EXERCISE glutton - yes you did read that correctly - exercise glutton Boris Johnson, right, who runs and cycles every day, was quizzed about his food habits in a recent interview.

Asked about his guiltiest food pleasures the Tory MP for Henley said: "I tend to eat the children's previous night's supper - spaghetti and meatballs - for breakfast.

"And I'm a cheeseaholic."

They don't call him the Tory Adonis for nothing, you know.

ALEX Hollingsworth, the former leader of Oxford City Council, got a taste of his own medicine this week when he was kept waiting for a Town Hall rat catcher.

Mr Hollingsworth, who stood down in May, called in the experts after his Jericho house became home to an unwanted guest and he tired of chasing the rodent.

He said: "This one was quite cute...but it was still a bloody rat."

CAROLINE Bull, who has announced she is leaving local government to travel the world, joked she might have to live on bread and cheese for a while - a reference to the fact she will miss her £107,000-a-year salary.

Things will probably not be that bad, especially since The Insider is told her successful property developer husband lives in tax exile in the Isle of Man and Guernsey.

It's all right for some.

Meanwhile, speculation as to who might succeed her as city council chief executive has reached fever pitch.

Two internal candidates certain to throw their hats into the ring are finance chief Mark Luntley and his leisure counterpart Sharon Cosgrove.

Both are credible candidates - and of course there's the added incentive of catapulting their earnings from a paltry £70,000-a-year to well above £100,000.