Pray

Only a Papal intervention now can save us from the sight of an unseemly BBC spat in front of the Commons Public Accounts Select Committee on Monday.

Two of the country's leading Catholics - Lord Patten and Mark Thompson - are so plainly at odds over who knew what when about severance payments to Mark Byford and Sharon Baylay, that even sharing the peace at St Aloysius Gonzaga in Oxford in Sunday seems impossible. And currently, it is quondam-arm-biter Mark who's leading, at least on depth of outrage, with a 13,000 word deposition to MPs, saying, sin of sins, they have been mislead.

The crusted officers of the BBC Trust Unit will spend the weekend on a line-by-line analysis of the Thompson position. The late discovery of the Project Silver briefing doesn't entirely help their position - but then nor does the eventual settlement to Byford help Thommo, being a new conflation, rather than any of the three options in the briefing note.

Meanwhile tonight Thommo lectures the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford, on the subject of "Paying the Piper". Spookily, the website now says the event is "invitation only".