Derek Jameson - Do they mean me?

Eileen Herbert tells me she actually felt her heart swell with pride on learning that daughter Casey had achieved 13 A-grade GCSEs, 11 of them with distinction.

Casey's success, which made front-page news in the Argus, may well be the best individual result in Sussex.

Her father is my close friend James Herbert, Britain's leading horror writer, and we toasted Casey's success at a family dinner at the weekend.

The Herberts, who live near Henfield, were also celebrating their 33rd wedding anniversary.

Casey has been attending The Towers, an independent convent school in Upper Beeding, and will now go on to Brighton College to take three science subjects and English literature.

Last week's results confirmed that girls are doing much better than boys in education.

Sixteen-year-old Casey certainly put my own three sons in the shade and so I set about discovering the secrets of her success.

"When I got the results, my first reaction was disbelief," she told me. "I had spent the previous night worrying that I must have failed. In the event, all my hard work paid off.

"It's important to stay focused while studying but not to become obsessive about it.

"If I wasn't in the mood, I would take a break and see my friends, listen to music or whatever."

Jim interrupts to say: "We never pushed but let Casey do it her way. I told her again and again 'It doesn't matter if you don't do well. It's not worth making yourself ill'."

Like dad when he's writing, Casey gets down to the task confronting her with total dedication. She makes copious notes and plans her work meticulously.

Nothing seems beyond her reach. Her least favourite subject is sport but Casey still managed to get an A-plus for PE.

How was it done? "I realised theory was worth 40 per cent of the mark and concentrated on what I did best, swimming and dancing, for the rest."

She isn't sure what career to take up eventually, though she doesn't plan to follow in father's footsteps and become a writer. "Too much hard work," she says with a grin.

Boyfriends haven't figured much so far. Now Casey is wondering how she will take to sharing lessons with boys for the first time at Brighton College, which hasn't succumbed to the trend toward single-sex classes.

Apparently boys are distracted by girls, football and computers and are too busy playing at being one of the lads to do well at school. Girls, on the other hand, are outperforming them because they work harder and are more conscientious.

I don't know if that is true of Brighton College, but one thing is certain - Casey will be a star pupil.

Could it really be him?

Let us pray Sir Richard Branson's lottery dreams come true, especially as he proposes to pass all profits to the people, but pardon me if I express a few doubts.

Does the Lottery Commission seriously believe he will have 36,000 terminals operating with maximum efficiency across the country when Camelot pulls out in a year or less?

The Commission's biggest gamble of all must be Branson. His grandiose plans for Virgin Cola haven't bothered Coke and Pepsi overmuch, nobody loves Virgin Trains and we'd like to know why he runs his empire from a tax haven in the Virgin Islands.

As a customer of Camelot from the day the lottery started six years ago, I must say it always struck me as a reliable and efficient way of losing my money. I've no complaints, though it might have scaled down profits and awarded more prizes of smaller amounts.

Let us hope the bearded entrepreneur with the winning grin does as well.

Tony's new clean-up crusade Spurs have just been defeated 2-0 by Newcastle, which gives us fans plenty to moan about.

Manager George Graham seems to have lost his magic touch.

It's bad enough losing games, but he's also managed to lose the magnificent David Ginola to Aston Villa.

Now there's talk of Sol Campbell, our Rock of Gibraltar, leaving the club.

See how we suffer?

Things are so bad we look to hated Arsenal for comfort. Even Spurs fans admire their captain Tony Adams, who has just succeeded Alan Shearer as captain of England. We'll be looking for miracles when we play France on Saturday.

Tony has won friends everywhere for his courage in beating the bottle after years of heavy drinking.

Now he is helping other players add-icted to booze, drugs and gambling.

He plans to open 12-bed clinic with its own football pitch where they can continue to train while in recovery.

Judging by the lunacy that goes on off the pitch, he will not lack clients.

A picture paints a thousand lies They say a picture never lies. Don't believe a word of it. They frequently tell the biggest whoppers of all.

Picture editors take pride in their ability to spot a phoney and suffer much pain and embarrassment when it turns out they've been taken for a ride.

The Daily Mail's man must have been spitting tin-tacks when he discovered his paper's exclusive picture of Prince William in the Belize jungle with the Welsh Guards was in fact taken on Salisbury Plain last year when he was an Army cadet at Eton.

"William, king of the jungle," said the Mail's bold front-page headline over the picture of the grinning Prince in combat gear, cradling a rifle and surrounded by six tough jungle fighters.

The picture certainly looked kosher, bearing in mind William is just back from a visit to Belize.

Papers claim a picture is worth ten thousand words, which can mean huge rewards a particularly tasty specimen. No wonder some dodgy characters try to fake it.