This is the week this is...

'That Was the Week That Was' was a BBC radio production featuring many of the great names of radio in its time, which was about that when The Beatles were heading for domination of the music world in a way previously unimaginable but, some 46 years later, this is the week that has created some, admittedly 'red-top', newspaper headlines that echo through the decades:

• Sir Paul McCartney (a certified "National Treasure", as several of the cast of the BBC radio show were, or later became) was finally divorced from Heather Mills.

• Carla Bruni-Sarkozy made a state trip to Britain and she was of course accompanied by her husband Nicolas, who just happens to be the President of France. Truth to tell they both played their parts brilliantly: Gordon Brown talked about a new political entente formidable and the next morning, while on a boat trip down the Thames, the newly-weds played the UK media thing to perfection with an entente à deux as they shrugged off the fact that one UK tabloid paper had reprised an old picture of Mme. Bruni-Sarkozy, sans vêtements and taken on a modelling shoot in the early 1990s, by sharing a snog in front of the media cameras. She has also recorded two albums (one in French and one in English) that have had some critical acclaim. French politics has had its fair share of scandal but never has it been quite so honest, transparent and legal!

• This week UK music has done a remarkable thing. To paraphrase the 1988 single by Sting (and without any mercy on my part) West Londoner in New York, Estelle, displaced Duffy at the top of the UK single chart with the single 'American Boy', sung with Kanye West. That is not very remarkable but simultaneously East Londoner, and winner of X-Factor 2006, Leona Lewis is at #1 in the US singles chart with the single 'Bleeding Love' - and she only the third UK solo female artist to take a début single to #1 in the US.