Kept in the dark

Alumnus to be proud of No: 29 is the unsinkable Bolsover MP Dennis Skinner, commended last week by Gillian Shephard as a splendid advertisement for the virtues of selective education.

Mr Skinner did indeed attend Tupton Hall Grammar School, but his assertion that he got his real education down the pit may have come as a bit of a disappointment to his other alma mater - Ruskin College, Oxford.