Gordon Brown has shot himself in the ... well, in those few remaining pieces of cartilage that remain dangling hideously below his knees by apparently endorsing Barack Obama in a magazine article, in contravention to the protocol that prime ministers remain above the fray of foreign elections. The usual damage limitation processes are under way - junior employee wrote it, Brown didn't know, etc, etc. What is not appreciated is that the Obama policy that Brown explicitly supported, a “Foreclosure Prevention Plan” to help families facing repossession, had already been quietly dropped as Democratic policy. The Republicans have gleefully reproduced two versions of Obama's website, making clear that he consigned this to history last month. And with Brown, whose endorsement of any sportsman notoriously guarantees instant defeat - the most recent case being Andy Murray - behind Obama, how can John McCain lose?

Supermarket sweep, but with a difference

Skulduggery in the supermarket aisles? Will King is an entrepreneur trying to break into the shaving market with his King of Shaves company, formed in the 1990s. While at his local supermarket, he found that someone seemed to have removed his Azor brand from the racks. He posted this on his blog and customers wrote in with their own experiences. One found that someone had gone to the trouble of turning all the product around so that no one could see the name. A former employee of a competitor claimed by e-mail that this was standard practice in the industry. King is asking customers for further sightings. It's a jungle out there, I tell you.

As the TUC threatens a winter of discontent over wages, this is a genuine exchange from an unnamed company. Woman requests a pay rise. “Sure,” says her boss, taking out the relevant form. “What is it that you have done over the last year, or what have you additionally taken on, that makes you think you deserve a pay rise?” Woman considers. “Well, I've just bought a car.”

After my item yesterday that most of the furnishings at the Whitehall bunker where civil servants and politicians will retreat once London is reduced to a nuclear wasteland seemed to have come from Ikea, a reader is indignant. “The bedside cabinets are definitely John Lewis, because we have two exactly the same.” Must be some MP's cast-offs.

That annual meeting for Sports Direct turned out to be a non-event. Not one member of the Toon Army made it to the company's HQ in Derbyshire - “in an industrial park that really doesn't exist yet”, says my informant - to attack Mike Ashley, the Sports Direct founder, for his stewardship of Newcastle United. Not that Ashley, in sober City attire of a striped shirt and jeans, was unprepared. A question about the club from the man from The Sun was ignored. A question about a possible boycott by fans of the stores was ignored. My man asked if he expected to attend Saturday's home game against Hull City. “With his minders flanking him, he went down the stairs, through the store and into his Rolls-Royce with blacked-out windows.” That'll be a no, then.

Vodafone has been rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority over a radio ad that crammed 30 words of the small print - “use of this mobile phone can rot your brain, etc” - into a mere eight seconds. That's 225 words a minute, which beats Baroness Thatcher, who held the record as the fastest public speaker, and equals a racing commentator on the final stretch.

I hear Andrew Gowers, former editor of the FT, is on his way again after two years as co-head of communications at Lehman Brothers. Gowers and I have had a touchy relationship after, what was it, oh yes, on his appointment I was shockingly rude about him, even by my standards. Now he is off we know not where. I should be OK unless he ends up here.

One admires the chutzpah of Simon Tucker, who runs the AIM-listed Software Radio Technology and is convinced that his kit is cheaper than the Motorola models ordered by the Met Police. Tucker has invited Boris Johnson to a demo this week. Just a “thank you for your interest” reply, but Tucker hasn't given up hope.

Vasella's $16 million is a tonic

Daniel Vasella, chairman and chief executive of Novartis, one of the world's biggest drug companies, is on CNBC's The Leaders tonight talking about medical ethics and putting paid to one myth.

He insists, contrary to a BBC interview still on the internet, that he did not suffer a nervous breakdown in his 30s. Instead, he was in psychotherapy. “I always wanted to understand what drives me and what drove me at the time.” He discusses his $16million (£9million) pay packet, which sits “poorly” in Europe because it is so much more than “average people” make. “But you have to have an understanding that people question that.”

Very finally ... this column is not often in the position to deliver a genuine exclusive and, for reasons which will become obvious, this is the last opportunity. You read all that stuff about the CERN experiment creating a black hole that will devour the Earth. The idea was laughed off by scientists, but in fact the ripple effect is, as you read this, approaching Bruges. I can exclusively reveal that by mid-afternoon you will all resemble bowls of pink spaghetti, spread across four dimensions. We in the media have been told not to mention this for fear of sparking a public panic, but, hey, what can they do? The good news is you don't have to worry about Lehman's losses, the credit crunch,

the housing market, industrial production ... Plus, Belgium gets it first. Been nice knowing you.

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