Is there a problem, Culture Secretary Maria Miller? Er, um, sort of. . . So excellent was the answer that it deserves to be quoted in full so that all may share David Cameron's joy. "Because I think there was a lot of concern about the rules," said Mrs Miller, "and, er, a lot of concern about, you know, the whole issue, and it's something I felt that I didn't want to be, sort of, mixed up in, the fact that I..." At this, she paused to search for the killer line to put further insolent questioning to bed, and duly found it with: "I just made that decision." Was it, Mr Murphy encouraged, that she felt these expenses did not look right? In that case, he went on, why did she stop claiming them? "I've just said," came the definitive reply to that. No wonder the Prime Minister was impressed. Some Cabinet ministers in strife over an issue that drives the public to apoplexy like none other, would have busked it. Wisely reasoning that the last thing about which they would be asked, in an interview about suspicious expenses claims, was suspicious expenses claims, the arrogant chancer would have mooched into the interview without having pre-prepared a vaguely plausible answer. Were Mrs Miller such a character, Mr Cameron would probably now be asking himself how to solve a problem like Maria. One excellent answer, he might conclude, would be to make her the first Wolverhampton-born Conservative Cabinet minister to be fired over ill-advised dealings with the press since Enoch Powell took the advice of a friend, the local newspaper editor Clem Jones, to ensure that he timed his Rivers of Blood speech to catch the early evening television bulletins. That speech, Powell correctly predicted, would "go up, fizz, like a rocket," and so, in its quiet way, has Mrs Miller's political career. She has risen tracelessly to her high position after earning her living - but you've already guessed this from her mastery of public relations - in advertising and marketing. After a parliamentary decade of barely broken obscurity, she was unexpectedly promoted to replace Jeremy Hunt in September for reasons wholly unconnected with any pressure the PM may feel to boost the Cabinet ratio of a) women, b) products of comprehensive schools and c) Tories without a holiday home anywhere near Mr Rupert Murdoch's colon. Mrs Miller's qualifications extend far beyond the gift for handling the media evident this week. She also has a rapacious appetite for culture. Asked soon after her appointment to list a few arty events she had recently attended, she found another excellent answer. Oh, crumbs. Um..." she said, before her special adviser chipped in with "I don't think we need the shopping list." How much higher this safe pair of hands will clamber up the greasy pole, time will tell. But even if, God forbid, it all ended tomorrow, she would leave having already cemented herself as one of the greats. If this article reads like a billet-doux, I make no apology for that. To the question: "Is there any possibility now that legislation will underpin a regulatory code for newspapers?" the only reply, thanks to how Maria Miller highlighted the dangers with her bold attempt to intimidate the Telegraph out of doing its job, is "Not an earthly." Even from her own ruby lips, answers come no more excellent than that.