The Queen will be left holding the baby at Christmas With the Duke of Edinburgh, the has sent around 45,000 cards during her reign. They have more than sentimental value for some recipients. A number are on sale on eBay for around £250 each. David Cameron sees his own green shoots David and Samantha Cameron - like Gordon and Sarah Brown before them - are embracing some of the ideals of the Goods from the classic television series The Good Life. In the Commons, the Prime Minister, right, let slip that he has become a keen gardener when he was asked by Sarah Newton (Con, Truro & Falmouth) about European Union regulations on seeds and plants. "I'm very proud of my vegetable patch and of the investment that I make in seeds every year," he replied, "even though it does not aways pay off in the form of good results." I wondered if he had taken an interest in the vegetable patch that Mrs Brown had installed in the Downing Street garden in the spring of 2009 at the behest of Michelle Obama, who swears by the produce she grows outside the White House. "The PM was talking about his vegetable patch in Oxfordshire," his spokesman tells me when I inquire. In 2010, a visitor to a summer party in Downing Street told me how Mrs Brown's old vegetable patch was looking in a very sorry state. "The French onions were hanging limply, the lettuce looked droopy, and the soil was parched," I was told. At the time, the PM's spokesman had assured me it had only been because Mrs Cameron had been pre-occupied with her pregnancy, and her husband with running the country. Now, I am told that the staff in the Downing Street cafe keep an eye on Mrs Brown's old vegetable patch - and occasionally even put some of its produce into their pots. Justin's fairweather friends Everyone wants a part of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby. "One of my colleagues, when I was named as Archbishop of Canterbury, said, 'You suddenly have a lot of new best friends,"" he says. And I keep getting letters that say, 'You may remember that we have been good friends for many years. When you think about that sentence, it doesn't make much sense, but they still write it. It's some people who have not been in touch for 20 years, then suddenly I was their closest friend at university.