YOU can't call them liars. I'm sure you can't question their parentage. And "second-rate Miss Marple" is also out when you're describing a fellow MP, presumably female, on the floor of the Commons. But as we learnt this week, you can apparently shout "twit" across the hallowed Chamber with impunity.

So it was that poor little Anne McIntosh had her intelligence questioned by big bully John Prescott.

Miss McIntosh, the demure Tory MP for the Vale of York, dared to mention during Monday's statement on the floods that the Deputy Prime Minister last week visited her inundated constituency without telling her.

Now it's been hallowed Commons procedure to let the relevant MP know if you're invading his or her home territory - especially if you are accompanied by the national television cameras.

But with a fair bit of North Yorkshire imitating Lake Windermere, Big John obviously thought Anne had lost the plot and anyway, he had run into her there. "I met you, twit!" said Mr Prescott.

Michael Martin, the new Commons Speaker, effectively enshrined the insult as Parliamentary language by merely observing that it was "not nice".

Miss McIntosh has been musing on her next move and wisely decided not to raise it again in the Commons, presumably on the jolly sound grounds that she'd be reminding everyone what she'd been called.

So Anne has craftily penned a letter to the Deputy PM inviting him back to flood-hit Vale of York and wondering whether an apology for the twit remark is in order.

I WOULDN'T dare say Ashok Kumar is predictable. Let's leave it to the staff in the Commons Speaker's office. The Labour MP for Middlesbough South and East Cleveland this week trotted in to ask for an adjournment debate. "On Operation Lancet, by any chance?" they chorused. And, by an amazing coincidence, they were right. Pretty obvious really. It couldn't have been on the Teesside Development Corporation (TDC). That other great campaigning passion of Dr Kumar's life was the subject of a Commons adjournment debate yesterday.

MY isn't Peter Mandelson the dog lover! I knew about his best friend Bobby the golden retriever. But Jack, who is technically a parson's terrier whatever that is, has now apparently joined the Mandelson household. I know this because the Hartlepool MP and Northern Ireland Secretary this week got both the hounds electronically tagged to coincide with a National Canine Defence League campaign.

Cynics might nastily observe that there must be a General Election a-coming if Mr Mandelson is stocking up on photogenic pets. I just say he's a big fan of man's best friend.

DAPPER MP Frank Cook is sporting a new fashion accessory - a neat little goatee beard. But Mr Cook, Labour MP for Stockton North, brought me up short when I asked why he was growing it. "I'm not growing anything. I've just stopped cutting it!" he said.

STUART Bell is not content with the publication last month of his Tony Really Loves Me little tome.

In case you missed it, it's a series of short reflections by the Middlesbrough Labour MP on his political life and experiences with, as the name suggests, more than the odd hymn of praise to Mr Blair.

Now he's following it up with a sequel but I hear the original title of Tony Still Loves Me is under review by Mr Bell who is mindful that his high favour with the Prime Minister may not be permanent.

And the book might eventually appear under the DH Lawrence-inspired title of Softly in the Dusk