Jack Straw may have been busy during the past week or so... but that doesn't mean he hasn't made time for his local newspaper.

Despite being centre stage in the most tense of world crises, the Foreign Secretary is writing a personal War Diary for the Lancashire Evening Telegraph.

On March 25 he looked back at the previous week in detail and even told how John Prescott's 'heavy hand' trying to pull him down by his jacket tail signalled to the Blackburn MP that he had to finish his Commons 'winding up' speech and sit down to allow Tuesday's crucial war vote to go ahead.

At lunchtime on Wednesday, March 26, Mr Straw, who is on record as having described his local evening at Westminster as "the world's greatest newspaper", told the Telegraph he hadn't quite finished his latest dispatch because of another Commons date.

He promised it would be finished either before he took off from Heathrow with Tony Blair or when the pair landed at New York for a War Summit - and it was.

More recently, he wrote: "There is now a settled pattern for the War Cabinet, which has been meeting since the start fo the war with Iraq. It meets everyday at 8.30am I have a pre-brief from my officials beforehand - our 'Emergency Unit' prepares an overnight situation report for me.

"I imagine its much the same as at the Lancashire Evening Telegraph as they prepare for that day's paper - although I would hope they don't know about things in as much detail as me!"

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