And two, she's among a wide range of people who have signed a document denouncing Gordon Brown for welcoming George Bush's visit to Britain next Sunday.

The lip-brush from Bianca (that's three times, I'll stop now) happened at the back of the platform in Manchester from which we'd just urged delegates to a Labour Party conference to demand that the party break from the Bush administration.

Her fellow signatories include playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker (" George Bush has seized the very word 'democracy' illegally, and mocked it, tortured it, done his best to kill it"); novelist Iain Banks ("A war criminal, a peace criminal and unfit to be in charge of anything larger or more important than a pretzel. Actually, including a pretzel"); former Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg ("Justice cannot be done until such men are brought to book"); US journalist William Blum ("I charge him with breaking the hearts and crushing the idealism of an entire generation of young Americans"); poet Adrian Mitchell ("George W Bush you face disgrace/For crimes against the human race/Put these handcuffs on your wrists/Terrorist of Terrorists").

Plus thousands of others, including dozens of ex-soldiers and parents of soldiers killed in Iraq.

At least one national British newspaper, the Independent, has editorially excoriated the plan to honour the architect of Guantanamo with the full-scale flummery of a formal State dinner.

Meanwhile, the Belfast Anti-War Movement has produced a letter with hundreds of signatures from trade unionists, artists, academics, community leaders, political activists and others denouncing the invite to Bush to visit the North next week.

Even leaders who personally support US policies — Sarkozy, Merkel — are careful, in welcoming Bush's European tour, to use nicely nuanced language.

Bush arrives within the octave of publication of the most devastating (so far) official US judgment on the invasion of Iraq — a report from the Senate Intelligence Committee offering a stringent attack on the way the administration went about winning support for the war.

Claims that the threat from Iraq had been exaggerated beyond recognition in the US, as in Britain, are hardly new. What's different about this 170-page document is that it takes aim not at intelligence reports or the like but directly at the public statements of Bush, Cheney, etc.

Committee chairman Senator John D Rockefeller said: "The President and his advisers undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the (September 11) attacks to use the war against Al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein."

The report makes clear that Bush and his associates were not repeating intelligence estimates which they had wrongly but understandably taken on trust: they were lying. Dissembling, dissimulating, inventing falsehoods. Even two senators of Bush's own party supported this conclusion.

Has the whole world, then, turned against President Bush and his wars and renditions and intimations of Rapture? Is there nobody at all to say a good word for the man?

Well, yes. There's a welcome on the hillside. The hill of Stormont, that is. In the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister. There, it seems, a votive lamp burns bright for Bush.

"We have enjoyed the support and encouragement of the United States and we very much look forward to the visit of President George Bush," says Peter Robinson.

"Our excellent relationship with the US political administration ... is going to continue. I'm very optimistic that the upcoming visit of the President will see us move forward even more decisively," says Martin McGuinness.

These glowing endorsements amid the encircling gloom will lighten the heart of the President as he flies in. But for whom exactly does the OFMDFM speak on this occasion? Few DUP members — I hope I do them no disservice — will be distraught that their leader has rolled out the red carpet for Bush's arrival. But Martin McGuinness must be aware that many in his party are confused and dismayed. Two prominent SF stalwarts in Derry have signed the BAWM letter. Others are squirming.

There may be a precedent somewhere in the past 35 years for well-known members of Sinn Fein distancing themselves from the line of the leadership, in writing and in public. But, off-hand, I can't think of it. Republican leaders, it is said, 'stretched their constituency' on more than one occasion over the past 15 years so as to maintain momentum towards Agreement. Could it be that in glad-handing Bush as he poses as a peacemaker, they have over-extended themselves? Has a section of the party faithful finally reached breaking-point?

Maybe Martin should pay heed to the ever-wise Zimmer-man of Minnesota:

He's a great humanitarian, he's a great philanthropist,

He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed.

He'll put both his arms around you,

You'll feel the tender touch of the beast.

You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.