… or at least until the great revenge story got in the way

Here are a few email lines between Isabel Oakeshott, Sunday Times political editor, and her Huhne-spurned friend Vicky Pryce.

“Please don’t tell me what I can’t print. Tell me what I can print.”

“I just want the story out there so he has to resign.”

“My own view is that you would come out of it fine.”

Neither the ex-minister nor his wife came out of anything fine, of course. Both await sentencing for perversion of justice. And Isabel? She got a good story. Her paper made sure Pryce knew the risks. But friendship, surely, adds up to more than this.

The emails show Oakeshott as an occasional mover and shaker in this revenge drama. She did her day job. Yet she was more than that to Vicky: trusted adviser, shoulder to fume on. Could she have hosed Pryce down with perspective and calm, rather than stoked her rage? That’s one definition of what friends are for; and one more example of why friendship and journalism don’t mix.

• For six weeks this summer, while Jon Stewart goes off to direct a film, John Oliver (from Birmingham, via Cambridge’s Footlights) will be front man and star of America’s Daily Show. Sharp, idiosyncratic and hilarious, he’d be the perfect man to present a UK daily satire show, too, if only some broadcaster – C4? – had the courage to plunge in. But fairness, balance and a failure to invest mean the one thing our television never shows is the constantly churning, acrid side of life.