The London Times called it "the cheekiest of parliamentary guides," but a few members of Britain's House of Commons have been less complimentary about The M.P. 's Chart. The 83-page booklet is a collection of irreverent thumbnail descriptions of British politicians written by Manchester Evening News Correspondent Andrew Roth. In Roth's updated pocket guide, Andrew Faulds, a Labor M.P. and former actor, is dismissed as "tall, bearded, rude, sextrovert." Conservative Leader Margaret Thatcher rates a more splendid oxymoron: "blonde, stainless-steel Dresden china." Liberal Leader Jeremy Thorpe is characterized as a "middlebrow, U.S.-style show-biz politician." Because almost a quarter of the 635 seats in the Commons changed during last year's two elections, Roth's directory has grown increasingly useful to Parliament watchers. His only concession to propriety, however, has been to adjust his use of the King's English to avoid misunderstanding: "gay" politicians have been redescribed as "genial" or "jovial."

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"I can't imagine my life changing. The things I am interested in are things that money can't buy," said Julie Roy, 36, a department-store clerk who had just been awarded $350,000 by a Manhattan court. For nine days Roy was in a courtroom face-off with Psychiatrist and Cosmopolitan Columnist Renatus Hartogs, 66, who, she claimed, had mixed professional advice with sexual advances (TIME, March 24). Sexual intercourse with the good doctor, claimed Roy, had only produced severe depression and two involuntary stretches in a New York psychiatric ward. Last week a six-member jury awarded the $65-a-week clerk $250,000 in compensatory damages and another $100,000 in punitive damages. Hartogs, meanwhile, was left to ponder the possible loss of his medical license and the prospect of a similar suit by another of his former patients.

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"Seventy is wormwood/ Seventy is gall/ But it's better to be 70/ Than not alive at all." It is also better to be 71, which is Poet Phyllis McGinley's real age despite the birthday doggerel she composed for herself last week. "It couldn't matter less," she laughed, "now that it's out." Still a vigorous defender of the glories of housewifery, the 1961 Pulitzer prizewinner had little praise for modern poets. "They stopped using rhyme, and they stopped using meter," she complained. "They're just kind of wandering about, like Erica Jong." Slowed down recently by a stroke and pneumonia, McGinley has all but given up writing her own agile light verse. She spends her time in her Manhattan apartment reading and watching her favorite TV shows, M*A*S*H and The Streets of San Francisco. "I don't like any of the good programs. I like mush," she confessed. "I am the great common denominator."

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Add one more name to the rolls of working wives. Citing the mounting legal bills of former Domestic Affairs Adviser John Ehrlichman, Wife Jeanne has signed on for a $10,000-a-year publicly funded emergency employment job with the Seattle Symphony. A former part-time employee of the symphony, Jeanne qualified as a member of a "lower-income family," and has begun working as a school concert coordinator. The Ehr-lichmans still occupy their big house overlooking Lake Washington, but, says Jeanne, "my family needs the money. John hasn't worked in the past year, you know."

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"My God, it's my father," marveled Margaret Truman Daniel after watching Actor James Whitmore run through his role in give 'em hell harry! Whitmore, who toured the U.S. for three years as the gum-chewing reincarnation of Humorist Will Rogers, returned to the stage in Hershey, Pa., this time with the blunt bons mots of Harry S. Truman. Among the show's props, naturally, is a copy of the famous Chicago daily Tribune that erroneously headlined Truman's 1948 election defeat by Governor Thomas Dewey. "I must have thrown away 50 of those," mourned Margaret. "Now they're worth $5,000 each."

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"I've got a much better dressing room now," rasped Comedian George Burns, "and when I go to the commissary, they have a seat waiting." There have been other changes too since Burns, 79, and the late Gracie Allen filmed Honolulu back in 1939. Now fully recovered from open-heart surgery eight months ago, Burns is back on the movie sets for the first time in 36 years starring in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. Co-starred with wrinkled, bewigged Walter Matthau, 51, Burns is replacing Jack Benny, who died last December. "When I worked with Gracie, I didn't have to do that much, just ask how her brother was and stand around smoking a cigar for 20 minutes while she talked," recalled Burns last week. "In Sunshine Boys I don't even have to tell jokes. Character actors don't have to get laughs." Pause. "Come to think of it, last time I played Vegas I was a character actor."

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