Some Christmas cheer for Bert Lance. First, Saudi businessman Ghaith Pharaon said he would pay $20 a share (more than 33% above the going rate) for 120,000 shares of the former Budget Director's stock in the National Bank of Georgia. The $2.4 million deal should leave a fat profit (a third of a million or so) in Lance's stocking. Then there was a gift from Wife LaBelle: a family portrait by Atlanta Artist Comer Jennings. LaBelle especially liked how Jennings painted her diamond pendant--the "broken heart," as she calls it, that Bert gave her after he resigned.

A tempest in a c-cup? Definitely, said White House Aide Hamilton Jordan. Nothing more, agreed Egyptian officials. Yet the story filled innumerable inches in major U.S. newspapers. As reported by Washington Post tattletale Sally Quinn in an article on the social scene in the capital, it all happened at a party tossed by Barbara Walters for the Israeli and Egyptian ambassadors to the U.S. When Jordan settled down to dinner, according to Quinn, he turned to Amal Ghorbal, the Egyptian ambassador's wife, "gazed at [her] ample front, pulled at her elastic bodice and was prompted to say, loudly enough for several others to hear, 'I've always wanted to see the Pyramids.' " Did it really happen? Better ask the Sphinx, because nobody else is talking. Does it really matter? Hamilton's boss doesn't seem to think so. When Quinn's story appeared, Jimmy Carter's only complaint was that it took up far more space than the paper's year-end review of his Administration's record.

A scene from Some Like It Hot? The Seven Year Itch? Actually, that familiar sultry smile belongs to Linda Kerridge, 23, an Australian-born model whose role in an upcoming movie called Star$ shows she can give a pretty convincing imitation of Marilyn Monroe. In the film, Kerridge works in a Hollywood pleasure house where the women look like famous movie stars. Off-camera, Kerridge has little in common with M.M. "Marilyn was wonderful, but very lonely, without family, without roots," says Kerridge. "I will not have the same problem."

It was billed as "a light program in which the guests play themselves," so Denis Healey, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, accepted the BBC's invitation to appear in a TV parody of The Wizard of Oz. Decked out in a red cape and his own extravagant eyebrows, Healey plunks Over the Rainbow on a piano and hams it up with the denizens of Emerald City. At the end of his appearance, he called for contributions to the IMF--the International Magicians' Fund, that is--and beamed: "You just wave a wand and suddenly find your pockets stuffed with money." Now, if only he could get the British economy to do that trick...

On the Record

Irwin Shaw (Beggarman, Thief), after complimenting himself on understanding women: "I'll tell you another writer who was ahead of his time on women. Shakespeare. Look at Rosalind, Portia. His women were key figures. Lady Macbeth was the Bella Abzug of her day."

Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica, talking about the situation at home during a visit to Washington: "We're going through some very tough times now. Great sacrifices are being made. No more Cadillacs, Mercedes or cornflakes."

Stephen Sondheim (A Little Night Music, Company) on why he made the decision to become a composer: "Oscar Hammerstein was my teacher from the time I was eleven. He kept urging me to write. I just wanted to be what he was. If he had been a geologist, I would have been a geologist."

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