LONDON--You may wonder what Rebekah Revels, John Edwards and I have in common.

Clue: It has nothing to do with the fact that we all have been photographed topless.

All three of us were in London recently. Revels was there to compete in the Miss World contest. Edwards met with Prime Minister Tony Blair. And I was there to meet Queen Elizabeth.

Well, actually, I just missed the queen.

My wife and I and dinner companions were leaving a restaurant when we encountered a group of bobbies and a gathering crowd. The queen and Prince Philip were about to arrive at St. Martin's Theatre to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of Agatha Christie's musty play "Mousetrap," which has been playing in London's West End longer than Blair or Edwards, both 49, have been alive.

Edwards, of course, would like to become an American Blair -- a new-style Democrat who ends Tory control of the U.S. government. Blair has gotten along swimmingly with President Bush. But as leader of the Labor Party, he was happy to grant Edwards a lengthy audience at 10 Downing Street. Blair gave Edwards a chance to burnish his foreign policy credentials -- and have pictures snapped with Blair -- as he explores a possible presidential bid.

Blair offers clues to what the Democrats need to do to retake the White House. While I was in London, Blair was standing up to the demands of public employee labor unions (the firefighters were on strike), proposing tougher criminal laws and continuing to be a strong partner in the U.S. war against terrorism.

The closest I got to 10 Downing Street was when I visited Winston Churchill's underground Cabinet War Room, which has been left virtually untouched since World War II.

Churchill himself was back in the news. The BBC was conducting a telephone and Internet vote of who was the greatest Brit of all time.

Churchill won, but he had stiff competition from Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel and from Princess Diana. Brunel's votes were the result of Brunel University students' trying to electronically rig the voting. Diana's strong showing was another indication of the cult of celebrity.

Speaking of beauties, Revels, the Lumberton native, arrived in London when the Miss World contest was forced to flee Nigeria, where the contest set off several days of religious rioting, leaving more than 200 people dead.

The rioting was prompted by a newspaper article that said the prophet Muhammad would have approved of the pageant. This angered many Muslims. At least somebody cares about beauty pageants.

Revels received a small amount of attention in Britain because she had been stripped of her Miss North Carolina title in July when a former boyfriend threatened to make public some topless photos he had taken of her.

If Revels had been a Brit, the incident would have hardly caused a stir. Photographs of topless women are common in the racy British tabloids.

But then, the Brits have their own way of doing things. One of their most famous desserts is called spotted dick, a delicious pudding. Honest.

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