The distinguished gentleman was working busily in his chancellery office when the door burst open and a throng of German revelers rushed in. The Karneval celebrators planted the Prince of Fools' plumed cap on his head, dangled three Orders of Fools around his neck, cajoled him into singing some spirited songs and downing a glass of champagne while three comely ladies planted kisses on his head. When the festivities were over and the gang departed, it was back to business as usual for German Chancellor Willy Brandt.

"I came here to kick the hell out of you," a 17-year-old black youth informed conservative Cartoonist Al Capp during a taping session on Public Television's new teen-age talkathon, "The Show." That remark kicked off a sizzling one-hour discussion of the generation gap, with 25 youngsters v. Capp. "You're a creep," one youngster stated during the talk session. "And you're nothing but vermin," Capp retorted. When it was all over, the cartoonist reCapped the confrontation by telling the kids: "I created all of you 20 years ago in my comic strips--I just didn't have any idea you were all going to come true."

After six months of rift rumors, the breakup has finally become official: come mid-May, Chet Huntley leaves David Brinlcley after a 13 1/2 -year association that made them the No. 1 news team in the country. Huntley is headed for Marlboro Country, something called Big Sky Inc. --"a $13 million resort and leisure-time enterprise"--in Montana. Good night, David . . .

At a suburban supermarket in Woodbury Heights, N.J., where Universal was filming They Might Be Giants, a kid came up and offered Actress Joanne Woodward a stick of bubble gum. Joanne popped the wad into her mouth and began blowing bubbles. The wardrobe mistress couldn't have been happier: she salvaged the gooey mess and used it to mend some broken cuff links worn in the next scene.

The talk turned, as it does so often with parents these days, to marijuana. "1 don't know whether my children have tried it or not," New York City's Mayor John Lindsay told his guest, "but I shouldn't be the least surprised if they have." His listener was Democrat Howard Samuels, who plans to challenge Nelson Rockefeller for the governorship of New York this year. And Samuels had good reason to listen, for his son, Howard Jr., 17, was recently charged with possession of hashish. As for the mayor, he does not advocate legalized pot, but fatherly figures that there are "a lot of irrational laws" on the books.

Wearing a dark business suit beneath his pomp-and-circumstantial ermine-trimmed scarlet robes, Prince Charles last week took his seat in the House of Lords. After swearing allegiance to both his mother and himself ("Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors"), the prince self-consciously donned the floppy black Cap of Maintenance. Then, like any mere peer, Charles retreated backstage and bummed a cigarette.

Letter to the Times of London:

"Sir: My husband, T.S. Eliot, loved

to recount how late one evening he

stopped a taxi. As he got in, the driver

said: 'You're T.S. Eliot.' When asked how he knew, he replied: 'Ah, I've got an eye for a celebrity. Only the other evening I picked up Bertrand Russell, and I said to him: "Well, Lord Russell, what's it all about?" And, do you know, he couldn't tell me.'

Yours faithfully, Valerie Eliot"

"It astounds me that we have progressed so far in sexuality that ultimately Rudi Gernreich's unisexual concept should be as asexual as the Virgin birth." Added Episcopal Priest Malcolm Boyd, a worldly and sometimes irreligious religious: "It's ending up to be the same bag."

Since his current bestseller is a solemn tale about the evils of suppressing literature, it is surprising to find Novelist Irving Wallace engaged in doing exactly that. Brandishing a temporary injunction against Olympia Press, the jaunty bad boys of publishing, Wallace charges that their new paperback porn book, The Seven Minutes, by a pseudonymous J J Jadway, threatens his own $7.50 bestseller of the same name. It just so happens that the plot of Wallace's book centers on the obscenity trial of a hot item he calls The Seven Minutes by a mysterious J J Jadway. "There is no J J Jadway except the one I created in my mind," Wallace charges. Life follows art?

To the heroic strains of the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Salvador Dali, gilded cane perched jauntily in one hand and a chocolate bar in the other, shimmers into view. Voraciously, he rips off the wrapper and enthusiastically devours the chocolate. "Je snis fou, je suis completement fou--du Chocolat Lanvin," swears Dali. Well, he is not quite mad. For his candy commercial on French TV, the surrealist picks up a realistic $10,000.

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