Ephraim Hardcastle
MAYOR of London Sadiq Khan is reportedly unhappy with his predecessor Boris Johnson’s plan to re-name the east London site of the 2012 Games Olympicopolis. Surely he’s right. Albertopolis was suggested for the area of Kensington dedicated to Prince Albert after he died in 1861 but it never caught on. The widowed Victoria (now played on TV by too-pretty Jenna Coleman) settled for the Royal Albert Hall. ‘ Although (present royal consort) Prince Philip has achieved as much as Albert there will be no Philipolis,’ says my source.
LABOUR peer Melvyn Bragg’s attack on the ‘increasingly arrogant’ National Trust, in a letter to The Times, follows more trenchant criticism by the paper’s arts critic, Richard Morrison. He wrote about its director-general, Dame Helen Ghosh: ‘Is she accident-prone or publicity hungry? Rescuing a great institution from irrelevance, or making it a soapbox for trendy causes?’ The Times incidentally has offered potential subscribers ‘free membership’ of the National Trust.
THE Queen, Princes Philip and Charles as well as (possibly) Camilla, are expected at the Braemar Gathering on Saturday in their usual array of tweeds, kilts and camp Caledonian frippery. Her Majesty is pictured at a previous event. Last year, grandson Peter Phillips refused to wear tweeds, or a kilt, and was alone in the 17,000 crowd wearing a business suit and tie. A tipsy tartan-clad laird in the whisky tent lamented, paraphrasing Robert Burns: ‘He’s a wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie for failing to reveal his knees.’
THERESA May tea towels and mugs emblazoned with ‘Building a country that works for everyone’ are offered for donations over £35 to the Conservative Party. Surely items adorned by the slogan, ‘A bloody difficult woman’ – Kenneth Clarke MP’s observation about the PM – and a cartoon likeness of the severe No 10 siren would garner greater sales of the towels and mugs.
IRISH-born TV heartthrob Aidan Turner, 33, of Poldark, is asked about the chances of him becoming the next James Bond – he’s currently among the bookies’ favourites. Weedily he tells Woman’s Weekly: ‘No, I don’t answer any questions about that. I’m sorry, I just can’t. Next question.’ Does he fear it’ll cost him the role? If so, he’s no Bond.
SAUCY Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis, 45, a BBC employee for 15 years, receives a Corporation memo stating: ‘I understand that you are soon to leave the BBC and thought you might want to know about BBC Alumni ... the free and official scheme for former staff.’ A puzzled Ms Maitlis wonders: ‘Is this a whole new way of being fired?’ The BBC tells me it’s ‘an administrative error’. Indeed!
NOW 93, New York’s legendary gossip writer, Liz Smith, who wrote authoritatively about presidential candidate Donald Trump’s scandalous extra-marital affairs during the 1980s, reflects: ‘He was a horse’s ass. Still is.’