Ephraim Hardcastle

AS A New Zealand poll says 59 per cent of Kiwis want to ditch the Crown, the Queen announces a visit by Prince Harry. Will he charm them out of Republicanism? He tickled Jamaica’s then PM, Republican-minded Portia Simpson-Miller, on a 2012 visit. He’ll also visit six countries where his granny wears the crown, including Antigua, Grenada and St Vincent which have never received a visit from Harry’s father, their next king. Is Charles doing enough to keep the Commonwealth on board? EMBARKING on a new tour in October, Petula Clark, 83, says it is in her contract to have an ironing board, an iron and a bottle of port in her dressing room, explaining: ‘I like to iron my own clothes before I go on stage – I find it therapeutic.’ The port is to ward off chills, no doubt. SOUNDING as if he knows what he’s talking about, political activist Douglas Murray, 37, a bachelor, reflects in The Spectator on the fate of Labour MP Keith Vaz, 59: ‘Other than getting rent boys it is hard to imagine many other routes to happiness for Vaz in the whole gay area. For although one does not want to rub salt into wounds, if you have the appearance of [Danger Mouse sidekick] Penfold (pictured), the condescension of a cat and the physique of a care bear, even being a chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee won’t help you get much in the way of gay totty.’ Unduly harsh, surely. EX-Tory MP Norman Fowler’s debut as the new Lords Speaker this week reminds colleagues of when there were three bigwig Normans on the Conservative benches – Messrs Lamont, Tebbit and Fowler. They were known as Little Norm, Big Norm and Nice Norm. Now he’s Lords Speaker, shouldn’t Fowler be reclassified as Bigger Norm? TORY MP Sir Nicholas Soames, 68, takes against shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry’s latest hairstyle, asking Twitter followers: ‘Does anyone know the name of Lady Nugee’s Islington hairdresser person?’ (Emily’s the wife of barrister Sir Christopher Nugee). ‘One of dear Lady Nugee’s female colleagues has just told me she keeps her chewing gum in it.’ To give him his due, Sir Nicholas takes criticism as well as dishing it out. He didn’t contradict the woman friend who described his amatory approach as ‘like a wardrobe falling on you with the key sticking out’. FORMER Labour MP and diarist Chris Mullin describes, in his latest memoir, daily life as a junior minister in environment secretary John Prescott’s vast department in 1997, in particular, ministerial meetings: ‘They consisted mainly of [Prescott] slumped in an armchair, tie askew, one leg over the arm of the chair, giving vent to a stream of consciousness about whatever had hit him on his way into work that morning. Our role was to provide sycophantic laughter at appropriate intervals. The longest monologue lasted 29 minutes, broken only when the fire alarm went off and he paused to abuse the anonymous voice coming from the ceiling.’ But isn’t ‘Prezza’ a towering statesman alongside today’s Corbynite pygmies?