Ephraim Hardcastle

WILL June 17’s Trooping the Colour, starring the Queen, be cancelled because of the ‘critical’ terrorist threat? (It’s happened once before, due to a 1955 train strike.) ‘It’s under serious review,’ says a royal source. ‘Viewing areas along the Mall and approach roads are open to the public. They’re difficult to police in the age of lone suicide bombers.’ On the other hand, Trooping the Colour is a major crowdpuller for London in June. On the 10th, Prince William is expected to take the salute as Colonel of the Irish Guards. INTRODUCED as the former director of Liberty rather than Labour’s shadow attorney general, Shami Chakrabarti, pictured, suggests on BBC2’s Newsnight that her party’s shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, should be consulted on security after Manchester. If doolally Diane is the answer, what’s the question? SPEAKER John Bercow, recently made a professor at Manchester University’s school of political sciences, was seen grinning on the dais at Manchester’s City Hall while local poet Tony Walsh performed an uplifting and amusing piece about the city. Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham were also on the dais but they managed to avoid the TV cameras. STEPHEN Fry, 59, talks at this weekend’s Hay literary festival about Twitter, saying it began marvellously. ‘Then somehow the box got opened. Trolls flew out (along with) bullies, tyrants, extortionists, thieves, pornographers… I wonder has the lid closed on hope?’ Fry quit Twitter ‘for good’ last year after his ill-judged Baftas joke about winning costume designer Jenny Beavan looking like a ‘bag lady’ backfired. Now he’s back on it. Does its usefulness as a self-promotional tool outweigh for him its ghastliness? THE Star Wars franchise, 40 years old today, introduced the late Carrie Fisher as scifi pinup Princess Leia, pictured, who wore a white dress. Ms Fisher, who died aged 60 last December, said director George Lucas banned her from wearing a bra and knickers, claiming there was ‘no underwear in space’. She noted in her memoirs: ‘And he said it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn’t see any bras or panties.’ WHILE the royal family cosies up to the military, the police are unloved by comparison. But Prince William is making amends. In January, he became patron of the Metropolitan and City Police Orphans Fund. Now he is backing a £4million permanent police memorial to be installed at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. William and Kate have hinted that they’re open to the idea of something other than a military career for their children. Might PC George Cambridge pound the Kensington beat one day?