Ephraim Hardcastle
WILL the heroes who went towards danger to help others in Manchester last week be recognised honours-wise? After the 2005 bombings in London the Government decided not to reward those who tended the sick and the dying. The Cabinet Office said then that gongs were ‘for meritorious service over a sustained period and not for specifically saving someone’s life’. In the 2009 new Year’s Honours this decision was reversed and six heroes were honoured ‘for services during the July 2005 London bombings’. They got the lowest gong possible at the time, the MBE. Being a crony or civil service time-server trumps bravery when it comes to gongs.
APROPOS gongs, David Beckham’s intemperate emails probably cost him a knighthood but the tradition of footballing knights will continue if Arsene Wenger gets an honorary K. It has been discussed twice in recent years but the honour still eludes the man who has managed the Gunners since 1996. He would certainly have the backing of the Queen and Prince Harry, both fans. Wenger has to make do with the OBE he was given in 2003 and the Freedom of Islington he received a year later.
QUEEn victoria’s drawers had a 45inch waist, says writer Annie Gray in her new book, The Greedy Queen: Eating With victoria. ‘She could chomp her way through all six courses of dinner in 30 minutes,’ she says. Might Jenna Coleman, pictured as victoria, have to climb into a ‘fat suit’ while playing her in the second series of ITv’s victoria in the autumn?
BARBRA Streisand, 75, mourns the passing of her beloved pet dog Samantha, a fluffy white Coton de Tulear aged 14. The pampered pooch made headlines in 2015 after biting a flight attendant on a private jet. After it emerged that the attendant needed stitches, Streisand’s spokesman insisted: ‘This never happened before... the dog has never exhibited this kind of behaviour.’ The same can’t be said for many of Hollywood’s human A-listers.
LEFT-winger Diane Abbott, who says her past support for the IRA has changed along with her once ‘splendid Afro’ hairstyle, is the target of ungallant criticism. not from Jeremy Corbyn, obviously. The pair were a romantic item in the late 1970s when Diane sported her old look. They enjoyed a motorbike holiday in East Germany and friends recall being startled to arrive at Corbyn’s bedsit to discover Afro-bedecked Ms Abbott on a mattress ‘with a duvet up to her neck’.
HOW will the Duchess of Cornwall celebrate her 70th birthday on July 17? Surely in a way which assists the ongoing Project Queen Camilla – Prince Charles’s campaign to increase public acceptance of his wife as future queen. A 2015 Mail poll indicated that only 32 per cent wanted this. Charles is said to yearn for her public acceptance. Appropriately, Camilla’s 70th falls on the same day as the founding of the House of Windsor a century ago – another neat feat of re-invention in monarchical history.