Ephraim Hardcastle
DAvID Dimbleby’s lack of a knighthood – and the fact that Jeremy Paxman, who once aspired to be his successor as election night presenter, is now being tipped for one – still intrigues me. But a source says: ‘What about David’s brother, (the Any Questions broadcaster) Jonathan Dimbleby. His 1994, approved biography of Charles, with which the prince fully co-operated, would normally have got him the Royal victorian Order. But it’s said the Queen rejected Charles’s request on Dimbleby’s behalf because of the scandal caused by the prince’s admission of adultery with Camilla Parker Bowles in the book.’ So, two Dimblebys out of favour? As for Paxman, in Diamond Jubilee year, having once harboured republican sympathies, he promoted himself as a supporter of the monarch. ‘Now we all love the Queen,’ he said. Perhaps that helps to explain why he’s now tipped for a ‘K’.
LABOUR former deputy premier, John Prescott, 79, makes an appearance in a More 4 documentary on June 13 about sex and old folk. Watching OAPs adopting Kama Sutra-style positions for an online ad for safe sex, Prescott exclaims: ‘Bloody hell! It’s a new version of praying. Not everyone can do that because the knees are going, aren’t they!’ His lordship’s own knees held up remarkably well – even though he was then of pensionable age – during vertical trysts in 2002 with his diary secretary, Tracey Temple.’
RUSSIAN president vladimir Putin, having watched Stanley Kubrick’s unnerving, 1964 US v Russia Cold War satire, Dr Strangelove, says ‘little has changed’. Movie buffs are more interested in the disquiet of its star, Peter Sellers, about the performance of supporting actor Slim Pickens, pictured in the film. His former secretary, Hattie Stevenson, said: ‘He became terribly sarcastic and nasty because Slim Pickens was so good.’
PRESIDENT Donald Trump is setting up American Idea, a chain of downmarket hotels in some backwater US locations that voted for him last November. President Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929) proclaimed: ‘The business of America is business.’ Having retained control of his empire, does Trump believe that the business of the President is business?
JOANNA Lumley’s reading at Wednesday’s Westminster Abbey memorial service for Ronnie Corbett further consolidates the Ab Fab star’s position as a modern lady of all sorrows. Ms Lumley, 71, mounted the Abbey pulpit last September to bid adieu to Sir Terry Wogan. In March 2014, she paid tribute there to Sir David Frost. In October 2015, it was St Luke’s Church, Chelsea, eulogising racing’s Sir Peter O’Sullevan. In 2014, she appeared at the Savile Club saluting the late elizabeth Jane Howard. In 2008, she gave a reading at St Paul’s Cathedral for Samaritans founder Chad varah’s memorial service. Small wonder she has been chosen by funeral directors and crematorium owners for Tv ads.