Ephraim Hardcastle
HASN’T London Mayor Sadiq Khan shot himself in the foot with his suggestion that London’s Latimer Road Tube station might be renamed ‘Grenfell’, in memory of the tragic tower? It commemorates Edward Latymer, a 17th century philanthropist who gave away his money to educate poor children. Perhaps Sadiq is unaware that Grenfell Tower is named after Grenfell Road – itself named after the 19th century Field Marshal Grenfell, who fought in the Anglo-Zulu war. His Old Etonian grandson, Julian, Baron Grenfell sits in the Lords. Would he be welcomed to tea by Left-wing Khan?
PRINCE William’s trip to Israel in the summer, predicted here, will be a disappointment to his father. Prince Charles had hoped to be the first royal to make an official visit but it wasn’t diplomatically feasible. As we speculated in January, 2017: ‘It might be time for Prince William to dig out his sand shoes.’ Perhaps Dad might lend Will his purple kippah?
MULTILINGUAL BBC Europe editor Katya Adler, 45, pictured, admits to fibbing before landing the job of Madrid correspondent in 2003. While then able to speak French, German, Italian, Arabic and Hebrew, she now confesses in a Media Masters podcast: ‘I lied to the BBC to get a job as Madrid correspondent. They said: “Do you speak Spanish?” I said: “Yes, of course I do.” But I didn’t.’ At least Katya now speaks fluent BBC.
GARY Oldman, 59, favourite to pick up the Best Actor award for his Churchill role, was asked by his teacher at the Young People’s Theatre in Greenwich in the Seventies to do something to ‘make him memorable’. Oldman proceeded to pee out of the window. How unlike Winston!
ABOUT to star alongside her father John Cleese, 78, in a new movie called One Night In Bath, stand-up comic Camilla Cleese, 33, doesn’t hold back from ridiculing the old fool’s private life. Noting Cleese’s marriage to fourth wife Jennifer Wade, more than 30 years his junior, she has joked on stage: ‘We have a new child in the family... my new stepmum. We have a lot in common. We’re both six foot, blonde and way too young to be married to my Dad.’
NO love lost between BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis and the Beeb’s world affairs editor John Simpson? Emily, interviewing Piers Morgan for Radio Times, mischievously asks about Simpson’s criticism of his Donald Trump interview. ‘I can’t remember a momentous interview that John Simpson has ever done with anyone,’ says Piers. ‘He was, of course, most well known for “liberating Kabul”, as he put it. Which was a bit of a surprise to the British armed forces who had actually liberated Kabul at the time.’ Miaow.
JOHN Major’s hapless media reemergence prompts a reader to forward a 1993 tome ‘101 uses for John Major’, which lists a variety of roles for the former Tory PM including: A pantomime mollusc, a garden gnome, plant stand, pipe-lagging and gun club target.