Ephraim Hardcastle
DUE to sing for the Queen at the Royal Albert Hall later this month, Sir Tom Jones, 77, cheekily claims: ‘I think she likes to jig to [his 2000 hit] Sex Bomb.’ Prince Philip is unlikely to join her jigging majesty, having remarked about Sir Tom’s oeuvre: ‘It is very difficult to see how it is possible to become immensely valuable by singing what I think are the most hideous songs.’
CHANNEL 4 News correspondent Michael Crick, prevented from questioning Jeremy Corbyn yesterday, says: ‘What a dull launch that was for Labour’s local election campaign in London. Not surprising when Corbyn only takes pre-agreed questions from pre-agreed journalists.’ That’s how it works in the dictatorships the Labour leader most admires.
CLARENCE House media spinner Julian Payne’s denial that the Prince of Wales travels with his own loo seat brought the story to the attention of countless millions who hadn’t heard it previously and led to Charles being quizzed about it by a reporter in Australia. He denounced it as ‘c**p’ – a term which, some believe, derives from London plumber Thomas Crapper (1836-1910). A previous Prince of Wales, who would later become Edward VII, gave Crapper an order for 30 loos for Sandringham in 1880 and his first Royal Warrant.
THE publicity-prone former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, 57, pictured, says of his trademark leather jacket: ‘When I became finance minister, I told them to sell the official cars. I rode a motorbike to work and my leather jacket was part of this. So I was labelled a narcissist. What can you do? Wear an Armani suit?’ Vain Varoufakis has done more for himself than he did for poor old Greece.
DESPITE being known as the Crafty Cockney, darts champion Eric Bristow MBE, who has died aged 60, moved out of London saying he had no plans to return. ‘I can’t speak 27 languages,’ he remarked. ‘When you ask someone for directions and they don’t speak English, it puts you off a bit.’
GLOOMY ex-Blair mouthpiece Alastair Campbell, talking about The Book That Changed Me on Radio 3, says Brexit has led him to consider migrating to France. (Shouldn’t this be crowd-funded?) His chosen book was Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, about dull, decent Charles Bovary, his unfaithful wife Emma and their daughter Berthe, sent to work in a cotton mill after her mother expires in agony having poisoned herself with arsenic and her father dies alone in his garden.
GENTLEMANLY ex-Telegraph editor Charles Moore, who has refused on principle to pay the BBC licence fee, says he suspects corporation ‘high-ups’ regretted having appointed Sarah Montague, £150,000-a-year presenter of Radio 4’s Today show, ‘but didn’t dare sack a woman from a programme notoriously dominated by men. So, in a typical BBC compromise, they kept her on, but paid her “only” about five times the average wage.’ Cross Lord Snooty at your peril!