Ephraim Hardcastle

THE Queen’s first Royal Ascot runner, Fabricate, came in 13th on Tuesday and her nag Seniority was eighth on Wednesday. So it falls to Elector, running in the King Edward VII Stakes today, to restore honour to the royal stables. However, the monarch has earned £119,745 from breeding and also-rans this year. Loyal subjects placing ‘on-the-nose’ wagers on her horses were less fortunate. A £1 bet on each runner in the royal colours means they are already down £18. PREPARING a TV social history project , Andrew Marr says it’ll mention the late glamour actress Diana Dors, pictured in her prime. He tells The Spectator a hoary old tale: ‘She was born Diana Fluck, but changed her surname because she dreamed of having her name up in lights and was worried about what might happen if one of the bulbs went out.’ RADIO 4’s Today show will ‘put out feelers’, I hear, to the new Duchess of Sussex suggesting she becomes a guest presenter. The lure: Meghan would get to promote some of the many causes she holds dear. Last Christmas, her husband, Prince Harry, interviewed his father, Prince Charles, for Today. Might Princess Henry quiz her own pater, Thomas, eclipsing his much-deplored outing this week on ITV? FOREIGN Secretary Boris Johnson ruled out any royal or ministerial attendance at the World Cup, although it punishes the team rather than Russia and President Vladimir Putin. Contrastingly, Japan’s Princess Takamado, 64, pictured, patron of her country’s Football Association, is there supporting their team, even though Japan and Russia are still technically at war – her seventh World Cup since becoming patron. If England get to the semi-finals, won’t the ‘no official recognition’ policy become embarrassing? SIR Brian Jarman, an emeritus professor at Imperial College, London, who studies NHS deaths, suggests in a Radio 4 interview that the influence of ‘a sort of super-management-consultant group called Common Purpose’ could have played a role in the Gosport War Memorial Hospital deaths scandal. Presenter Justin Webb cut him off brusquely with: ‘Sir Brian, thank you very much.’ Common Purpose, say critics, establishes Left-wing candidates into positions of power and, where necessary, helps when scandals threaten their jobs. Might they have infiltrated the BBC? DISMISSING the claim by BBC comedy tsar Shane Allen that Monty Python would not be made today because it featured ‘Oxbridge white blokes’, John Cleese, 78, star of the 1970s show, says: ‘We had three grammar-school boys, one poof, and [Terry] Gilliam, though not actually black, was a Yank. And no slave owners.’ The old boy takes no prisoners, does he?