Ephraim Hardcastle
FRENCH ambassador Jean-Pierre Jouyet, 64 – ‘speaking in a personal capacity’ – advised viewers on France 3 TV that well-off Brits tend to be Remain supporters. However, he adds that ‘the very rich and the aristocracy’ are often Brexiteers who want to regain their old privileges and resent foreigners wielding power and money in the UK. ‘They want to restore their Victorian-era power,’ opined the smirking envoy. HAS the BBC2’s ailing Newsnight given up any pretence at objectivity? On Wednesday night Kirsty Wark invited Tory-hating columnist Owen Jones to ‘take us through’ his latest anti-Conservative diatribe in The Guardian. Why not just let the twerp read it out in its entirety? LABOUR MP Chris Bryant, pictured, points out to Speaker John Bercow in the Commons during a Women & Equality debate: ‘As you know, I entered a civil partnership eight years ago. There’s joy, there’s passion, there’s not so much celibacy in civil partnerships... we should extend them to straight people as well!’ Bercow, oleaginously: ‘If memory serves me correctly, it took place on March 27, 2010.’ How cosy! GORDON Brown’s attack on anti-Semitism wasn’t his first. As a 12-year-old, the future Prime Minister contributed a 400-word article on the subject to the parish magazine of St Brycedale, where his father, the Rev John Ebenezer Brown, was a Church of Scotland minister. ‘Persecution – this is the pernicious eclipse under which the Jewish people have always existed,’ wrote wee Gordon. His youthful polemic is reproduced in this week’s Jewish Telegraph. EMINENT literary agent Michael Sissons, who has died aged 83, was eulogised movingly by his client and friend, historian Sir Max Hastings, 72, at St Mary’s, Uffington, Oxfordshire. Surprisingly eldest daughter, interior designer Kate Sissons, 55, is furious with him, claiming: ‘He named my two sisters and brother but made no reference to me.’ She claims Max’s tribute ‘regurgitated’ a Times obituary of Sissons which stated that Kate was ‘not close to the family,’ adding: ‘I complained to The Times and received an apology and had that removed online. My family was left openmouthed in the church. I was in tears.’ Says Sir Max: ‘It must be for other members of the family to speak if they choose.’ MAN of letters Ian McEwan, 70, wants to write a novel from the Brexit point of view, explaining: ‘I could easily inhabit the mind of a passionate Brexiteer.’ Who doubts it, but in a recent literary Q&A – asked which living person he most despises – he said, ‘The lying, ideological Brexiteers, a monied-elite of cynical populists who are trying to drive us towards a calamitous exit from the EU.’ COMPOSER Andrew (Lord) Lloyd Webber, 70, confesses after winning an Emmy award for NBC TV’s live concert in April of his 1970s musical Jesus Christ Superstar: ‘I loved this TV version. I thought the (original 1970s) Broadway production loud and vulgar.’ Tactfully never mentioned at the time!