Ephraim Hardcastle
CHURCHILL biographer Andrew Roberts itemises the wartime leader’s neardeath experiences. They include a stabbing aged ten, two bouts of pneumonia, two plane crashes, three car crashes, a near-drowning, a suicidal First World War cavalry charge and a Boer War train ambush. Roberts adds: ‘He complained that nobody would give him life insurance.’
U2 CROONER Bono visits the EU Parliament in Brussels and announces: ‘Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling, and I am, as an artist, in service of that.’ On the other hand, a boost for Leave supporters.
URGING fans to donate ‘things you no longer need’ to Age UK, author and socialite Kathy Lette, 59, suggests: ‘Books, clothes... hubbies.’ Last year she discarded hers – human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC – after 27 years. Has raffish Geoffrey, pictured with Kathy, found a new keeper?
THE Irish litigant who ordered a ‘gay cake’ – he wasn’t discriminated against when it was turned down, says our Supreme Court – chose to adorn it with Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie and a message: ‘Support gay marriage.’ However, the show’s producers say Bert and Ernie are NOT gay! Less amusing – taxpayers have to pay the £500,000 legal fees.
CHANCELLOR Philip Hammond has found a sense of humour, quipping: ‘I always know I’m in Scotland because I get out of the plane and it’s ten degrees colder. Then you drive into town, up to Holyrood, into [SNP First Minister] Nicola Sturgeon’s office and it’s another ten degrees colder.’
MIDSOMER Murders’ retired star John Nettles, 75 today, says: ‘I get a lot of letters from French lady admirers. Midsomer is a huge hit in France, and it’s all down to the guy dubbing me into French. He makes me sound like the most intelligent, sexually exciting man on God’s Earth. I don’t sound so good in the German version, though.’
ASKED why he wasn’t mentioned when Sir Paul McCartney recently unburdened himself with the revelation that Beatles members enjoyed what might be called self-pleasuring sessions together in their youth, canny Sir Ringo Starr, 78, explains: ‘That was before I joined.’
ERIC Idle’s much-plugged memoir says arch feminist Germaine Greer performed with him in Cambridge Footlights, took part in their UK tour and bet him she could bed every member of the troupe. ‘She got stuck at the horn player,’ he adds.
CHAT show host Graham Norton says ‘it’s not nice’ of the BBC to reveal its top salaries, including his own £600,000. But his big concern, at 55, is: ‘I wish I could catch, or throw, a ball. It’s a male thing. I think it’s why my dogs aren’t interested in playing ball. They’re thinking, “F*** knows where that’s going to end up”.’