Ephraim Hardcastle

JOHN Bercow’s inglorious tenure as Speaker draws, slowly, to an end, after he’s had to deny allegations he bullied staff and being seen by many as favouring Labour. Now the public servant with a ‘B******s to Brexit’ sticker on his car might have an opportunity to punish Brexiteers and the PM herself. Should Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal motion be voted down, Bercow can, in theory, reject any rewording – preventing it from being voted on. ‘And if he decides to allow it he can extract concessions about his own position from Mrs May,’ opines a political source. But, of course, he would do no such thing. MICHELLE Obama’s memoir, Becoming – £12.50 on Amazon – doesn’t have an index. You’ll have to buy the tome if you want to check whether or not you’re mentioned by the ex-First Lady (pictured). Failing to provide an index – something which could have been done by an intern for a trifling sum – is frowned upon by respectable publishers. And providing one wouldn’t have put a dent in the $60million being paid for her and Barack’s post-White House memoirs. AS Principal of Oxford’s Lady Margaret Hall, former Guardian editor Alan rusbridger, author of Breaking News, a new book about journalism, mentions in the preface only one previous work – Play It Again, about learning the piano. He’s far too modest. In 1986 he composed A Concise History Of The Sex Manual, for which he had to spend hundreds on sex titles in bookshops. He said he also had to ask the London Library for a book considered so filthy ‘that it was kept not on the open stacks but in the Chief Librarian’s own office’. STILL a US citizen, the Duchess of Sussex might have to pay tax here and in America. Will America’s famously aggressive IRS tax officials inquire into Meghan’s financial position as a member of the Royal Family? Royal financial advisers have studied this possibility in detail, I hear. Under the Memorandum of Understanding on Royal Taxation, last revised in 2014, the sums paid by royals to HMRC remain ‘voluntary and confidential’. DAD’S Army star Arthur Lowe, who died in 1982, always played Captain Mainwaring as a snob very conscious of his rank. His son Stephen remembers that Lowe remained in character even after recordings, sitting at a separate table in the BBC bar. ‘It wasn’t that he was being unsociable. He just felt that he was the captain of the ship and ought to keep a distance.’ THE Royal Collection, whose chairman of trustees is the Prince of Wales, has launched a limited-edition teddy bear costing £125. Labelled ‘Baby’s First Christmas’ and made from ‘the finest blonde mohair (“wool” from the Angora goat) and pure silk, this is a teddy bear to enjoy and treasure for future generations’. Has Charles noticed a host of retailers – including M&S, Next, Primark, Topshop and Asos – have committed to stop selling mohair items on ‘animal cruelty’ grounds?