Ephraim Hardcastle

JUST before the 2009 MPs expenses scandal erupted, parliamentarians on the public accounts committee interrogated Royal Household staff about the Queen’s expenditure. Apparently miffed at MPs’ double standards Her Majesty then spoke to one of the principal investigators at the Chelsea Flower Show, leaving him ‘even more resolute and robust’ to expose the fiddling, as disclosed in Emily Maitlis’s BBC2 analysis of the scandal. Says my royal source: ‘The subsequent expenses outrage levelled the playing field allowing HM’s money men to indulge in a bout of schadenfreude.’ NEARLY five months after the BBC triumphantly announced the poaching of Sky’s political editor, Faisal Islam, to take over its economics brief he is still covering Brexit at Sky. Faisal, 41, who grew tired of playing second fiddle to grouchy Sky political bigwig Adam Boulton, had expected to pack his powder puff in the new year. His successor, Beth Rigby, has been kicking her heels at Westminster. Some good news for scarlet-lipped Beth: the BBC confirmed last night that Faisal will start in the summer. LABOUR peer Joan Bakewell, 85, snootily tweets: ‘BBC London News leads with story of litter cleaning at Hammersmith – are they MAD?’ TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp, 47, pictured, responds indignantly: ‘No they are not. Litter goes into our gutters, down our drains, into our rivers and onwards into the oceans.’ Cuttingly, she adds to Lady Bakewell: ‘It’s too often trivialised by people who should know better.’ Ladieeees! THERESA May should visit Christopher Wren’s splendid Painted Hall at Greenwich, where William III is shown taking an olive branch from a woman who symbolises peace, handing the cap of liberty to a figure representing Europe and trampling all over a man with a broken sword in his hand, representing tyranny and Louis XIV. In other words, bringing peace to Britain, freedom to Europe and walking all over France. Inspiration Mrs May? POLEMICIST Jonathan Meades’s celebration of eating dog meat in the April edition of the Right-wing magazine Standpoint prompts a fellow contributor, historian Zareer Masani, to protest that Jonners’ rant is as bad as making jokes about the Holocaust. Let’s hope the dozen or so readers don’t cancel their subscriptions. TRANSPORT minister Jesse Norman’s Commons eulogy on government cycling policy prompts Labour MP Dennis Skinner to suggest replacing ministerial cars with bicycles. Good idea! But gangly Norman is already an enthusiastic pedaller, most mornings whizzing towards Whitehall on a boneshaker. Norman tells the Commons he is also a keen paraglider, prompting nervous gulps from Whips keen to avert an unwanted by-election. THE BBC is advertising for a £110,000 Head of Change, Radio and Music to ‘use influence and persuasion to gain buy-in to enable change to happen through others’. Has there been a mix-up with Hugh Bonneville’s WIA script?