Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Queen’s proroguing embarrassment might lead to a radical change in the convention of future weekly audiences with PM Boris Johnson. At present, Parliament can demand to know how a PM advised HM on any subject. But at the weekly audiences no note is taken of the one-to-one encounters held without officials or a fixed agenda. Courtiers are now talking about HM asking for transcripts to be taken, not for immediate publication but to be filed away, just in case the record needs to be checked.
ROBERT Mugabe’s passing brings to mind Prince Charles’s visit to Zimbabwe soon after its independence, where he was expected to ride a domesticated Cape buffalo during a visit to an agricultural college. Liaison officer Andrew Parker Bowles test rode the animal beforehand. He was hurled off and badly gored, later joking: ‘I always remind Charles that if it hadn’t gored me and had gored him, things might be very different.’ Still, Andrew gallantly sacrificed wife Camilla for his king.
DAVID Cameron, in a front pew at Paddy Ashdown’s Westminster Abbey memorial service, diplomatically forgets his past description of Paddy in a BBC Radio 4 documentary about William Gladstone. He had said: ‘There’s only one problem with Gladstone, something a bit sanctimonious... you know, I was going to say Paddy Ashdown with whiskers.’
CLEARING her throat ahead of an interview by Gyles Brandreth at London’s Theatre Royal on Sunday, Joanna Lumley, pictured, should turn the tables and ask Gyles when he first met her. It was 50 years ago in Oxford’s Randolph Hotel with DJ Simon Dee. Gyles recalls in his diary: ‘When I went to collect him from his room I found him drinking champagne with a beautiful actress/model, Joanna Lumley. She is very lovely. I glimpsed her in her crisp white bra and panties.’ Pass the jump leads Brandreth!
AMBER Rudd won’t be defending her fragile 346 majority in Hastings and Rye, saying: ‘I’m looking at my options at the moment.’ She’s clearly peering enviously at fellow Remainer and retiring MP Sir Nicholas Soames’s nearby constituency of Mid Sussex with his 20,000 majority.
ALASTAIR Campbell wisely declined playwright Lloyd Evans’s invitation to attend Cherie – My Struggle, currently on at Islington’s Hen & Chickens theatre. Evans explains: ‘In the play Cherie describes him as a chest-thumping, alpha-male, king-ofthe-jungle, sexist, control-freak, loudmouth bully from Yorkshire, adding, “I say that as a colleague. Some people don’t like him at all”.’
THE Queen’s former chef Darren McGrady sarcastically tweets about my story of her enjoying Fray Bentos pies on royal flights: ‘I feel bad now, sitting behind her on these flights quaffing champagne, eating steak and lobster and complaining the Bearnaise was a little thick.’ Odd, I wonder if HM has any idea who he is.