Ephraim Hardcastle

DURING the 1990s the Queen set up the Way Ahead Group (WAG) – a regular meeting of royals and officials to discuss their future. This paved the way to HM paying taxes, junior royals being removed from the public payroll, the Royal Household being modernised and staff appointed professionally. Now senior royals are reestablishing their fiefdoms, costs are rising, some are going ‘rogue’ and there’s a feeling of instability. At 93, the Queen can’t be expected to start a new series of reforms. However, a court source suggests HM would not object to Charles establishing WayAheadGroup2.

TORY MP Penny Mordaunt urges Boris Johnson to ‘bring an end to the honours system that values women less than men’. The PM responds: ‘Speaking as the oldest son, who’s never seen the particular benefits from that...’ His boat-rocking siblings, journalist Rachel and Tory MP Jo, certainly don’t see themselves as his subordinates.

TALKING to a US magazine in 2017, Prince Harry said: ‘Thank goodness I’m not cut off from reality. People would be amazed by the ordinary life William and I live. I do my own shopping... I am determined to have a relatively normal life and if I am lucky enough to have children they can have one too.’ Happy days.

FANS of the 90s TV sitcom Men Behaving Badly hope writer Simon Nye will revive the series starring Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey. Clunes, 57, pictured with Morrissey,

UNMOVED by anti-Brexit protesters shouting ‘scum’ and ‘Nazi’ at Jacob ReesMogg and his 12-year-old son Peter, former Tory MP Robert Key claims that ‘this is the second time Mogg has used his little boy in a stunt’ and that Conservatives are now led by ‘crude, Right-wing nationalists’. By the way, Key is a recent member of the Church of England Synod who chaired the governors of Salisbury Cathedral School and describes himself as a Christian.

LABOUR frontbencher Richard Burgon is quizzed about the coming general election by Sky TV’s chief glamour puss Kay Burley, who advises him: ‘The polls say you won’t win.’ Burgon responds: ‘The polls said we wouldn’t win last time.’ Quick-as-a-flash Burley: ‘You didn’t!’

WOULD James Joyce, the Irish author of Ulysses who died in 1941 and was buried in Zurich, be happy to hear of moves to have him reinterred in Dublin? ‘Never did Joyce express any desire to be buried in Dublin,’ says Professor (of English) John McCourt. Joyce’s work was banned in Ireland, which he left permanently aged 22. But Dublin has created a multi-millioneuro Joyce tourism industry. A Joyce grave would be the cherry on the cake.

also 57, appears lukewarm, remarking: ‘I suppose it would be called Old Men Behaving Badly. Not that I believe that I personally look at all old, although time has not been kind to Neil, who I think has aged rather badly.’