Ephraim Hardcastle
PRINCE Philip has been spending much of his time at Sandringham ploughing through his papers, diaries and photographs. Scribbling copious notes and jettisoning what he considers ‘dross’, the duke plans to pass the edited material to the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. Apparently he was so dismayed by the ad hoc boxes archivists had to handle after the Queen Mother’s death he’s determined to get everything in order himself.
JEREMY Corbyn’s virtue-signalling pledge to give Chequers to the homeless may not bother comrade John McDonnell who has said, as Labour’s Chancellor, he would relinquish Dorneywood – the Buckinghamshire mansion occupied by previous chancellors George Osborne and Philip Hammond. But what about Emily Thornberry, alias Lady Nugee? As Labour’s Foreign Secretary she’ll be measuring the curtains at Chevening House, the Kent chateau which comes with the job.
BBC world affairs editor John Simpson tells Radio Times what happened when he approached PM Harold Wilson in 1970: ‘I stepped forward. I got as far as “excuse me, Prime…” when Wilson punched me hard in the stomach and tried to yank the radio microphone out of my hand. Then he stormed off. A veteran cameraman chided me, “You don’t doorstep the Prime Minister, sonny”.’
PRINCE Andrew won’t be troubling US immigration any time soon but daughter Eugenie, pictured, has no such qualms, flying into Miami for the opening of Art Basel, a shindig where celebrities pretend to be art connoisseurs. As director of London’s Hauser & Wirth gallery she’s the genuine article, useful when future monarch Charles sheds the minor royals.
HAS Brexit Party deserter Annunziata Rees-Mogg MEP no shame? Standing for the Tories in Aberavon in 2005 she boasted Lord Morris of Aberavon was a relative. As second cousins once removed, they barely knew each other. Says a friend: ‘Everyone thinks Annunziata is posh. But her grandfather was a lorry driver who became a car salesman in the Euston Road.’
REVEALING Donald Trump’s make-up regime at one of his golf resorts, the Washington Post claims he ‘slathers on’ Swiss Bronx Colors face make-up, adding: ‘The housekeepers had to regularly bring new shirts from the pro shop because of the rust-coloured stains on the collars.’
CLIVE James announced his impending death in his 2014 poem Japanese Maple. Three years later Sam Leith, spotting a Japanese maple in James’s Cambridge garden, was told the original had died and this was the third one he’d planted. Clive warned: ‘Keep that to yourself. I’m saving it for a poem.’
CURRENTLY playing Benedict XVI in The Two Popes, Sir Anthony Hopkins recalls: ‘I once asked a Jesuit priest, “What is the shortest prayer in the world?” He said,“F*** it”.’