Ephraim Hardcastle
PRINCE Harry’s New Year release of a picture of himself and baby Archie may fail to delight brother William, coinciding, as it does, with the launch of his big project, Earthshot. The Sussex Instagram upstaged the elaborately planned lift-off of William’s multi-million-pound environmental award. It’s not the first time Harry and Meghan have confirmed the lack of joined-up thinking between the Cambridge and Sussex households. They no longer co-ordinate their diaries with the royal household, and having a major initiative overtaken by a photo is something that should never happen.
WITH eight minutes of free global television airtime at its disposal, how did London choose to promote itself during the midnight fireworks on New Year’s Eve? With a medley of tuneless rap songs, football theme tunes and Seven Nation Army – otherwise known as the Leftie anthem ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn’. Coincidence, or a brazen anti-Tory two fingers by Labour mayor Sadiq Khan? Was it £2.3million well spent? Perhaps Khan’s predecessor, now installed at Number Ten, might review funding for next year.
NEIL Innes, known as the seventh Python, died before he could carry out his threat to sue Eric Idle for royalties from Spamalot, the musical based on the film Monty Python And The Holy Grail cowritten by Innes. ‘The gloves are off. I am not being polite any more,’ he warned. Idle is now making a movie version. Will he give Neil’s family a cut of the profits?
BORIS’S brief preelection sojourn in a fridge resonates with Dancing On Ice contestant Caprice, pictured, who has discovered an effective treatment for bruising. She explains: ‘I’ve been having cryotherapy, where you sit in a freezer for three minutes. You come out and two days of bruises are gone! It heals me, and makes me sleep better.’ How was it for you Boris?
WHILE former Wimbledon champion Sir Andy Murray contends with his latest injury – he’s had to pull out of this month’s Australian Open – his fist-pumping mother, Judy, is in buoyant mood. Why so? She tweets mischievously about mum Shirley, 85: ‘Great start to the New Year. My mother has lost her voice.’
EMILIA Fox’s portrayal of Valerie Hobson in the BBC’s Christine Keeler drama makes no mention of her sudden death in 1998, bizarrely predicted by the late Alec Guinness after attending the cinema with her and husband John Profumo. Guinness appears to have had the gift of second sight, having earlier warned Hollywood star James Dean not to drive the Porsche in which he perished in a crash.
FINGERS crossed, Elton John’s appointment as a Companion of Honour goes more smoothly than his 1998 Buckingham Palace knighting. En route to the Queen, the Lord Chamberlain announced him as ‘Sir John Elton’.
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