Ephraim Hardcastle
WHY has the BBC’s North American editor Jon Sopel – or Jonathan B Sopel to his friends – been presenting Radio 4’s Today programme when America’s presidential election is under way? ‘Maybe because they haven’t found a replacement for John Humphrys yet and he’s doing an audition,’ says a corporation source.
NOW comfortably installed as chatelaine at No 10, Carrie Symonds lands another distinction. Marks & Spencer is marketing Carrie skinny jeans – ‘the high-ride fit in our softest-ever denim, only £29.50’. Coming soon, perhaps: Boris clobber for the studiedly scruffy man-about-town.
NEXT week there’s a star-studded, tickets-only memorial service for Margaret Thatcher’s former public relations man Lord Bell of Belgravia, aka Tim Bell, presided over by Richard Chartres, former bishop of London, at Anglo-Catholic St Paul’s, Knightsbridge. It features a eulogy from ex-BBC (and ITV) boss Lord Grade of Yarmouth, with drinks at the five-star Berkeley hotel nearby. ‘Michael’s a star but we hope he’ll make it about Tim rather than himself,’ fusses a Bell friend.
HISTORIAN Lucy Worsley, pictured, links Brexit with the 16thcentury Reformation in a TV documentary tonight, remarking: ‘Henry VIII’s break from Rome caused a lasting schism and now Britain is breaking away from Europe all over again. So it all happened in the 1530s when a lot of those seeds were planted and are still shooting up to the sky today.’ Who knew?
STILL touring at 78, Sixties pop star Joe Brown reminisces fondly about his legendary manager Larry Parnes, who also handled Tommy Steele, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Georgie Fame and Vince Eager, recalling: ‘He said to me, “You can’t walk around with a name like Joe Brown. You’ll be Elmer Twitch. And you’ll have your own group and we’ll call them the Fidgets.” Elmer Twitch and the Fidgets was seriously going to be my stage name. I told him I wasn’t having it.’ Could Parnes have been right?
HAS a love of exercise helped Prince Philip – who is set to celebrate his 99th birthday in June – prolong his life? ‘He still fits into uniforms he has had his entire life and still drives carriages pulled by fell ponies around Sandringham when he gets the urge for some exercise and fresh air,’ according to the upcoming Channel 5 documentary Secrets of the Royals.
WILL the Queen’s beloved Commonwealth collapse before its centenary, and her own, both in 2026? The controversy over its secretarygeneral Baroness Scotland’s spending habits, leading to a withdrawal of its funding by the UK, Australia and New Zealand, is ominous. With other members ganging up against the Commonwealth, HM is powerless to influence her own government. A royal lackey says: ‘In the winter of her reign, surely she has a right to expect better.’