Ephraim Hardcastle
HARD to believe that the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh were so anxious about the adolescent Princess Anne that Philip sought advice from Dame Vera Lynn. Taking her aside at an event he confided: ‘We’re concerned about Anne at the moment, trying to get her to make up her mind about what she wants to do.’ Alas Vera will, now, never be able to reveal her answer. At least she didn’t clear her throat and warble Wish Me Luck as You Wave Me Goodbye.
LONDON Philharmonic Orchestra adviser Christopher Fraser urges the BBC to curtail the Archers’ boring lockdown monologues by adapting his orchestra’s synchronised ensemble experience with musicians playing from home. ‘It cannot be beyond the resources of the BBC to deploy such a technique and allow The Archers to return to interactive dialogue, inspired by the LPO,’ he says.
RESTAURANT critic Jay Rayner wants diners to eat with their hands, making cutlery optional. ‘Food tastes better when it’s eaten with your hands,’ he adds. ‘The simplest way would be to change the law and make it part of statute.’ What next? Soup in a basket!
CHARLES Saatchi paid £150,000 for My Bed by Tracey Emin, pictured, in 2000 as a joke on the art world, according to a new book on the history of Britpop. When Charlie sold the unmade bed with its empty vodka bottles, cigarette butts and discarded condoms to an anonymous buyer for £2.2million in 2014 who was laughing all the way to the bank?
JEREMY Irons, happily wed to Sinead Cusack for four decades, was first married to fellow Bristol Old Vic student Julie Hallam in 1969. Recalls fellow student Christopher Biggins: ‘It’s no surprise that a year later they separated.’ Why? ‘I went on the honeymoon with them, in the back of a Citroen 2CV,’ explains Biggins.
STIRRED by the BBC’s famine of content, John Cleese tweets: ‘Some years ago I was involved in a programme called Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which the BBC has not repeated for nearly 20 years. Some of it might still seem funny to old people.’ He’s all heart is Cleese.
A FORTHCOMING Channel 5 documentary on the Duke and Duchess of York concludes that the pair possess the complete reverse of the Midas touch, as everything they touch turns to disaster. ‘The former golden couple are trapped in their very own never-ending nightmare of PR disasters and blunders,’ it adds. What do bears do in the woods?
WITH church lockdown ending, celebrity vicar Giles Fraser will have to remove his pulpit-side TV from St Mary Newington in South London. ‘I watched Chelsea’s 2-1 victory over Aston Villa on Sunday,’ he sheepishly admits.