Ephraim Hardcastle
FAILURE to resolve Brexit before the Queen pre-recorded her Christmas message allows HM to adroitly avoid mentioning any historic accord in her review of 2020. Since the 2016 referendum she has resisted reference to Brexit at Christmas, this being the one address where ministers have no input nor veto. In 1972, with the UK about to join the EEC, she did verge on the political, saying: ‘The links with Europe will not replace those with the Commonwealth.’ Her private view remains private.
DESCRIBING Sir Keir Starmer as a ‘wet wipe’, writer Moya Lothian McLean lacerates the Labour leader on feminist news website gal-dem, accusing him of ‘profound cowardice and fence sitting’ on everything from Covid to Brexit. ‘He does not lead proactively; he reacts, passively’ and ‘doesn’t particularly stand for anything’, she says. ‘Try and name a single Keir Starmer policy. Go on, think of it now. Anything? Nope. Keir Starmer, put one pair of cojones on your Christmas list.’ Starmer the wet wipe? It could catch on.
WHAT is the best Christmas present ever received by Jacob Rees-Mogg? ‘It was a vial of anointing oil from Queen Victoria’s coronation given to me by my father when I was a boy,’ he says. ‘I’m afraid my friends didn’t think this was as exciting as I did... but I was very thrilled.’ Parents will search Amazon in vain for a similar gift.
UNWOKE actor Laurence Fox seems to disapprove of black actress Jodie TurnerSmith, pictured, playing Anne Boleyn in a new Channel 5 drama. ‘This is real slap in the face for actors from the limb different community. Everybody knows Anne Boleyn had six fingers on her right hand,’ says the Morse star.
BORIS’S ex-mistress Petronella Wyatt expresses bafflement at the PM having rescue dog Dilyn in Downing Street, claiming that previously, he’d never shown fondness for animals and displayed a cavalier attitude to her Papillon dog Mini. ‘The only person she has ever attacked is our current Prime Minister,’ she tells The Spectator. ‘One could plead this was out of self-defence. Boris had just sat on her.’
LUCIAN Freud’s lover Celia Paul reveals how their son Frank was one of the last people to speak to Lucian on the day he died. She tells The London Review of Books: ‘Rose Boyt [Lucian’s daughter] told Frank that one of the nurses had said that the last sense to leave a dying person is their sense of hearing, so Frank should say a few words to his father, if he felt inclined. Rose and I left the room.’
THE Fast Show’s Arabella Weir, alarmingly obsessed with her more successful school contemporary Emma Thompson, predicts ending up in actors’ retirement home Denville Hall, adding tongue in cheek: ‘I can sit all day chatting to Ian McShane and Lulu, and saying, “Do you remember I was going to be in that series, and blow me if they didn’t cast Emma Thompson.”’ The very idea!