Ephraim Hardcastle

DESPITE having withdrawn from public duties, Prince Andrew retains his colonelship of the Grenadier Guards. Might he be wishing Covid triggers the cancellation of June’s Trooping the Colour, where he normally parades on horse Guards using the prestigious title? The Trooping is the unspoken deadline for deciding the future of this role. For him not to attend, or to send a deputy, would be regarded as a dishonour to the regiment, whose past colonels have included Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. But a cancelled Trooping would allow the Queen to prevaricate further on stripping her son of his military honours. And there is pressure from the troops for a decision to be made.

CRITICISED for cycling seven miles to the Olympic Park, why didn’t Boris pedal the mile up the Mall and avail of the Queen’s invitation to use the 2.5 miles of gravel path in her Buckingham Palace garden? When in residence – she hasn’t been since March – HM is presented daily with a small posy of flowers by her gardener. Boris could bring them back to Carrie.

WILL Dame Eileen Atkins’ memoir, due out in october, provide chapter and verse on hollywood star Colin Farrell’s request for ‘sex without strings’ in her hotel room while filming Ask the Dust? Colin was 28, Eileen approaching 70. ‘I spent two and a half hours saying no,’ she recalled.

LADY Clegg, alias Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, pictured, urges the EU to profit from the UK’s Brexit losses telling the Financial Times: ‘Europeans are taking comfort from how much the UK has lost in the Brexit negotiations.’ Oh to be a fly on the bedroom wall when husband, ex-deputy PM Nick Clegg, flicks through the pink paper!

LEFTIE spouter Paul Mason calls on Boris to ‘order social media platforms to suppress Covid disinformation’. What about the ex-BBC man’s own social media accounts? Less than 18 months ago he summoned a mob to Whitehall: ‘We, the British people, are coming for you Boris Johnson, ready or f****** not.’ Given Twitter’s strict new rules on rabble-rousers, that surely trumps Trump?

PETER Sellers’ biographer Roger Lewis describes as ‘pious, high-minded and illogical’ Russell T Davies’s insistence that straight actors never play gay roles, adding: ‘I can’t wait for Davies’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, which will have to star a genuine hunchbacked psychopath and for Macbeth, he’ll need to ask Equity for a list of available regicides.’

SIXTIES femme fatale Christine Keeler makes the new edition of the oxford Dictionary of national Biography. So too does Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Cormac Murphy-o’Connor. no ‘as the showgirl said to the bishop’ jibes, please.