Ephraim Hardcastle
BAReLY settled in his crypt, Prince Philip is already the subject of claims of impressive alcohol consumption, with Windsor Rugby Club – where he was patron for 68 years – crediting him with consuming two lunchtime pints of his favourite ale Brakspear, two ports and some wine, then recalling his beer-drenched attendance at the club’s Potminders drinking society annual dinner. ‘The last time I was here,’ he told club members, ‘I left at about 2am and was a little bit wobbly indeed. The wife mentioned it in the morning when I woke up wearing a new club tie.’ As hM might clarify: ‘Recollections may vary.’
RETIRED footballer Vinnie Jones recalls cheekily asking the Queen for her two FA Cup final tickets when meeting the monarch at the interval of the Royal Variety Performance 20 years ago. ‘I just thought, they get two tickets every year,’ he tells ITV, explaining: ‘If she wasn’t going, there were two mates from the pub who wanted to go!’
DeSCRIBING himself as a ‘helpless old queen’, Stephen Fry discloses why his friend Gore Vidal, pictured, preferred staying at London’s Savoy hotel after a floor manager removed from his suite a rent boy who was demanding an additional £30 for services rendered. Two days later when Gore was checking out and paying the bill, he saw at the foot of the column of figures: ‘Sundries £30’, Fry tells The New York Times. he adds that Vidal told him: ‘I thought the use of the word “sundries” was inspired and I have been fond of the Savoy ever since.’
PUTTING the final pink touches to his mammoth Cherry Blossoms show in Paris, Damien Hirst recalls finding Lucian Freud staring at his Blue Paintings at the 2009 opening of his universally panned exhibition at the Wallace Collection. Says Damien: ‘He said to me, “I didn’t know you could paint” and I remember thinking, is he being sarcastic?’ While Damien’s record auction price, for Lullaby Spring, was £12million, Lucian’s Portrait On A White Cover fetched a personal record of £22.5million at Sotheby’s. Final score? Freud 1, Hirst 0. hAS Keir Starmer ignored pleas from eddie Izzard to be Batley and Spen by-election candidate to replace former Coronation Street actress Tracy Brabin? The transgender entertainer and Labour luvvie volunteers, saying: ‘If a byelection comes up, I would go for that.’ Surely Yorkshire is ready for eddie describing himself on election flyers as ‘she’ and ‘her’?
THE Duchess of Fife recalls the curious ritual of weighing visitors to the family’s Aberdeenshire Mar Lodge after they’d signed the visitors book. In 1891, Queen Victoria declined to be weighed in while Sir William Gordon-Cumming happily concurred. But when he was blackballed after a baccarat scandal involving the Prince of Wales, his entry was crossed out. His dog’s paw print was retained.