Hardcastle
PRIVATE Eye editor Ian Hislop forensically exposed how the Sackler family had donated millions to the arts from its addictive painkiller OxyContin, responsible for an opioid epidemic in the US. A recent beneficiary of £500,000 from the Sackler Trust was Newbury’s Watermill Theatre. Its forthcoming production? Spike, a play about arch-Goon Spike Milligan. And the co-author? Step forward PE’s Ian Hislop. Isn’t life grand?
HISTORIAN Ruth Goodman identifies the slinky shoes worn by the Queen, her grandmother Queen Mary and the Queen Mother at Princess Anne’s 1950 christening as made by glamorous theatrical costumier Rayne. ‘They were shoes for seductive showgirls,’ she tells BBC2’s Inside The Factory tonight. ‘Made fashionable for society’s upper echelons, after ballet superstar Anna Pavlova began wearing them in public.’ Three queens in dancer’s shoes: that’s quite the chorus line.
CATE Blanchett, pictured, had to utilise her acting skills to home-school seven-year-old daughter Edith. ‘She wouldn’t allow me at all to teach maths or do phonics unless I dressed up as her teacher and put on her teacher’s voice,’ the mother-of-four explains. ‘I had an array of stuffed animals who also had to be taught. It wasn’t an offer I made. It was a request she made.’ And the Oscar for best impersonation goes to...
BY CONVENTION Westminster Abbey is the location for memorial services for the great and the good, from Sir Terry Wogan to Harold Wilson. Unusual that the funeral service for Jack Dromey MP is being held at the Abbey on January 31, however. Jack, husband of Labour stalwart Harriet Harman, was born a Roman Catholic.
GAY theatrical agent Barrie Stacey, who has died, once summoned gangster Mad Frankie Fraser to his office for wine and cheese to discuss a tour of his one-man show. Addressing a startled Fraser, who had spent more than 40 years in prison and still carried the giant pliers he had used to extract victims’ teeth, Barrie declared: ‘You see, dear, what we need with this show is a bit of camp. That’s what theatre’s all about, Frank. Pure camp.’ At least Frankie didn’t reach for the pliers.
AWARDING Camilla the Garter, the Queen ends a 120-year tradition started when Edward VII honoured his wife Queen Alexandra. George V and George VI did the same after accession for their wives, Queen Mary and the Queen Mother. King Charles will now have to find another bauble for his missus.
APPEARING on stage in a bleak Royal Court drama about the Irish Troubles, Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs was startled when a mobile phone trilled. ‘It was an ascending ring so it got louder and louder,’ he says. ‘Finally I realised it was me. I pulled it out of my pocket and I answered it and went, “F*** off!”’ He adds, sheepishly: ‘They didn’t have phones in 1970 when the play was set.’
Email: john.mcentee@dailymail.co.uk