Ephraim Hardcastle
WILL Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s jubilation at Rishi’s elevation be followed by a request for help in repatriating the Koh-iNoor diamond? Modi wants back the troublesome diamond given to Queen Victoria in 1850 and used to crown the last three Queen Consorts: Alexandra (1902), Mary (1911) and the Queen Mother (1937). He has form. Since becoming PM in 2014 he has persuaded Australia, Germany and Canada to return historic artefacts. Hindu Modi will expect support from his fellow religionist and Britain’s first Anglo-Indian PM.
WITH Pakistan and Afghanistan also claiming the diamond, Rishi might have an even larger diplomatic headache than anticipated. One previous compromise proposed cutting the diamond into four with one segment staying in Britain and the others given to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Previous governments rejected this but with two full-size replicas in the Tower of London, the PM may be tempted to call in the gem cutters.
WYKEHAMIST Rishi may have paused the stranglehold of 20 Eton-educated PMs, but does he retain a whiff of Floreat Etona? The posh school’s late headmaster Sir Eric Anderson – pupils included David Cameron and Boris Johnson – moved on to the Rectorship of Oxford’s Lincoln College, where his undergraduates included… Rishi Sunak. Was studious Sunak too old for the Jesuit maxim: ‘Give me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man’?
EDDIE Redmayne, pictured, explains why thespians airily address each other as ‘darling’. ‘You work with people and don’t see them for ten years,’ he says. ‘And you meet them again, but you can’t for the life of you remember their name.’ Wasn’t darling Eddie once mistaken for actress Jennifer Garner?
STEPHEN Fry had few friends when he infuriated playwright Simon Gray and co-star Rik Mayall, disappearing after three performances of Gray’s play Cell Mates in the West End in 1995. One loyal chum was the late spy scribbler John le Carré, who is revealed in a new book to have written to Fry offering to assist with his clandestine departure. Apparently suicidal and missing for three days, Fry left a telephone recording at his London flat: ‘Please leave a message unless you are a journalist, in which case, f*** off.’
EMMA, Duchess of Rutland, who shares Belvoir Castle with her estranged husband, delights in The Crown using the historic pile’s Elizabeth Saloon for filming. She tells woman&home magazine: ‘Not wanting to get in the way of filming, I once dressed as a servant to have a peek!’
LACK of a canteen at GB News prompts Eamonn Holmes to complain: ‘Our ad breaks are only two minutes long – so you’ve no time to eat.’ Shades of the Jon Culshaw BBC spoof of a peckish Eamonn devouring studio guest Frankie Dettori declaring: ‘I was fierce hungry, so I was.’