Ephraim Hardcastle
WILLIAM and Kate will be studying Queen Margrethe of Denmark’s abdication, with the future King noting how the transfer to Frederik X involves little other than the signing of papers, the changing of royal standards and a proclamation. For William, keen to downsize his own coronation, the relative simplicity may be appealing. Kate, meanwhile, is said to be delighted that Crown Princess Mary is becoming Queen. She spent a lot of time in conversation with Mary at Royal Ascot when she visited in 2016. They exchanged numbers. Will her low-key elevation help Kate to pick up tips for her own no-fuss crowning?
MEANWHILE, is William burnishing his bespoke wellies for this year’s Glastonbury? Festival founder Michael Eavis, who thinks that William will present him with his New Year Honours knighthood, says: ‘He’s made a few mentions of wanting to come to the festival. So I’ll probably take a couple of tickets in my pocket.’
KIRSTIE Allsopp, pictured, facing a backlash after calling for the building of detached houses to be banned as they ‘waste space’, rages at detractors: ‘Yes, I do live in Devon in a huge “detached” house, most Jacobean mansions are detached, you morons. In London I live in a block of flats, so shove that in your pipe and smoke it.’ Deep breaths, dear!
STEPHEN Fry wants a ban on real fur in the King’s Guard bearskin caps, declaring: ‘Tradition is never an excuse for cruelty.’ What about geese, Stephen? According to the late gourmet Clement Freud, the well-nourished polymath waxed rapturously over foie gras. ‘There was great excitement when I realised that this was not pâté, but whole liver which melts in your mouth,’ he mewled. A honk in your shell-like Stephen: your chum the King has banned foie gras, described by animal rights campaigners as ‘torture in a tin’.
BORN almost a decade after his sister, Sir Michael Palin reveals his late mother always wanted another child despite his father’s reservations. ‘In the end, she made his mind up for him,’ says Michael. ‘She dispensed with some device she’d normally use. She said [to me], “I can remember the night you were conceived. I can even tell you what was on top of the wardrobe”... this was just too much!’
ENCHANTED by Mark Gatiss’s portrayal of John Gielgud in The Motive And The Cue at London’s Noel Coward theatre, Maureen Lipman was prevented by a jobsworth security woman from going backstage to ‘genuflect to the cast’. ‘She demanded my credentials and treated me like a terrorist,’ Maureen tells The Spectator. ‘I hear myself say, “I know how to go into a stage door – I’m a bloody Dame!”’
A NEW biography of Stanley Kubrick reveals that while making 2001: A Space Odyssey, he had doubts about the voice of the computer HAL 9000. He wanted to use Barbra Streisand, declaring her to be an ‘exciting actress’. Would his favoured homicidal HAL have warbled The Way We Were as he tried to murder the crew?