Hardcastle
WHEN strictly hoofer Johannes Radebe met Queen Camilla last week he gushed that he was ‘beside myself’ with happiness that she watches the show. Camilla gave a Buck House tea party for strictly, sat in the audience and once recorded a video message for the final. she is not the only royal viewer. Copresenter Tess Daly has indiscreetly revealed that King Charles is also a fan claiming: ‘They watch religiously.’ With strictly currently off air have Camilla and Charles been spared the prattlings of Bradley Walsh on Gladiators?
PIERS Morgan’s disclosure that Rishi Sunak telephoned his mother Gabrielle after learning of her seven-hour ordeal on an A&E trolley after suffering a heart attack prompts recollection of late PM Margaret Thatcher’s frequent surprise visits to the hospital bedsides of disaster survivors. In the midst of her Florence Nightingale phase one Comedy Club wannabe claimed that his hospitalised father had added to his doctor’s Do Not Resuscitate form: ‘Maggie Free Zone.’
SPARE a smidgen of sympathy for Zara Tindall, pictured, who has to indulge in the occasional smooch with husband Mike knowing that he allows his brindle boxer Blink to kiss him on the mouth. ‘Yes I do because boxers have the softest muzzles and they’re so nice,’ explains Mike on the Oh My Dog! podcast. ‘Zara hates it when I do it, but I would be lying if I said it hasn’t happened’. Banish him to the doghouse Zara!
ON YESTERDAY’S ITVX PMQs show Tom Bradby asked his fellow presenter Robert Peston what advice the Prime Minister might get from an adviser. Peston replied: ‘Oh my God. What the f**k are we going to do?’ ITV’s political editor now joins boorish Miriam Margolyes in the ranks of those who have uttered live on TV the word that starts with F and rhymes with duck.
THE Queen has feted writers including my colleague Robert Hardman for producing miniature books for the library in Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. Tom stoppard and alan Bennett also obliged unlike George Bernard shaw and Edward Elgar who refused to donate works when the house was built in 1924. and society painter sir John Lavery demanded five guineas in payment for a miniature portrait. Big money then for a little picture.
SAUCY saucier Prue Leith recalls making good use of a bucket of sheep’s testicles gifted by a neighbouring farmer. She fed them to her mother, the actress Peggy Inglis. ‘I served the marble-sized pale-pink testicles like sweetbreads, in a cream sauce on toast,’ says Prue. ‘My mother had two helpings. She was spitting feathers when I told her what she’d eaten.’ Where did the feathers come from Prue?