Ephraim Hardcastle
QUEEN Camilla will lead the extended Royal Family at Monday’s Commonwealth Day service with the absent King ordering all able-bodied working royals to attend. This shines an unwelcome light on the royal sickbay (the King, Kate and Princess Alexandra) as well as underlining the frailty of others. The Duke of Kent (89 this year) now needs a stick or wheelchair to get about and the Duke of Gloucester is 80 in August. And the one-time baby of the Windsor clan Prince Edward is 60 on Sunday.
MEANWHILE Camilla is expected to make an appearance at the Cheltenham Festival to indulge her love of the jumps. Also attending is Princess Anne, who lives down the road, alongside daughter Zara who is a Cheltenham director. With Anne’s own equestrian show, the Festival of British Eventing, biting the dust maybe Zara can find a job for her brother Peter Phillips, who was heavily involved in the festival at mum’s Gatcombe Park estate.
THE MoD did well financially by prematurely announcing that Kate (pictured) would be attending Trooping the Colour in June.
There was an unprecedented stampede for the £15-a-head tickets, with more than 90 per cent gone in the first 12 hours. Tickets for the Review are normally slow to move (which is why a proposed price hike to £20 was shelved) and it’s rarely a complete sell-out. Kate is clearly still a big box office draw, even if she might be calling in sick on the day.
WHAT is it with former The Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson and the Welsh? Investigated by the Broadcasting Standards Commission for describing them as ‘irritating and annoying’, she has now fallen foul of Peter Underhill, agent for Colin Charvis, former Welsh rugby captain. Sitting opposite her on a train from Kemble, Peter reminded her of Colin’s appearance on TWL with a broken nose. ‘He told me and the whole carriage that Colin and his mother have never recovered from me rudely asking him – did everyone in Wales have a nose that turned half left?’
KEMI Badenoch’s criticism of Michael Sheen’s Port Talbot drama The Way prompts the Welsh firebrand to invite her to his new play Nye at the National Theatre where his performance as NHS founder Bevan in his pyjamas prompted three audience members to faint in one night. ‘I realise of course,’ says Sheen, ‘there is no guarantee she [Badenoch] would make it to the end.’
DRAMA critics are braced for performer Eloina’s first night in High Steaks at the New Diorama theatre, where she will be appearing nude with two beef steaks hanging from her labia ‘in a profound, heartfelt, and healing call to action against body-shaming’. Given just how many of Fleet Street’s theatre reviewers are confirmed bachelors, should additional St John Ambulance operatives be on standby?