Ephraim Hardcastle
QUEEN Camilla has been doing her bit to economise. In an effort to cut the royal postage and stationery bill, as revealed here last month, she has jettisoned the traditional crested heavyweight envelopes. She likes to reply personally to as many letters as she can and always used envelopes embossed with the royal crest, sent out by £6 special delivery. Now her missives are dispatched in cheaper, unembossed envelopes and sent by normal second-class post. At 69p a pop, the palace’s discounted business rate for second-class stamps, it saves a small fortune. A first-class Queen using second-class mail!
DID Harold Wilson unburden himself to the late Queen about his secret affair with his deputy press secretary? A senior courtier quoted in Ben Pimlott’s biography of the late Queen recalled that Wilson and HM confided in each other in their increasingly lengthy private audiences. She did tell him about her worries over the impact of the impending 1976 announcement of her sister Margaret’s legal separation from Tony Snowdon. Wilson gave her advance knowledge of his resignation, gallantly timing the announcement for the same day as the Snowdon marriage split to dull its impact. Alas, it didn’t go to plan. The royal separation swamped the news with Harold’s departure playing third fiddle.
HOME Secretary James Cleverly was yesterday urged by Tory backbencher miriam Cates to do something about the falling birth rate. Cleverly is a lusty lad but had to confess the matter was ‘beyond my control’. Father-of-six Jacob Rees-mogg has taken a more proactive approach.
KEELEY Hawes laments her youthful naivety in posing in lingerie for lads titles such as Loaded. ‘There was no one there but 20-year-old Keeley, who didn’t know how these things worked,’ the actress, pictured, tells Stylist magazine. ‘You would be put in a hotel room, sometimes with a male photographer on your own, not even with “hair” and “makeup”. It was deeply uncomfortable but that was the expectation of what we did. It makes me feel horrendous – really horrendous. I feel for myself.’
DOMINIC West, Prince Charles in The Crown, recalls the last week of shooting in York minster. ‘We had 400 extras bowing to us, me and olivia Williams [his co-star, as Camilla Parker Bowles] getting married, with a whole orchestra and a full choir . . . it’s quite tricky going home after that and the kids, my wife, refusing to bow, things like that!’
EX-PYTHON Michael Palin explains to BBC Radio 4’s Nick Robinson why his former, now often mirthless, colleague John Cleese is permanently irascible: ‘He’s got grumpy pills from the National Health Service so he’s going to be like that’.