Ephraim Hardcastle
WHAT of Prince Charles’s prediction, made in Brazil in March 2009, that there were only 100 months left to prevent ‘irretrievable climate collapse’? Charles Moore reminds readers of The Spectator that the deadline runs out next month, adding: ‘So it looks as if we are all doomed. The Prince is rightly concerned about the future of the yellow-footed rock wallaby and the golden-shouldered parrot, but is notably more reticent about exactly when the end is nigh. We can breathe again.’
WAS Jeremy Corbyn too quick to take offence at Boris Johnson’s description of him as a mugwump? Originally a Native American word for ‘important person’ and ‘kingpin’, it flatters Jezza. Might he focus any whingeing on being called mutton-headed?
DURING Jeremy Clarkson’s long stewardship of Top Gear, BBC management received frequent official complaints over use of the p-word at centre of a furore currently engulfing the broadcaster. On one occasion, copresenter Richard Hammond wanted to apply the term to a car he was reviewing. Rather than incur further reprimands from his bosses, he simply placed a pie and a key on the bonnet.
A SMALL irony: On Newsnight Peter Mandelson, 63, sabotaged Sir Keir Starmer’s carefully constructed Labour policy on Brexit. Starmer is Mandy’s constituency MP in Holborn and St Pancras. As a peer, Mandy can’t even vote for him. The least he could do is get Brazilian lover Reinaldo da Silva, 43, pictured, to put a Vote Keir sticker in the window of the £12.5million house they share in Regent’s Park.
ONE of the pleasures of being a Knight of the Garter is the yearly lunch in June with the Queen at Windsor. But not this summer. The timing of the general election means that the Queen must now open Parliament on that day. No doubt the Knights, who include Sir John Major and Field Marshal Lord Bramall, will be disappointed. Less so, the Duke of Edinburgh. Reflecting on the annual procession of the Order of the Garter through the castle – in velvet robes and ostrich-plumed caps – the Duke observed: ‘Rationally it’s lunatic. But in practice, everyone enjoys it – I think.’
JOHN Bercow’s determination to hold on to the speakership will be good news for his chaplain, Rose Hudson-Wilkin, 56. Rev Rose, who depends on the Speaker’s patronage, had a whirlwind rise to fame, becoming the first black female Chaplain to the Queen in 2008. In 2009 Bercow broke with convention and appointed the East End vicar. Until then, one of the clergy at Westminster Abbey undertook the duties. Hudson-Wilkin, who once staged a rooftop protest about her Haggerston church’s state of decay, has even had the ultimate honour: an appearance on Desert Island Discs.