Hardcastle Ephraim
PRINCE William’s comparison in a legal statement of his wife, Kate, being photographed sunbathing topless in 2012 and the death of his mother, Diana, after a paparazzi chase in Paris seems uncomfortable now. It might not have seemed so in 2013, when he began suing the female French photographer responsible, but it can hardly avoid being so as the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death approaches. Wouldn’t it have been more seemly if the couple had said that they were disappointed by publication of the photos – encouraging the rest of us to feel the same – and left it at that? THERESA May’s publicity pose with a cone of chips recalls Tony Blair’s claim as PM that his favourite meal was fish and chips. This man-of-the-people ploy was ruined when it emerged that he’d confided in 1993’s Islington Cookbook that his preferred dish was ‘fettuccine with olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes and capers’. SIR David Attenborough, 90, replayed on Radio 4 the original Tweet of the Day – the first live recording of birdsong in 1924, featuring the then celebrated cellist Beatrice Harrison, who died in 1965 aged 72, playing in her Oxted garden accompanied by nightingales. Sir David now claims: ‘The authenticity of the broadcast has been called into question with speculation that it wasn’t a nightingale but a whistler called Maud Gould who sang to order.’ Scandalous! Shouldn’t Panorama investigate? THE Queen, played by respected Russian actress Inna Churikova, 73, pictured, entertains Moscow audiences in Peter Morgan’s stage play The Audience. With UK-Russia relations at a low ebb, might Vladimir Putin be invited on a state visit here soon, his first since 2003? HM enjoyed sharing an open coach with him, in which they were seen talking ‘vigorously’. BBC man and Putin lookalike Andrew Marr later claimed that he’d been told by a royal aide that HM had to keep reminding herself ‘this is the president of Russia, not that chap from the BBC’. PUBLICITY-friendly Tory Peter Bone, 64, raging over EU attempts to land the UK with a whopping multi-billion-pound Brexit bill, tells attractive Sky News anchor Jayne Secker: ‘Put it this way, if we were married, quite rightly you’d want to divorce me and we’d divide the estate up. If I’d put £184billion into the marriage, I’d expect half of that back.’ Ms Secker, 44, said Bone might also be expected to pay the private school fees for their offspring. The saucy rascal responds: ‘I didn’t know we had children? You kept that quiet!’ What does longsuffering Mrs Bone make of it? THE Who’s Roger Daltrey, 73, still touring with bandmate Pete Townshend, 71, admits in an interview: ‘I seriously don’t know if we’ll ever play again after this tour... People at our age have been popping their clogs.’ Happily, Daltrey has outlived the lyric he sang in 1965’s My Generation: ‘I hope I die before I get old!’