Hardcastle

IS Prince andrew pitching for a new government job? His pro-Brexit remarks to the BBC about landing new trade deals outside the eU suggest he seeks to recapture his role as a trade ambassador, which he lost under David Cameron. ‘air Miles andy’ has been to turkey, the US, France, China and Singapore on business trips this year promoting his Pitch@Palace initiative. His website says: ‘Pitch@Palace offers the chance to get tech businesses in front of a global audience of influencers who can catapult it to the next level. established by the Duke of York, in less than three years Pitch@Palace has helped over 247 businesses grow, with some now enjoying huge global success.’ Does theresa May have time to consider his potential during her current political travails? DESIGNATED as a pariah by regional rivals, Qatar’s rulers are welcomed into Royal Ascot’s inner sanctums. They pump millions of pounds into British racing. As of 2014, they’ve been Royal Ascot’s sponsor. So eminent Qataris enjoy the hospitality of the Royal Enclosure. The Queen doesn’t have to consult the Foreign Office over whom she entertains there. SIR Daniel Day-Lewis, who says he’s quitting acting at 60, first left the profession in 1989 while playing Hamlet at the National theatre (not ‘Old Vic at the Hamlet’, as a malaprop-prone actor once said). Mid-performance he saw his father, Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, who had died in 1972, standing upstage, glaring at him. Spooky, no? EDUCATION Secretary Justine Greening, pictured, seeks our sympathy by saying a bank turned her down for a job because of the unsophisticated way she ordered lunch at a snooty restaurant. Yorkshire-born Ms Greening, 48, often reminds us of her struggles. She told an interviewer about her Rotherham schooldays: ‘It was a really hard long slog, but I was willing to do it because I knew there was something better out there.’ Social historian David Goodhart commented: ‘She was talking about escaping from Rotherham in a way that if I was from Rotherham, I would feel was pretty offensive.’ I wonder if Ms Greening agrees? OBSeRVeRS note that theresa May’s cleavage, concealed for months after adverse comments, made a tentative reappearance before the cameras during her Commons statement on the Grenfell tower fire. and why not? an embattled PM must play to her strengths in these challenging political times. SO who drew the offensive Guardian cartoon suggesting readers of the Mail and Sun were responsible for social inadequate Darren Osborne allegedly driving a van into Muslims in north London? It’s Martin Rowson, who might be familiar to some Mail readers. Ten years ago he sold us, for £7,500, the story of his sad early life, summed up thus: ‘With two birth parents, two adoptive parents AND a stepmum, Martin Rowson’s childhood was far from conventional. Only when the last of them died did he begin an extraordinary – and deeply poignant – voyage of self-discovery.’ Judging by the relentlessly dark character of his work, did the voyage yield anything more than bilious hatred?