Ephraim Hardcastle
CABiNEt Secretary Sir Jeremy heywood’s honours Forfeiture Committee has never been so busy, currently pondering the removal of harvey Weinstein’s CBE and facing the possibility of stripping Kevin Spacey of his honorary knighthood, George Bush Senior’s K and, maybe, Aled Jones’s MBE. Former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon, Knight Commander of the Most honourable Order of the Bath, seems to have escaped their attention.
APROPOS the committee, it moves at a snail’s pace. When Fred Goodwin crashed RBS in 2008 with losses of £24.1billion, it took four years to remove his K. Two others lost their Ks after Fred – HBOS banker James Crosby and ‘superhead’ Alan Davies for false accounting. They join an elite club including Robert Mugabe (GCB), Nicolae Ceausescu (GCB), Mussolini (GCB), Elliot Morley and Denis MacShane (both booted out of the Privy Council), Kim Philby (OBE), Rolf Harris (CBE), Stuart Hall (OBE) and James McGuire who lost his 1858 VC for stealing a cow.
AFtER itV Political Editor Robert Peston’s girlfriend Charlotte Edwardes interviewed former Baywatch babe Pamela Anderson, 50, pictured, she came home with a raunchy present. Recalls Charlotte: ‘She gave me a pair of sexy, seethrough knickers with ribbon ties and my boyfriend almost had a heart attack.’
FORMER foreign secretary Lord Carrington, 98, who helped negotiate the 1980 Rhodesia/Zimbabwe settlement with Robert Mugabe, got the measure of the emerging tyrant, describing him as ‘an archetypal cold fish, secretive, devious, clever and reptilian’. In private Carrington jumbled his name, calling him derisively: ‘E-Ba-Gum.’
tO some excitable sorts, the key question for the new Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard is ‘Football: Scotland or England?’ his choice – England – causes ructions. But as a Yorkshireman, is that so odd? Gordon Brown’s choice of Paul Gascoigne’s Euro ’96 goal at Wembley as a stand-out? that reply caused Alex Salmond to question whether Fife’s Mr Brown was a legitimate Scotland fan.
NOW back on ITV’s I’m A Celebrity following his much-publicised stint in rehab for alcohol and drug addiction, Ant McPartlin was mischievously asked by long-time TV partner Dec Donnelly, 42: ‘Where were you all summer anyway? What were you doing?’ Ant, also 42, awkwardly replied: ‘Just stuff... just dead busy.’
EVERGREEN Swedish beauty Britt Ekland, 75, seems untroubled by the hollywood sex scandal: ‘For any young, beautiful, innocent actress in those days [the 60s], all of us has been touched inappropriately. When i was very young, it was constant.’ She adds that marriage at 22 to priapic British star Peter Sellers, 39, was an eye-opener: ‘i thought it was normal to turn someone over at six in the morning because he was aroused.’