Ephraim Hardcastle
AN unfinished, handwritten autobiography by the late, camp TV entertainer Larry ‘Shut that door!’ Grayson has been found in a warehouse in Malvern, Worcestershire. Generation Game presenter Grayson, who died aged 71 in 1995, reveals that the love of his life was school friend Tom Proctor, who died in the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy during the Second World War. TV producer Tony Nicholson, who has completed the book, says: ‘Larry never really recovered from the loss. Tom’s sisters wrote a poem commemorating his death and he carried it around with him all his life.’
WHY the haste to send Prince Harry and his fiancée Meghan Markle on their first joint engagement tomorrow, a visit to Nottingham? It comes a few days after Kensington Palace officials said the Duchess of Cambridge would be getting out more, following the news that she has undertaken just four engagements outside London this year. In the same period, the Queen, 91, aside from London engagements, has been to Wiltshire, Leicester, Manchester, Edinburgh, Hull – and fed an elephant at Whipsnade Zoo. Pre-Christmas visits to Chichester and Portsmouth are also in HM’s diary.
BRILLIANT playwright Sir Terence Rattigan, who died 40 years ago today, finally received a knighthood in 1971, having reportedly been denied the honour first time round by civil servants in 1958. Rattigan’s gong was reduced to a CBE in the late 1950s because of his homosexuality. The word ‘homo’ was written on documents recommending his place on the Birthday Honours List. He only became Sir Terence four years after homosexuality was legalised.
PRINCE Harry’s girlfriend from 2012 to 2014, Cressida Bonas, 28, pictured, read A Politically Correct Christmas Poem at the festive charity Fayre at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, this week, reciting these lines about the pitfalls of marriage: ‘And his wife, who suddenly said she’d had enough of this life, joined a self-help group, packed and left in a whiz, demanding from now on that her title was Ms.’ Actress Ms Bonas trusts we won’t continue to refer to her as Harry’s ex.
THE Newcastle feminist calling for a primary school to stop reading Sleeping Beauty to pupils – arguing that a story about a sleeping princess being kissed might give young boys the wrong message about sexual consent – is mocked by John O’Sullivan, an ex-adviser to Margaret Thatcher. He says it’s typical of lazy, Leftist thinking to believe it’s better for Sleeping Beauty to remain in a coma for ever than be kissed without prior explicit consent – ‘which, being in a coma, she is incapable of giving’.
APROPOS of their visit to Nottingham tomorrow, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle should be advised of the legend of Leo and Oscar, two stone lions located in Slab Square. It’s claimed they’re inclined to roar if a virgin walks by.