Ephraim Hardcastle
LADYLIKE Labour MP Harriet Harman, 67, plotting to oust her ‘friend’ John Bercow as Commons Speaker, is supported by Labour MPs Dame Margaret Hodge, 73, and Dame Rosie Winterton, 59 – the latter a deputy Speaker. Might chippy Bercow, reputedly prone to class insecurities, feel that Westminster’s la-di-dah Establishment is against him? ‘Especially after the time he’s spent flattering Harman and her dame-ish cronies,’ chortles my source.
BROADCASTER Sir Michael Parkinson, 82, recalled at the St Bride’s memorial service for his friend, Fleet Street editor Robin Esser, that they became the youngest captains in the British Army during their National Service in the 1950s. Robin said he was the younger ‘by a few days’, said Parkinson. ‘Then when Robin died last November, aged 84, I discovered he was older than me by two years. Never trust a journalist!’ Publisher Christopher Ward, 75, spoke eloquently at the service for his friend, Robin, explaining afterwards: ‘It helps that I’ve made speeches on cruise ships about my grandfather, who was on the Titanic.’ Jock Hume was a violinist who, with his colleagues, played all five verses of Nearer, My God, To Thee while the ship sank in 1912.
TV personality Katie Boyle, pictured in her prime, who died on Tuesday aged 91, is said to have been a friend of Prince Philip, but she told the duke’s biographer, Gyles Brandreth, in 2004: ‘It’s ludicrous, pure fabrication.’ Prince Philip said about such stories: ‘You just shrug your shoulders and get on with it.’ Meanwhile, on a lighter note, disc jockey ‘Diddy’ David Hamilton says he and Katie were friends while serving on a Battersea Dogs Home committee. In her fluting, Lady Bracknell-like tones, she once left a message on his phone about a visit they were making to Windsor saying: ‘David, I’ll drive if you’ll hold my chihuahuas.’
FRESH-faced Tory MP Tom Pursglove, 29, made headlines after advising Theresa May at PMQs: ‘Perhaps if she is around afterwards I might be able to give one to her’ – a reference to recyclable coffee cups, not an obnoxious sexual remark. She sportingly replied, ‘If he’d like to come and see me afterwards…’ Backbencher Pursglove, elected in 2015, is an ambitious cove. ‘It would be an enormous honour and a privilege,’ he replied when asked about ministerial promotion.
THRICE-married Sixties pop star Sandie Shaw, 71, mentions the late Beatle John Lennon in an interview, saying: ‘I loved John and thought he should have married me. He’d be alive today if he had. I would have taken a bullet for him!’ Can you imagine how sardonic Lennon might have responded to this offer?
FOLLOWING Tom Bower’s Charles-Camilla revelations, my own royal contact says: ‘The year 2002 was when the Queen had a change of heart about Charles and Camilla. The death of her mother and sister pushed her into rethinking her priorities. With Charles determined to press ahead – and partly influenced by (then PM) Tony Blair – she accepted the inevitability of a wedding.’ Email: peter.mckay@dailymail.co.uk