Ephraim Hardcastle
WHEN Boris Johnson makes the PM’s traditional trip to Balmoral this summer – with or without mistress en titre Carrie – he shouldn’t be bothered by the dreaded midges, as the Queen has installed high-tech annihilators. In her younger days, leading visitors to a picnic, she raised her hand to a swarm and declared: ‘Creatures, I command thee, be gone.’ After a dramatic pause, she sighed: ‘I’m as powerless as King Canute.’
LIKE Napoleon exiled on Elba, ousted Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik awaits recall, saying: ‘It’s possible I may have to step in to fix things, but I’d only do that as a favour to the nation to save it from itself. I’m busy with other things these days.’ Er, twice weekly on BBC Radio Kent?
DAVID Burnside, BA’s former head of public affairs, now says the airline is no better than Easyjet, adding: ‘It feels like the wheels are coming off.’ The wheels certainly came off for Burnside in 1993 when he departed with four years’ free first-class travel after masterminding BA’s dirty tricks campaign against Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic.
BESTSELLING author Robert Harris motors past the ‘magnificent’ French chateau of Leave-supporting JCB chairman Lord Bamford. After describing him as a ‘Brexit-backing funder of Boris “the people” Johnson’, he adds: ‘One marvels anew at their sheer effrontery in labelling their opponents “the establishment elite.” ’
WOULDN’T painter Lucian Freud be intrigued by reports that climate change might render eels extinct in our lifetime? For Lucian, who died in 2011 aged 88, regaled friends with his psychoanalyst grandfather Sigmund’s little-known efforts in discovering the different sexes of eels. How? Lucian was unsure.
BRENDA ‘Vera’ Blethyn, pictured, was appalled at a US Four Seasons Hotel charging her $15 to launder a T-shirt. ‘The next time I needed some washing doing, I tracked down a launderette, but the only available hotel car was a stretch limo. It couldn’t get down the street. It was worth it, though – I got everything washed, fluffed and folded for $10.’
PRINCE William’s impeccable behaviour at Cowes contrasted with his visit in 2008, attending uncle Peter Phillips’ stag do. The shenanigans involved a pub crawl, a march around town and boisterous drinking games in the Anchor pub followed by a rowdy hotel party. The future king even dropped his trousers as a forfeit.
DESIGNER Nicky Haslam, paying a posthumous tribute to Min Hogg, the glamorous founder of World Of Interiors magazine, recalls her reaction to US singer Mama Cass dying in 1974 after eating a ham sandwich at midnight in Mayfair’s Shepherd Market, remarking: ‘I wish somebody would tell me where I could get a ham sandwich at midnight.’