Ephraim Hardcastle
JOHN Bercow may have endorsed John Major’s legal challenge to prorogation but the Squeaker is none too keen on the former prime minister’s QC, Lord Edward Garnier. In 2013, Garnier took on Sally Bercow on behalf of Lord McAlpine after she incorrectly implicated the Tory peer in a child abuse scandal. The case delivered a nasty blow to the Bercow finances with Sally paying substantial costs and an undisclosed amount to charity.
WHEN Brooke Shields declared in 1985 that she wanted to remain a virgin until marriage, Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell told underlings that should the paper want its own version of the story it should look no further than his 24-year-old daughter Ghislaine. Now 57, Ghislaine remains unmarried.
TO the surprise of some, Theresa May accepted Boris’s invitation to drinks on Monday evening, her first visit to Downing Street since her departure six weeks ago. A euro for her thoughts as she peered at her former abode.
REMAINER Gary Lineker jokes about Boris Johnson’s new dog Dilyn: ‘Thought the least the Prime Minister could have done was allow us to vote on the puppy’s name.’ Piers Morgan tweets back: ‘Why? You’d only demand another vote if you didn’t get the name you wanted.’
CARA Delevingne, pictured, says she made a secret visit to Dublin to perfect her accent to play an Irish fairy opposite Orlando Bloom in TV series Carnival Row. ‘The Irish accent is just so beautiful and lyrical,’ says Cara, celebrating Amazon’s commissioning of a second series. ‘I walked around and spoke to people in this accent and everyone was like “Oh, you’re from Dublin?” ’ And she didn’t, deo gratias, mention the backstop.
TIM Bell wrongly took the credit for creating the Labour Isn’t Working election poster, according to former Saatchi & Saatchi copywriter Andrew Rutherford, who said: ‘I have never quite forgiven him for basking for 41 years in the glory of having “dreamt up” the poster, which not only did he not do but was distinctly lukewarm about when I showed him the idea.’
BRIAN Blessed takes exception to his one-man stage show being advertised with a public warning attached which discourages ‘people of a nervous disposition’. ‘Publicity nonsense,’ he bellows. ‘I’m not going to make anyone nervous. I’m going to make them happy!’
LORD Young, the first to resign from Boris’s government, can’t list media savviness among his talents. On quitting, he called a journalist friend who discloses: ‘He said that since [former PA political editor] Chris Moncrieff had retired he didn’t know who to tell. I called the BBC.’