Ephraim Hardcastle
PAINTER Dom Ramos recalls building an igloo with fellow pupil David Cameron during a heavy snowfall at Eton. The ex-PM told him: ‘Let’s build it as well as the Eskimos do!’ Alas, the roof kept falling in. So Cameron found a square piece of builders’ chipboard, on to which they piled snow to create a roof. In a letter to The Oldie, Ramos says he complained: ‘That wasn’t the point, David, was it? You said we would make it as the Eskimos do.’ A smiling Cameron replied, ‘No one will notice.’ Touchingly, Ramos sees Cameron’s collapsing igloo as a metaphor for Brexit – ‘a crevice from which we will have no escape’, Incidentally, fellow Etonian Boris was then known as ‘the Yeti’.
Remain-supporting George osborne tweets: ‘What’s happened to the Brexit countdown clocks in Number 10 and tory HQ? Just asking.’ isn’t public gloating beneath an ex-chancellor?
CAMPAIGNING to succeed John Bercow, Labour MP Harriet Harman, 69, pictured, is boosted by a two-page ‘Why I Want to Be Speaker’ i nterview i n the Guardian... where else? But she fails to mention: the £155,000 salary, roughly twice that of an MP; the gold-plated pension, equivalent to that of a PM; the keys to Speaker’s House, inside the palace of Westminster; generous entertainment and travel allowances; sundry overseas conferences; automatic invitations to top state events; a state carriage; not least, a private loo behind the Speaker’s chair.
Recalling his 1969 ditty, octopus’s Garden, 79-year-old sir Ringo starr explains how he got the idea from a sea captain. ‘He was telling me that octopuses go around the ocean finding shiny stones and things to put around their cave entrance. so it’s like their garden. At the time – thanks to [the effects of] marijuana – it seemed like the best idea i’d ever heard!’
IAN Blackford, portly SNP leader in the Commons, deplores Boris Johnson’s proposal of a ‘middle of the winter’ December 12 General Election. Yet between 1900 and 1974, ten general elections were held between November and February. And the highest turnout ever recorded – 83.9% – was in February 1950. Voting expert Sir John Curtice says: ‘If our great-grandparents were able to turn out without the benefit of cars, central heating or reliable street lighting you might imagine the British public would be able to manage it with today’s modern conveniences.’
Researchers on BBc Radio 4’s the Now show mischievously filled in the online enquiry form issued by the Government’s £100million Get Ready for Brexit campaign. claiming to be a delivery company based outside the eU planning a short business trip to the UK in late December involving a team of live animals, (sound familiar?) they were told to take out travel insurance and health cover before travelling to the UK. the Now show’s Hugh Dennis says: ‘sensible advice given all those slippery roofs.’