Hardcastle Ephraim
EMBARRASSMENT at Buckingham Palace after Chinese ambassador Liu Xiaoming not only breaches convention by publicising Prince Andrew’s Chinese New Year dinner visit to his embassy but also releases the text of the Queen’s private message expressing sympathy over the coronavirus outbreak. This was private and meant to be just that. HM’s private 2016 election congratulations to Trump remain under wraps. Even he gets it.
BORIS, in a pickle after sacking Claire O’Neill and failing to persuade David Cameron or William Hague to take the helm at Glasgow’s climate change conference in November, could ask Prince Charles. Having helped to establish Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the Rainforests Project and Accounting for Sustainability, isn’t he the ideal candidate? And he’s mates with David Attenborough.
JACOB Rees-Mogg’s childhood talent with money was admired by diarist Kenneth Rose, who noted that aged 11 he had three bank accounts, adding: ‘When he went to open his fourth, at Lloyds, the manager patronisingly asked him why he had chosen that particular bank. Jakie replied: “Because I like your picture of a horse – and you give half a per cent more interest than the others.”’ Will it be enough to save him in Boris’s reshuffle?
OFFERING a thumbs up to the portrayal by actress Erin Doherty, pictured, of Princess Anne in The Crown, the Queen’s former chef Darren McGrady enthuses: ‘Princess Anne was the only royal that scared the bejeebers out of me every time she came to the kitchens.’
BOOKER Prize winner John Banville insists his account of the Queen and Princess Margaret sheltering from the Blitz in County Tipperary in 1940 is based on fact, saying: ‘I believe it. But I can’t prove it.’ Isn’t John, using his pen name BW Black, having a giraffe?
STEVE Coogan’s film parody of Philip Green, Greed, cost a mere £5million to make – £1.5million less than the rag trade mogul lavished on his 60th birthday party in Mexico featuring Stevie Wonder and Robbie Williams. Says Coogan: ‘We had James Blunt and Stephen Fry who probably did it for expenses plus a sandwich.’
WAS high-profile BBC news anchor Simon McCoy, these days encouraged to revel in a supposedly ‘cheeky chappy’ persona on the airwaves, wise to joke about Storm Ciara? Prior to news that a 58-year-old driver had been killed by a falling tree in Hampshire, McCoy jokily tweeted in the early hours: ‘This Storm Ciara thing. It’s not a wind up.’ Oh dear...
BROADCASTER Mark Lawson tips BBC director of content Charlotte Moore as Tony Hall’s successor as director general, telling Radio Times that alternate candidate James Purnell is doomed as a former Labour minister. He adds: ‘It would create a political firestorm almost guaranteeing the corporation’s destruction.’ Point me towards Labdrokes betting emporium.