Ephraim Hardcastle
to absent himself from next monday’s Commonwealth service at Westminster Abbey, is Prince Andrew set to stage a Royal comeback at June’s Trooping the Colour? Allowed to retain his military rank when his mother ordered him to step back from Royal duties as Colonel of the grenadier guards, he remains one of the obligatory five royals in the seven Household Division regiments. military head-scratching continues, but worth a punt with Ladbrokes that beleaguered Andrew will be on parade.
MEGHAN Markle’s estranged half-sister Samantha resumes her tedious assault on Harry and Meghan, accusing them on Australian radio of choosing profits over charity. ‘If they want to go around to make money, that’s fine. Everyone has the right to do that,’ she says, adding: ‘But it’s sort of like you don’t leave bodies in your wake.’ So it’s okay for her to comment for cash? ‘I have a right to speak about my life, my father has a right to speak about his,’ she insists with a straight face. mAX Hastings claims that during his BBC foreign-reporting career in the Sixties he was ‘naively shocked’ when the film department, as he describes it, ‘indulged several notorious sexual adventurers both heterosexual and homosexual to undertake assignments in the Far East because of the opportunities these afforded them to do stuff that in Britain constituted criminal offences’. Has max put the fear of god in some guilty BBC pensioners?
MICHAEL Bloomberg’s bid for the Democratic nomination failed despite a deathbed endorsement from his pal Kirk Douglas, pictured. The actor’s son Michael explains: ‘One of the last words that he said in the hospital... he asked me to lean over closely and he looked at me and said, “Mike can get it done”.’ Not even Spartacus could save the billionaire New York ex-mayor.
CELEBRATING Health Secretary matt Hancock’s appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today – the first Cabinet minister to break the government boycott of the programme – nick Robinson admits listeners had wearied of unproductive stand-offs, adding: ‘There is a need, indeed a yearning, for light as well as heat.’ Do as I say, not as I do (matthew, verses 1-3).
ANTHONY Seldon’s account of Theresa May’s unfortunate premiership reveals that her 2016 quip about retching when David Cameron’s communications chief Sir Craig Oliver was gonged was for her ears only. ‘It wasn’t meant to be read out,’ says Seldon. ‘It was written in her speech as a joke for her.’ Jokes and Theresa remain as distant as chalk and cheese.
WILLIAM and Kate’s Irish visit to a County meath bovine research centre on Wednesday was prefaced by frantic efforts to uncouple a pair of frisky cattle who engaged in romance just before the Royals arrived. ‘A bag of feed and stern words managed to dampen ardour just before they arrived,’ says my man with the Royal cattle prod.