Ephraim Hardcastle
SIR Keir Starmer, renewing his PMQs clash with Boris today, ignores the knighthood he got on stepping down as DPP in 2013. Mysteriously Hansard doesn’t use his title while Lib Dem temporary leader Ed Davey is always referred to as ‘Sir’. If Keir isn’t that bothered he could hand his gong back. He won’t require a change in the law like fellow Leftie Anthony Wedgwood Benn did when renouncing his peerage in 1963 to remain a commoner.
IN Much Too Shy George Formby plays a poster painter in trouble when nude female bodies are added to his soap advert pictures of women. An extra in the 1942 film went on to become the world’s most famous painter of naked women; Lucian Freud. Aged 20 he had a bit part as an art student alongside Charles ‘Carry On’ Hawtrey. And what did Lucian, who died aged 88 in 2011 think of the experience? ‘I didn’t like it much. Actors are so bitchy.’
INSATIABLE selfpublicist Lucy Worsley, pictured, notes that Harry and Meghan’s second wedding celebration falls on the anniversary of the execution of Anne Boleyn, adding: ‘I’m looking inappropriately happy here to be Anne, but I was very pleased with my Extra Finger.’ The myth of Boleyn having an extra digit was debunked in the 19th century when her remains were exhumed and no additional finger was found. Back of the class Miss Worsley!
VETERAN religious affairs writer Ruth Gledhill has abandoned the Church of England for Rome. Her conversion follows her appointment as digital editor of the uber-Catholic publication The Tablet. Has she a holy eye on the editorship? While tomorrow is celebrated in RC circles as the Feast of the Ascension current editor Brendan Walsh has no intention of rising from his seat.
BBC’s Scotland editor Sarah Smith retracts her claim that Nicola Sturgeon ‘enjoyed’ setting her own lockdown rules, tweeting: ‘I never meant to suggest she is enjoying this crisis.’ Sturgeon accepts Smith’s clarification. Odds on she enjoyed it.
RICHARD Branson’s sister Vanessa shares a curious recollection of being asked to pose for Virgin Records’ first logo and the photographer saying: ‘You can take your clothes off and come out.’ She explains: ‘I wasn’t going to undress but he just said Richard told me you would. I ran for the door.’ All fine and dandy. She adds: ‘I must have been 12 or 13 at the time.’
POST her ‘Boris Die’ remarks Miriam Margolyes takes a blunderbuss to her other foot by appearing on TV in Queensland and declaring: ‘There is a brutality and a greed in Australia, which I don’t like.’ Calling her the ‘ultimate whingeing Pom’ is one of the more polite descriptions of foot-in-mouth Miriam.