Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Queen’s legal prevention of grant Harrold, a former factotum of Prince Charles, trademarking the title royal Butler might prompt Meghan Markle to consult lawyers. New York socialite Myka Meier has been cashing in on the Meghan factor, running an etiquette course entitled the Duchess effect. Over five hours she teaches aspiring Meghans how to behave like the Duchess of Sussex, the do’s and don’ts of a royal catch and how to adopt ‘princess poise’. Alas, Myka fails to provide any helpful hints on the judicious use of toilet Duck in a house with 16 bathrooms.
APROPOS exploiting royal connections, former Buckingham Palace press officer Dickie Arbiter is clearly proud of his LVO (Member of the Royal Victorian Order, fourth class) but, fingers crossed, HM hasn’t noticed that his Twitter handle is Royal Dickie.
BARBARA Amiel, relentlessly pursued by lord (george) Weidenfeld, denied him full sexual congress. Very wise, according to ex-Private eye editor richard ingrams, who recalls that libidinous george’s Pe nickname lord Popeye came from extatler editor Mark Boxer’s revelation that the late publisher’s eyes actually popped out during sexual intercourse. ‘they had to be reinserted with a silver spoon,’ Boxer added helpfully.
JANE Fonda, 82, pictured, musing on mortality, declares: ‘I am at the end of my life.’ What would Tom Hayden, the second of her three husbands, have made of her gloomy pronouncement? When they divorced in 1990, a stipulation in the settlement was that he would not speak at her funeral.
WHILE Martin Amis expresses much fondness for Philip larkin in his 2000 autobiography experience, it contains not a shred of evidence that larkin is his real dad, as mischievously hinted at in his forthcoming novel inside Story. Amis quotes the bachelor larkin declaring: ‘Children are very horrible, aren’t they? Selfish noisy cruel little brutes.’ Could he be describing little Martin?
WYNFORD Hicks, author of English for Journalists, expresses surprise at the claim by Boris Johnson’s mother Charlotte that, as a CND-supporting student in 1961, she was engaged to marry him. ‘There was no promise, no ring, no announcement, no engagement party, certainly no proposed wedding date,’ he tells the London Review of Books. Maybe Wynford is simply peeved that Charlotte remembers him as ‘actually quite boring’.
WHEN tim Henman was disqualified from the Wimbledon doubles in 1995 after inadvertently hitting a ball girl, he gave her a bouquet of flowers and a kiss on the cheek. Surely tiger tim could give Novak Djokovic, dumped from the US Open for accidentally striking a lineswoman, a Zoom tutorial in the art of apology?
COMMONS Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle says his pet parrot never stops talking, adding: ‘He repeats himself a lot and his feathers are all over and he could do with a good brush.’ And his name? Boris!