Ephraim Hardcastle
GeRMAINe Greer will flick in vain through the pages of former lover Martin Amis’s autobiographical novel Inside Story for an account of her 1976 affair with him. with the biological clock ticking and only one ovary, Germaine, then 37, was desperate to become a mother, saying: ‘Trying to get pregnant is like playing billiards in the Sahara with the pockets in the ocean.’ She never did manage it, alas. Amis has little to say about the sexual adventure, merely describing Greer in his disappointing tome as ‘unwaveringly kind and gentle’.
THE replacement of the word ‘Empire’ in British honours is unlikely to occur in the Queen’s lifetime. Royal courtiers point to an off-the-record briefing during her Diamond Jubilee year in 2012, when it was explained that the Order of the British Empire was founded by her grandfather George V in 1917 – and as medals still feature the images of her beloved grandparents, HM wants any change to be held over until the reign of King Charles.
BeAN-spiller Sasha Swire spies husband Hugo ‘laughing uproariously’ with the PM at a party. Affairs of state? No, a schoolboy chat about ‘male members’ – notably that of Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts. ‘Hugo,’ she writes, ‘knows someone who, having seen it unfurl, was still in recovery.’ Not exactly Churchillian stuff – though the wartime PM was not averse to trouser humour. when informed one day that his flies were undone, he replied: ‘A dead bird does not leave the nest.’
AMAL Clooney’s departure as the UK’s press freedom envoy is not universally mourned. Some Whitehall mandarin eyebrows were elevated at starstruck then Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s selection of the lawyer who had represented Julian Assange and fought to have the Elgin Marbles repatriated to Greece. Amal, pictured, is unlikely to follow in the footsteps of former celebrity FCO nuncio Angelina Jolie. She was made a Dame of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George.
IS MADONNA’S mission to find a doppelganger to portray her in the forthcoming biopic over? Dawn French tweets: ‘waiting by phone ... surely I am no1 choice for lead..? we are practically identical. Come on, don’t tease me with all your silent withholding...’ Dawn is clearly having a giraffe.
RESPONDING to recent speculation that Lord ‘Charles’ Moore could be the BBC’s next chairman, Andrew Neil tweets: ‘BBC executives were choking on their muesli when it was reported that I was in the running. I have no interest in the job.’ Adding: ‘[With] Charles Moore favourite for the post, I expect the BBC to be begging me to take it.’
THe travel section of the gov.uk site may be confusing for tourists. Not so for ferrets. They must have pet passports, it advises, and ‘be microchipped, vaccinated against rabies and may need a blood test before flying in to the UK’. No smuggling down your trousers, then?