Ephraim Hardcastle
THE annual Buckingham Palace staff party, the highlight of the year for those below stairs, has fallen victim to the pandemic. In previous years the festive shindig for 500 staff featured a specially laid dance floor at the foot of the grand staircase, a band, a bar and upmarket party food. For the frugal monarch it might come as a blessing. She pays the estimated £50,000 cost herself. In 2010 chancellor George osborne’s age of austerity prompted HM to cancel the hooley because of the ‘difficult financial circumstances’ nationally. A week later Royal penny-pinching was undermined when osborne announced the Sovereign Grant, raising HM’s pay from £7million to £31million.
WILL any Royal be encouraged to roll up their sleeve and submit to a public i njection of the Covid vaccine to encourage mass inoculation? Clearly the Queen would be above such stunts. William, 38, who was wheeled out to praise the brilliance of Oxford scientists, is too young to qualify for an early jab. Princess Michael, 75, currently in self-isolation at Kensington Palace suffering from Covid, is in the priority age bracket. Might Charles, 72 who has recovered from the virus, step forward and be pricked for the cameras?
The signing of a deal with Atlantic Books by Lord Barwell, Theresa May’s former chief of staff, to write about his downing Street tenure underlines the paucity of interest in a memoir from Boris’s predecessor. It’s not all bad news. Unlike david Cameron, Theresa won’t have to spend £25,000 on a shepherd’s hut to scribble her painful Brexit narrative.
SIR John Paul Getty’s widow Victoria will be delighted that lockdown easing prompts the National Gallery to reopen it’s Artemisia Gentileschi exhibition of 30 paintings by the brilliant 17th century Italian feminist. Lady Getty has a personal interest. She helped fund the £3.6million acquisition of Self Portrait as Saint Catherine of Alexandria, pictured. While Covid prevented thousands from viewing the sold-out NG blockbuster, women prisoners at Surrey’s Send jail had an exclusive preview – the first time that a painting from a UK national collection was presented in a prison.
FORMER Harrods PR man Michael Cole recalls fending off critics convinced that the now-crumbling Hammersmith Bridge was re-painted in the 90s from black and cream to the store’s green and gold colours as a marketing ploy. ‘I established that the original colours when the bridge was opened by the Prince of wales (later King edward VII) were green and gold,’ says Michael.
CHEERED by Boris’s reassurance to an eight-year-old that Santa will be on duty as normal, Jacob Rees-Mogg – himself a father of six – enthuses: ‘My troop are certainly relieved that Father Christmas will be able to use a travel corridor.’ Stockings at the ready, Nanny!