Ephraim Hardcastle
LORD Sugar describes the Tory leadership hopefuls as the ‘Apprentice candidates for 2022’, remarking: ‘At the start of each series of The Apprentice I always warn the candidates any dodgy secrets from their past will be exposed. Similarly they should say to people applying to be Tory leader, “If you’ve got any skeletons in your cupboard, don’t even bother applying”.’ Thus far only one expected candidate – defence secretary Ben Wallace – has decided not to stand. However no one suggests that the burly ex-Scots Guards captain has anything to hide.
FORMER Grand Prix champion Sir Jackie Stewart says modern F1 star Max Verstappen is too fond of ‘diving into the first corner’ which sometimes results in crashes. The Scot adds: ‘If you had an accident like that in my day, you’d be dead. Simple as that. The cockpit of an F1 car today is a survival cell. In the 1960s and 70s, motor racing was dangerous and sex was safe. Fifty-seven of my friends died during my time racing. Fifty-seven!’
SIR Cliff Richard pays tribute to Sue Barker, ‘retiring after 30 years of exceptional commentary and interviewing for the BBC’. Bachelor boy Sir Cliff dated Miss Barker in the 1980s, pictured, claiming in a memoir: ‘I seriously contemplated asking her to marry me, but in the end, I realised that I didn’t love her quite enough to commit the rest of my life to her.’ Or (as was estimated at the time) possibly losing 10 per cent of his fans as a result.
MASTERCHEF presenter Gregg Wallace, 57, recalls in a forthcoming TV interview that he removed £20 from a customer’s wallet while working in dry cleaners in Peckham, south-east London, 30 years ago, confessing: ‘I have always felt bad about it. If he sees this, and it was about 30 years ago, I will take him out for dinner and he can have his £20 back’. He might have to make it £220. That’s probably what 1992’s £20 is worth now thanks to runaway inflation.
THE Queen is not amused, I hear, about the ‘wilding’ of parts of Buckingham Palace Gardens while she has been at Windsor. HM prefers a well-manicured lawn. As did Prince Philip, who was unimpressed when shown the Prince of Wales’s attempts at creating a ‘stumpery’ – a rockery made up of dead tree roots – at Highgrove, shouting at Charles: ‘When are you going to set fire to all this?’
AN expansion of offshore wind turbines, part of the sustainable energy plan, is good news for the Queen. Virtually all of the seabed around the UK is owned by the Crown Estate and HM receives 25 per cent of the profits. The exploitation rights and revenues of offshore wind power were formally vested in the crown in the 2004 Energy Act. No wonder then PM Tony Blair was finally Gartered last month.