Ephraim Hardcastle
THE mystery of why Defence Secretary Ben Wallace isn’t running in the Tory leadership race, having topped a Conservative Home popularity poll, remains a talking point in the party. Like fellow Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng, Wallace is a long-standing admirer of much-fancied Liz Truss.
GARY Lineker, once again the Beeb’s most highly remunerated star on a £1.35million salary, sought public sympathy last month by claiming he was the victim of racist jibes over his ‘darkish skin’. A reader who went to school with him in Leicestershire during the 1970s says he was teased ‘but it had nothing to do with his skin colour. Just the size of his ears’.
BORIS Johnson’s ex-mistress Petronella Wyatt observes: ‘Rishi Sunak went on [leadership] manoeuvres a tad sooner than was seemly. You don’t try on the becoming black veil before your husband is dead.’
CELEBRATING her 30th wedding anniversary with Conrad Black, Barbara Amiel, pictured with him, tells Rachel Johnson’s podcast that marrying then media tycoon
Lord Black of Crossharbour, ‘while it was a great love match, was the worst thing I could have done for my career. I went from being a columnist to being a “socialite”. Nothing is worse in life.’
AS a socialite, Lady Black had to ring Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore saying one of her dinner parties was ‘short of a woman’. He obligingly sent one of his journalists, Eleanor Mills. An hour later – hastily groomed and made up – Mills was sipping a pre-dinner drink in Black’s Cottesmore Gardens mansion when, after a male guest had bowed out, she was told by Conrad: ‘Finish your drink and skedaddle.’
TOM Bower’s forthcoming book Revenge, about Meghan Markle’s war with the Windsors, comes out on July 23. A previous Bower tome about pop impresario Simon Cowell was titled Sweet Revenge. Modern publishers are so imaginative, aren’t they?
STONED age disc jockey David ‘Diddy’
Hamilton recalls in Record Collector compering a long ago show by the Rolling Stones: ‘I parked my car at the back of the venue. Someone thought it was Mick Jagger’s and scratched a love note on it. For a week I was driving round with “I love you Mick” on the bonnet.’
LABOUR MP Tulip Siddiq says: ‘I slipped into one of the small rooms in Parliament during votes to make a phone call and jumped when I noticed a Tory veteran in the corner hiding behind a chair. Like actually hiding. He said, “I’ve had 11 phone calls – 11! And I’m not endorsing any of them…”’
computer terminals with phone headsets, taking bids over the internet.
My heart sank. This could only mean that dino-devotees in Silicon Valley were dialling in, ready to transfer tens of thousands of pounds with the push of a button.
There were more than 50 lots to be sold before the Psittacosaurus came up, and my confidence ebbed with every one. a few other fossils were in the sale and I decided, in order to ensure that the afternoon was not a complete washout, to bid on one or two.
I was pleased to acquire the jawbone of a Mosasaur, if only because that is the giant marine reptile that leaps out of a pool in the 2015 movie Jurassic World and gobbles up a flying Pteranodon . . . and an unlucky theme park employee called Zara.
Another hundred quid secured me a fossil that was simply labelled ‘dinosaur bone’.
These were prizes but they weren’t what I had come for.
One of the reasons I was so keen to buy the Psittacosaurus was its impeccable provenance. a disturbing trade has grown up in fossils, gouged out of the ground by unlicensed diggers who make no effort to preserve the site and cause immense damage to places of great scientific value.
THIS is akin to the illegal sale of antiquities from historic sites. I despise these destructive traders, who are no better than thieves.
My sights were set on an item that had been owned by at least two museums and so I was confident that it had been acquired in a responsible manner.
after an agony of waiting, lot 698 came up. It was described as ‘a Psittacosaurus skeleton, lower cretaceous period, 119 million to 97.5 million years BP’ — that is, Before the Present.
The description read: ‘a birdlike skull and beak mouth, mounted on a naturalistic desert sand setting, in a glazed hardwood case 85cm long.’
The catalogue added it was ‘notable for its bird-like appearance. Despite its small stature and lack of horns, it was part of the ceratopsia group which included iconic dinosaurs such as Triceratops’.
My daughters, who have never shared my delight in dinosaurs, have fallen in love with Polly — though, of course, what really pleased them was the spectacle of me on ccTV, unable to control my excitement.
There is now a family standoff over where Polly will be displayed. The girls want her on the wall in the kitchen where everyone can admire her.
But I think she’ll have to go in my study, where I can gaze at her as I work...and where no one can see me as I do my dinosaur victory dance every day.