Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Queen will meet her new prime minister at Balmoral only if her health is poor enough to warrant it, I am told. Courtiers prefer this outcome because of the negative publicity the alternative would bring. ‘A return to London in early September could mark the early end of her summer break coming just after the only fixed point in her Scottish summer, the Braemar Gathering on September 3 – the first after a pandemic hiatus.’
THE BBC has found a new way of spending our licence fee. A Miss Marianna Spring tweets: ‘Delighted I’ve been promoted from reporter and I’m now the BBC’s first Disinformation and Social Media Correspondent! I’ll keep investigating realworld consequences of online disinformation, trolling and all that’s bad on social media...’ Shouldn’t this be covered by their media correspondent?
DROLL Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar, pictured, who played quirky Irish-born copper Ted Hastings, says he’ll be singing in his forthcoming comedy TV series, Ridley. It turns out he’s a former elvis Presley impersonator. ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey!’ as his Line of Duty character is fond of exclaiming.
PORN publisher Paul Raymond mistakenly hired Olivia Newton-John – who has died aged 73 – and her singing partner, Pat Carroll, to perform at his Raymond’s Revuebar sex club, believing they were ‘singing strippers’. He paid them off with £40 after they sang without removing a stitch. A friend of ON-J says: ‘It happened during her earliest days in London after arriving from Australia. She was very young and unworldly. When Shadows guitarist Bruce Welch took her on a champagne-slurping tour of hot night spots in London, she was sick in his Rolls Royce.’
SHOULD Rishi Sunak get the keys to Downing Street, he will become the first PM to have gone to Winchester College since Henry Addington (in office 18011804). The majority of male PMs have been privately educated, 20 of them at eton. There hasn’t been a Harrow boy in no 10 since Churchill. Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May went to grammar schools. And Liz Truss may be the first comprehensive pupil to become PM.
THE permanently cash-strapped Taylor family in EastEnders are given £100 by a well-wisher for a family day out to Legoland. Good luck to them. Admission for the Taylor family of four would come to £156 (with the advance booking online discount) plus transport, food and treats. If they don’t get them online, tickets on the day will cost £248.
THE Duchess of York might be pleased by a fawning article on the website of the Conservative-leaning Spectator magazine. except she may feel its author, Sara nixon, goes too far In Defence of Fergie, writing: ‘Quite frankly, I wouldn’t care if the money for her new home [reportedly costing £5million] was raised through trafficking cocaine.’ Did any responsible person read this before it was put out?
Email: peter.mckay@dailymail.co.uk