Ephraim Hardcastle
The Prince of Wales didn’t receive the visiting Dalai Lama, who turned 80 this week. Tibet’s living god was seen capering at Glastonbury but he wasn’t invited to his usual tete-a-tete with Charles. Why so? Because China’s President Xi Jinping, who can’t abide the Dalai Lama, is due here for a state visit in october. he could have cancelled if Charles, who boycotted two previous Chinese visits, cosied up again to the Dalai Lama, regarded as a dangerous separatist by Beijng. Charles’s leaked diary entry about the 1997 hong Kong handover ceremonies called the Chinese leadership ‘appalling old waxworks’.
URGING Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant to calm down during Prime Minister’s Questions, Speaker John Bercow told him: ‘Mr Bryant, you are an esteemed member of Her Majesty’s Opposition!’ Bryant’s victim, David Cameron, riposted: ‘Well, he may be esteemed by you, Mr Speaker, but some of us take a different view.’ Two birds with one stone!
ASKED by a Las Vegas waitress for his autograph, George Clooney ‘signed the entire table cloth’, she says. Keen Democrat Clooney would like to follow fellow actor Ronald Reagan into the White house. he might have felt that marrying gorgeous international civil rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, pictured, would help turn him into un homme serieux. She’s gone from obscurity to paparazzi-pursued international celebrity but George’s political choo-choo hasn’t left the station.
US presidential contender and ‘combover’ king Donald Trump calls illegal Mexican immigrants ‘killers’ and ‘rapists’, forfeiting the support of giant New York department store chain Macy’s. TV wit Conan O’Brien says they’ll no longer carry The Donald’s menswear collection, adding: ‘Men who want to look like Donald Trump will have to hunt and kill their own hairpiece.’
JOHN Inverdale’s sidelining by the BBC for saying French tennis star Marion Bartoli was ‘never going to be a looker’ while Clare Balding is forgiven her insulting Grand National jockey Liam Treadwell over his bad teeth suggests gender-based discrimination in punishing misbehaviour. Might there also be race discrimination, too? hardeep Singh Kohli was suspended for six months from his ‘roving reporter’ role on the one Show after allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards a female colleague. he now hosts a Radio 2 Sunday religious programme, Good Morning Sunday.
NEXT week the Commons will debate hunting for the first time since it was banned by Labour. And the RSPCA has decided not to bring cases against foxhunters. Will the Duchess of Cornwall, 68 on July 17, saddle up again? ‘Should foxes once again be in peril you can expect Camilla to be first back in the saddle,’ I am advised by a source. But her approval ratings have risen. She hopes to be accepted as Queen one day. Will she risk that by antagonising an admittedly small minority of fox supporters?