Ephraim Hardcastle

JUSTIN Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, has taken in a refugee family after he found that he had a ‘spare cottage’ at Lambeth Palace. The palace has dozens of rooms as well as the outbuildings and Welby also has a substantial property, the Old Palace, in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral that goes with his job, but it seems he’s not so keen on sharing any of his bathrooms with the disadvantaged. To be fair, he has done more than his colleague at York, John Sentamu, who hasn’t yet found a space in the stately Bishopthorpe Palace for a refugee. And the Royal Family remain very quiet on the subject. AS initiation ceremonies go, David Cameron’s alleged encounter with an expired pig at least involved no physical danger. Getting into the Twinkies, an elite drinking club of Buckingham Palace staff, was far riskier. It involved picking up a corgi and kissing it on the nose – something the notoriously unpredictable creatures weren’t keen on. At least one foolhardy footman suffered a nasty nip in retaliation. Alas, the Twinkies, whose highlight was an annual midnight binge in the Buck House swimming pool, is now defunct. HOPES that American sweetheart Doris Day, 91, pictured in her prime, has been coaxed out of retirement to star in a new Clint Eastwood movie have been dismissed by her manager, who insists she ‘has no intention of going back into films’. It would have marked quite a comeback for the old girl – her last big-screen appearance was back in 1968 in a film called, bizarrely, With Six You Get Eggroll. GEORGE Osborne’s much-publicised trip to China this week is a far cry from a previous visit he made to the country in the autumn of 2013. Last time around, the Chancellor had to endure being overshadowed by the show-off antics of his old rival Boris Johnson, who accompanied him. Responding to news of tensions between the two men, Boris unconvincingly claimed at the time: ‘There’s probably some Chinese phrase for a pair of harmonious swans or doves … that’s what the Chancellor and I have been.’ News that George has been described as ‘prime ministerial’ in the Far East no doubt sticks in Boris’s craw. IS University Challenge dumbing down? This week it had a round dedicated to the children’s book series, Horrible Histories. Shown cartoon covers, the teams had to identify the titles of books. Worryingly, Southampton University scored a full 25 points identifying Slimy Stuarts, Vicious Vikings, Cut-Throat Celts and Angry Aztecs. But they lost to St Catharine’s College, Cambridge – coincidentally the alma mater of host Jeremy Paxman. AFTER watching an ITV tribute to the late news anchor Sir Alastair Burnet this week, friend and fellow broadcaster Andrew Neil tweets: ‘Confess it brought a tear to my eye.’ Neil fondly recalls being present for one particularly chaotic night of live general election coverage when Burnet, who died in 2012, was at the helm. ‘Things had gone so wrong, but no one who watched the screen would know, because of Alastair,’ he recounted. ‘At 4am, when the programme ended, the whole of that hard-bitten crew in the studio gave him a round of applause.’ No one mentioned the empty bottle of Alastair’s favourite tipple, Bell’s, rolling about the studio floor.

E-mail: ephraim.hardcastle@dailymail.co.uk