Ephraim Hardcastle
WHEN David Cameron declined to fund the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations, HM’s eldest grandchild, promotions expert Peter Phillips, 38, spied an opportunity – a June 12 public picnic in the Mall, with tickets costing £150. Now an unnamed benefactor has bought £100,000-worth of the tickets to distribute free and save royal blushes. Some of the Queen’s favourite charities – to which the majority of tickets had been allocated – indicated that some of their members couldn’t afford them. My royal source says: ‘Why £150? Big-name sponsors are covering almost all of the running costs. The BBC fees should cover some gaps and the security is funded by the taxpayer. A breakdown of finances might be interesting. And aren’t we entitled to know how much Peter Phillips’s company is getting?’ SHARING a pro-EU platform with Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, David Cameron announces: ‘He’s the son of a bus driver. I’m the son of a stockbroker, which isn’t quite so romantic!’ But it is a trifle patronising, isn’t it? TV sexpot Carol Vorderman, 55, dislikes Chris Evans’s new Top Gear show on BBC2, remarking on social media: ‘Sorry, switching off.’ Ms Vorderman spotted Jeremy Clarkson, 56, meeting a BBC executive in an Mayfair hotel last year after the latter was sacked by the Corporation. Clarkson told her afterwards: ‘They have just offered me my job back and I said no.’ THE Pope is the latest, globally-recognised figure to be pictured with actor George Clooney’s photogenic (and previously unknown) wife, Amal, 38. His Holiness is pictured gazing admiringly at her while shaking Clooney’s hand. Since marrying Clooney, the likes of Prince Charles, Hillary Clinton and David Cameron, along with Hollywood stars Julia Roberts and Jodie Foster, have queued to bathe in her limelight. Doesn’t our nonagenarian monarch deserve an Amal photo opportunity soon? THE PM’s latest gimmicky ‘enterprise tsar,’ pug-like Lord Sugar, 69 – who did the same non-job for Gordon Brown – exchanges insults with his regular sparring partner, broadcaster Piers Morgan, 51. Sugar had Tweeted: ‘I have to say Donald Trump put on a really good fight. Quite amazing. There’s a chance he is going to be the President.’ To which Trump pal, Piers, responds in his customarily civil fashion: ‘You snivelling little worm, Sugar, trying to jump on the Trump Train after abusing him for 10 months.’ Sugar: ‘It’s stating facts, you t****r.’ I suggest a Sugar/Morgan TV insulta-thon. After the kiddies’ 9pm watershed. THE Official Sherlock Convention at ExCel in London, in September, promises ‘exclusive talks, original props and sets on display, autographs, professional photo shoots, themed parties, episode screenings, Q&A and behind-the-scenes insights.’ Taking part, we’re told, will be ‘Sherlock’s parents’ – actors Timothy Carlton, 79, and Wanda Ventham, 80. They’re also the father and mother of Benedict Cumberbatch, 39, in real life and have played his fictional parents in Sherlock. A luvvie first?