Ephraim Hardcastle
THE omission of Diana, Princess of Wales from Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour Power List is surprising. What might be the reason? The BBC’s deputy director of radio and royal liaison officer Graham Ellis arranged for it to be launched (as part of Woman’s Hour’s 70th anniversary celebration) at Buckingham Palace by the Duchess of Cornwall. Camilla, notoriously, was referred to by Diana when the latter said in an interview: ‘There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.’
ROYAL grocer Fortnum & Mason’s seasonal Six Person Crackers – a trifling £65 each – feature jokes by TV polymath Stephen Fry. Thigh-slapping example: ‘How do monkeys make toast? They put it under a g’rilla.’ They’re no laughing matter!
ALAN Yentob, 69, who resigned as the BBC’s creative director over his involvement (as chairman) with the failed Kids Company charity, embedded himself in the corporation’s management by turning up uninvited at top-level meetings, says former BBC Trust chairman Chris Patten in The Guardian. A Yentob colleague, Guardianista Dame Liz Forgan, says he’s ‘ludicrously vain, lives ridiculously, is unbelievably snobbish and lives a life which is completely inappropriate and silly’. She tempers this verdict by adding: ‘You ask yourself, does he deliver value sufficiently to justify all those nonsenses? And yes he does, you know, by miles.’ A demolition job posing as a tribute.
LABOUR MP Peter Dowd, 59, asked the PM yesterday: ‘In light of the Foreign Secretary’s display of chronic foot- inmouth disease, when deciding on Cabinet positions, does the Prime Minister now regret that pencilling in “FO” against his name could have been an instruction, not a job offer?’ Home Secretary Amber Rudd, pictured, struggled to conceal her mirth from Commons TV cameras. She has said of Boris Johnson: ‘He’s not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.’
SACKED by Theresa May, ex-Chancellor George Osborne, 45, tells the Commons he feels personal responsibility for the slaughter in Aleppo – ‘as someone who sat on the National Security Council throughout those years’. Is he acting humble to ingratiate himself with the party’s membership? Unlike David Cameron, George hasn’t resigned his seat. Nor is he composing memoirs. He says: ‘I’d rather not… we don’t know how the story ends.’ In No 10 preferably, he might have added.
LABOUR’S Jeremy Corbyn did better than usual in his final Prime Minister’s Questions duel, tackling Theresa May fiercely on the scandal surrounding social care for the elderly. He earned the admiration of hard-to-impress BBC political presenter Andrew Neil, who said he had performed strongly ‘by narrowing questions down into one specific area, going for it again and again’. Perhaps it’s a coincidence but quick-witted former public relations man David Prescott – son of Labour ex-deputy premier John Prescott – has now joined Corbyn’s staff as a political adviser and speech writer.