Ephraim Hardcastle
SUNDAY’S 163rd University Boat Race won’t be adorned by a royal presence, although William and Kate are keen rowers who, in 2011, competed against each other in a dragon boat race in Canada – with his boat beating hers. As for June’s Henley Royal Regatta, it hasn’t seen a royal for years. Why does boating get the royal cold shoulder? Because its seen as a snooty sport? However, for the first time in living memory, Henley hopes to have a prime minister in the Stewards’ Enclosure this year – Theresa May, MP for neighbouring Maidenhead. Unless advisers persuade her that it’s bad for her woman-of-the-people image.
HIP Yann Barthes, the host of French TV show Quotidien, provides a quixotic post-Brexit list of what Europe owes Britain. He starts with the bill for the Second World War, followed by Shakespeare, The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Audrey Hepburn, Cheddar cheese and the pub. But then he gets silly, adding Kate Moss, Ken Loach, and, oh dear, the Beckhams, too.
DARING chef Heston Blumenthal, 50, says his £20 Eggstraordinary Dippy Easter Egg, a dark chocolate shell coated in a layer of white chocolate and filled with blue chocolate eggs and a pile of edible soil to dip them into – on sale in shops – is a new opportunity to ‘play with our food’. Which planet is Heston from – and haven’t we had enough of the baldie’s epicurean obsessions?
A HOLLYWOOD star for more half a century, Ann-Margret, 75 – an ex-girlfriend of Elvis Presley, with whom she starred in Viva Las Vegas in 1964, pictured – plays a supermarket checkout worker in her latest film, Going In Style. Has she ever visited a supermarket? Only once, she admits. ‘I had to ask the lady next to me, “Which one is spinach?”.’
BAYWATCH star David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff, 64, invites fans to join him on a five-day Mediterranean cruise in November, with fares starting at £680. He vows to perform for the trapped-at-sea cruisers ‘an intimate evening of songs from Broadway to the West End’. I trust there are sufficient lifeboats.
LADY Antonia Fraser, 84, biographer of Mary Queen of Scots, says marmalade was invented by a chef at a French palace where the queen-to-be grew up. She explains in The Times Literary Supplement that while preparing a remedy, he muttered, ‘Marie est malade…’ – Marie is unwell. I suspect a French plot – aided by Lady Antonia – to appropriate marmalade, although we make the best ones.
FORMER Oxbridge professor Norman Stone, 76, discussing, in a review, Christopher de Bellaigue’s new book, The Islamic Enlightenment, says: ‘The most notable Islamic contribution to civilization is the airline security queue.’ Let’s hope forthright, Scots-born Norman has cleared this sentiment with his employers, Bilkent University in increasingly Islamic Turkey.