Ephraim Hardcastle
ENGLAND’S captain Harry Kane, 24, might have played for Ireland if their manager, Martin O’Neill, had acted on a tip from one of the Spurs star’s relatives that he was interested. With a paternal grandfather from Connemara, Harry was qualified to wear the emerald shirt. But his father Patrick said Irish football authorities never approached his son... Their loss was England’s gain.
FORMER White House aide Ben Rhodes, 40, who revealed David Cameron persuaded Barack Obama to say the UK would be at the end of the queue for a trade deal, confesses to being guilty of lese majeste – ie, an offence against the dignity of a reigning sovereign, pictured. In Normandy for the 70th anniversary of D Day, looking for a lavatory, he found one with the door closed, recalling: ‘I’m really shaking this door hard. The door opens and the Queen of England walks out. She looks at me as if to say, “Are you the man who was just shaking the door while I was in the bathroom?”’
RETIRED 50-year-old tennis star Boris Becker’s earnings are reportedly going straight to administrators to reduce his alleged £54million debts... does this include his BBC Wimbledon commentary fees? ‘We’re declining to comment on this as it’s a personal matter for Boris,’ a Corporation spokesman advises. Might it also be of interest to licence fee-payers?
APROPOS the England team, if it reaches the World Cup final, the Government’s hauteur over the competition – refusing to send a minister, or a royal, as a protest against Russia’s autocratic President Putin – could become insupportable. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and FA president Prince William could have to rock up with sheepish smiles.
VOICE-of-the-people journalist Kevin Maguire rashly predicted on Twitter, during the England-Colombia match, that the Three Lions would lose, saying: ‘That sound is Germany laughing at English fans who laughed at Germany going out. They do have a word for schadenfreude.’ BBC This Week host Andrew Neil gently points out that the German word for schadenfreude is.... schadenfreude. If waspish Neil were transgender, might he be offered Question Time?
TORY MP Jacob Rees-Mogg observes that, as a Roman Catholic male, he’s technically eligible to be elected Pope. Yet his 2007 marriage to heiress Helena de Chair, mother of his six children, was in Canterbury Cathedral, home of the Anglicans. He obtained special permission from the Church of England for the Abbot of Downside, Father Aidan Bellenger, to conduct a Roman Catholic mass in Latin. Notwithstanding Rees-Mogg family piety, Jacob was sent to Eton, not Roman Catholic equivalents such as Ampleforth or Downside. An ecumenical gesture designed to assist him one day if he had the prospect of becoming PM?