Ephraim Hardcastle
JON Snow complains that Theresa May has declined an interview with him – the first time a PM has done so since he became ‘the face of Channel 4 News’ in 1989 – adding: ‘It’s unprecedented and disappointing.’ (Snow, by the way, chanted, ‘F*** the Tories’ at glastonbury Festival last year.) Meanwhile Sky News’ Kay Burley says of Mrs May: ‘She refused to do an interview with Piers Morgan, I’m told. She won’t let me interview her. She’s very careful about who she chooses to talk to.’ Not careful enough, evidently. On Sunday she chose to be interviewed by the BBC’s andrew Marr, who tore her apart. Do our TV inquisitors think they’re the story? The distinguished film-maker Ken Burns, who made the Civil War and Vietnam documentary series, says that interviews should ‘never become larger than the person being interviewed’.
OLLIE Roberts, 21, the Queen’s footman who resigned after being demoted over co-operating with gay magazines, might now forge a career commenting on the Royal Family, like ex-Diana butler Paul Burrell. His sexuality won’t have been an issue. Two of the Queen Mother’s servants, lovers Billy Tallon and Reg Wilcock, frequently had arguments in her presence. She is said to have scolded them once: ‘When you old queens have finished, this old queen is waiting for her drink.’
FIFTY Shades Of grey star Dakota Johnson, 28, pictured, tells Tatler she’s disheartened by Donald Trump, natural disasters and refugees, adding: ‘I find myself waking up and feeling like I can’t have a fully great day because of what’s happening in the world, you know? It’s too much.’ Far too much!
ROBERT Redford says he was drawn to the true story behind his new film, The Old Man and the Gun, about Florida bank robber Forrest Tucker. Aged 78, he held up a bank attired in ‘white pants with a sharp crease, a white sports shirt, white suede shoes, and a shimmering white ascot’. Waving an old US army Colt 45, he stole $5,000, thanked bank staff, but was caught after a police chase. He was carrying a pistol, a sawn-off shotgun, a holster, a can of mace, handcuffs, a police badge and radio scanner, a glass cutter and a small bottle of heart medicine. He died in a federal prison in 2004 at the age of 83.
PROMOTINg his biography of Winston Churchill, historian andrew Roberts reflects on the journalistic output of the wartime leader: ‘In March 1942, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and with the germans well on their way to Stalingrad, he published an article in the Sunday Dispatch asking: “are there men on the Moon?” in which he concluded that there were.’ Roberts asked his audience to imagine Theresa May doing the same. Perhaps not, but Boris might.
SELF-styled ‘fourth-generation socialist’ Owen Jones had a speaking engagement at the Tory conference. Tory MP Nadine Dorries says: ‘Try being a Conservative speaker at a Labour conference. “Tory scum” and worse rings in your ears.’ Jones has time on his hands. His touring one-man show has been cancelled.