Ephraim Hardcastle
HARRY and Meghan’s new office at Buckingham Palace casts doubt on its future as a royal residence, signalling the new order under King Charles. Andrew, Anne and Edward are already based there with sources intimating that it is likely to become an administrative centre under the next monarch. Post coronation Charles could stay at his current billet, Clarence House, where his mother was content until obliged by PM Winston Churchill to move to the palace in 1953. Now, there is no one of Churchill’s stature to shift Charles, ensconced a mere coronet’s throw down the Mall.
PRINCESS Anne’s hosting of tonight’s Presidential Dinner of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 prompts the question: What’s happened to plans for Theresa May’s 2022 Festival echoing the triumphant 1851 event? With Brexit limping from the slow lane to the hard shoulder, no one is putting much effort into bringing this jamboree to life.
SIR Paul McCartney, pictured, insists he had no knowledge of Michael Jackson’s sordid behaviour, saying: ‘When I knew him he was a really nice guy.’ But Macca sang a different tune when Jackson surreptitiously bought the Beatles back catalogue in 1985. ‘I think it’s dodgy to do something like that… to be someone’s friend and then buy the rug they’re standing on,’ he said.
BREXITEER Charles Moore, 62, complains that he was the only Leave supporter on the panel of Radio 4’s Any Questions, broadcast last week from Bournemouth, and cites an Institute of Economic Affairs analysis that 59 per cent of the programme’s panellists support Remain. So is presenter Jonathan Dimbleby a Remainer? Departing the show in the summer after 32 years doesn’t make Dimbo a Leaver!
APROPOS Moore, he and Sir Oliver Letwin, 62, were contemporaries and chums at Eton. Schoolboy affection has clearly gone out the window after Sir Oliver’s Commons manoeuvres against Brexit. Moore now accuses his old friend of ‘having been educated out of his wits’. Seconds out. Round Two!
TORY MP Crispin Blunt’s ‘shameful surrender’ attack on Mrs May reminds his former Labour general election opponent Peter, now Lord, Snape of his victory over Blunt in West Bromwich in 1992. Blunt, incensed by Snape’s criticism of the NHS, booked himself into the local hospital and underwent a circumcision. ‘Afterwards Blunt claimed, “Snape’s criticism of the NHS is all balls”,’ says Peter. ‘I tripled my majority as the electors obviously felt that this was too much information.’
PRICKLY bore John Cleese, 79, rejected by Netflix, tweets: ‘I take heart from the fact that every UK and US studio passed on Life of Brian, ten out of 11 Hollywood studios turned down A Fish called Wanda, and the man who commissioned Fawlty Towers told me, after the first episode, that I had to “get it out of the hotel more”.’ With his last triumph, A Fish Called Wanda, released 31 years ago doesn’t the old boy need a break?