Ephraim Hardcastle
NO rheumy finger in the style of Lord Sugar barking ‘You’re fired’ was levelled at The Apprentice supremo by the BBC after last year’s racist tweet featuring the Senegalese football team as North African beach bums. He apologised. But unlike sacked Danny Baker, Sugar is a valuable asset whose show earns a fortune for the BBC.
BAKER’S disgrace might prove awkward for Gary Lineker, the corporation’s most highly-paid presenter. He recently formed a weekly podcast Lineker & Baker: Behind Closed Doors. And could the offensive chimpanzee tweet be Baker’s revenge on Prince Harry? He wrote a speech for Harry and William for the 2007 Princess Diana Wembley concert. They rejected it for being ‘too expressive’.
RETIRED royal press wallah Dickie Arbiter complains about Meghan’s friend CBS’s Gayle King’s presence at the baby Archie unveiling. He wails: ‘It was done because she [King] was a mate.’ Isn’t Chippy Dickie peeved that his daughter Victoria, royal correspondent at rival CNN, wasn’t invited?
TITLELESS Archie means the Queen now has more common great-grandchildren than regal ones. Peter and Zara Phillips’ four children have no titles because they don’t descend through the female line. William’s three have them because they do. But Harry’s no to a title for Archie begs the question: If he wants to be that different, why not ask granny to annul his royal titles?
ARCHIE’S public appearance with the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh is a royal first. Until now such encounters have been private. And the presence of Doria Ragland might prompt Kate Middleton’s mum Carole, pictured, to wonder why she’s never been part of a similar photocall.
NORTHERN Powerhouse minister Jake Berry gave up alcohol in January telling friends he’d resume toping after Brexit’s March deadline. Now he has to abstain until at least October. But with no guarantee of an EU exit, will thirsty Jake ever again get the whiff of a cork?
FIFTY-SEVEN years after Marilyn Monroe’s death, her biographer Charles Casillo disputes a Times Literary Supplement review implicating Robert Kennedy, insisting that he and brother Jack did not want her dead, adding: ‘The telephone was clutched in Marilyn’s hand when she died and she may have been calling for help.’ Bibliophile Marilyn would have relished being at the centre of this TLS brouhaha.
THESPIANS Ian McKellen and Russell Tovey, filming The Good Liar in Berlin, ended up in nightclub Porn sexual with Sir Ian in jeggings and Russell wearing a harness. Where was co-star Helen Mirren? ‘She was invited,’ says Russell. ‘I think she decided to have a lovely bath instead.’ A wise decision, your dameness!