Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Duchess of Cornwall confides in Saga magazine her love of ships, adding: ‘I hate flying.’ Much time in the sky looms as she and Charles head to New Zealand in November. This trip is to compensate for the failure to include the destination when they last visited Australia. That outward trip took four days – to address Camilla’s aversion.
BORIS, looking presidential as he tiptapped his inaugural speech in Downing Street, might have asked the snapper to include a bust of his hero Churchill. More apt than the plastic bottles on view.
JACOB Rees-Mogg’s insistence on not using commas before ‘and’ displeases grammar-obsessed Gyles Brandreth, who recalls an unfortunate omission of ‘and’ in a newspaper description of a Peter Ustinov documentary. It promised: ‘Highlights of his global tour [including] encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800year-old demigod and a dildo collector’.
OUR new PM prompts historian Simon Schama to throw his toys out of the pram, tweeting: ‘Can someone please stand up and start shouting (it won’t be the weasel Corbyn)? YOU ARE NOT CHURCHILL, fatso, and the EU is not the Third Reich. You do not have a war cabinet because THERE IS NO WAR. How DARE you invoke the sacrifices of those who fought one!’ Nurse!
HAVING failed to save Julian Assange, former Baywatch star Pamela Anderson, pictured, wants to rescue horses at the Calgary Stampede, writing: ‘Moving back to my native Canada, my heart sank as I read about six horses who died in this year’s chuckwagon races. I urge you to direct the Stampede to ban these deadly race.’ If she turns up at the Ecuador embassy with stallions in tow put her in the Assange suite.
VOGUE boss Edward Enninful basks in guest editor Meghan Markle’s edition, which features aristocratic mannequin Adwoa Aboah. Meghan’s celebration of 16 women omits her grandmother-in-law The Queen but does includes Adwoa, who happens to be Ed’s goddaughter!
WINSTON Churchill would be horrified by disciple Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan, writes Professor Ian Buruma in the New York Times. He also reveals the Churchill bust Barack Obama removed from the Oval Office in 2010 was on loan while an Epstein was being repaired, adding: ‘He was accused by a British politician of doing so out of spite, because of his ancestral dislike of the British Empire... that politician was Boris Johnson.’
STILL flirtatious, Edna O’Brien recalls inviting playwright Samuel Beckett back to her Chelsea house and being warned against an Irish sing-song: ‘As I was putting my key in the door, Sam said: “Now, Edna, no wailing”. But then what does he do? He sits down at my piano and starts to “wail” himself, singing the songs of Schubert.’