Ephraim Hardcastle
FORMER Queen’s Flight pilot Graham Laurie tells a Channel 5 documentary that on some Nineties long-haul flights the Queen and other royals tucked into Fray Bentos tinned pies, saying: ‘And do you know, they used to love it. I think it’s such a lovely change from all that fancy food which comes first class!’ And still no Royal Warrant!
PHILIP
Hammond and Jeremy Hunt arrived together at Amber Rudd’s PR brother Roland’s 25th-anniversary shindig for his firm at the River Cafe on Sunday. Are they plotting? Wouldn’t Hunt, runner-up in the Tory leadership race, rejoice if Boris fails and Miss World rules – which allow the runner-up to take the crown – kicked in?
APROPOS
Mr Rudd: he reminded revellers that when he started his company in 1994 PM John Major had just removed the whip from eight Tories who had rebelled over Europe. Plus ca change!
ROBERT
Mugabe’s tormentor the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell must have chuckled at former Foreign Office minister Peter Hain’s Radio 4 recollection: ‘Mr Mugabe called me “Peter Tatchell’s wife”, which was news to me.’
GILLIAN
Anderson, pictured, who plays Margaret Thatcher in series four of The Crown, says she has fallen in love with the Iron Lady. But she still loves boyfriend Peter Morgan, who just happens to be the writer and producer of The Crown.
ROBERT
De Niro suffered a sense of humour failure when US comic Sean Hayes, referring to his unchallenging movie roles since The Godfather, quipped: ‘Is this the same Robert De Niro that did Little Fockers and Dirty Grandpa? I can’t wait for someone to make you an offer you can refuse.’
PAMELA
Anderson continues her obsession with Julian Assange, pledging to sell her house to pay his legal bills. ‘I’m willing to do whatever it takes to help Julian,’ she says. Let’s hope the ailing WikiLeaks founder, incarcerated in Belmarsh jail for breaching bail, doesn’t request a conjugal visit.
THE
Royal Shakespeare Company slides ever further into PC mania. Its website trailer for a coming production of Shakespeare’s King John – in which the king, inevitably, will be played by an actress – features courtiers having a good fight, complete with jelly and cream cake. Fancy that!
THE
Channel 4 Formula 1 presenter Steve Jones asks Italian Grand Prix driver Carlos Sainz if his McLaren teammate Lando Norris, 19, sleeps in his pyjamas or ‘in the buff’. Isn’t it time someone showed buffoonish Jones the chequered flag?