Ephraim Hardcastle
IN tandem with an exit strategy, the Cabinet must come up with a suitable honour for NHS key workers. A service at St Paul’s along with the George medal have been mooted. Couldn’t the Queen grant the prefix Royal to the service – and the Chancellor award everyone involved in saving lives £100?
FlORenCe nightingale would have celebrated her 200th birthday on May 12, International nurses Day. The Westminster Abbey commemoration has been cancelled. The nation’s nurses are heroically engaged elsewhere.
HARRY and Meghan’s Archewell charity ‘to do something that matters’ gets short shrift from the BBC’s Andrew Neil. ‘A period of silence from both would be ‘‘something that matters’’ to many of us,’ he barks.
COnSTAnT overhead aircraft noise normally prohibits Windsor as a broadcasting venue. But with air traffic in lockdown, the Queen talked to the nation from her favourite home uninterrupted.
HONOR Blackman, pictured in her prime, recalled how Americans balked at the name Pussy Galore, whom she played in James Bond. ‘An awful lot of interviewers would not say my character’s name,’ she said, adding, ‘ it wasn’t until a picture of me and Prince Philip was on the front page, headlined ‘‘The Prince and the Pussy” that the Americans decided it must be alright.’
SIR Keir Starmer wishes he had not been called after labour’s first leader Keir Hardie. He could have switched to his middle name Rodney, as did Alexander Boris Johnson. Rodney, as in ‘Only Fools And Horses’, hardly suits a would-be PM. But Rod Starmer? It has the thrust of Hollywood actor Rod Steiger or crooner Sir Rod Stewart. Is it too late?
BACK on Labour’s frontbench after five years, Rachel Reeves failed to inspire former BBC2 Newsnight boss Ian Katz – now head of programmes at Channel 4. He had to apologise after calling her ‘boring, snoring Rachel Reeves’ in a tweet.
neVeR the sharpest, new Shadow Justice Secretary David lammy once took offence at the BBC’s coverage of the papal election, when it speculated whether the smoke above the Sistine Chapel would be black or white. lammy, 47, condemned this as ‘silly innuendo’.
HOW does Hugh Bonneville react to a neighbour using an ‘industrial decibel strimmer’ after lunch? He tweets: ‘He’s gonna LOVE my Led Zeppelin at sunset.’