Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Queen’s dresser, Angela Kelly, has had to mothball two new Royal Ascot dress designs as a result of HM’s absence, for the first time, from next week’s race meeting. The season’s highlight, it was the only occasion left in the monarch’s diary at which she planned new outfits, frugally believing her existing wardrobe usually ‘saw her through’. Is it a reaction to her mother’s extravagance? Just short of her 100th birthday, the Queen Mother paraded a new six-figure costume, causing HMQ to bury her head in her hands and say, ‘Oh Mummy, not another new outfit, surely!’
SPAIN’S King Felipe resumes the tradition of sending Seville oranges to the Queen for her breakfast marmalade. His father, Juan Carlos, used to supply Charles with Seville oranges that staff infused with vodka to fortify guests at Sandringham shoots each November. Felipe, no lover of guns, stopped the practice. Has it improved the Royal aim?
DICKENS biographer AN Wilson, sexually abused and made to eat his own vomit as a nine-year-old at his Malvern prep school, says his spirit would have ‘gone under’ if he hadn’t discovered Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. ‘Dickens saved me,’ he says, ‘because he taught me three useful lessons – 1. Life is bound to be horrible much of the time, 2. Never trust a grown-up, 3. They might be cruel, monstrous, grotesque etc but they are also funny and one can find comedy even when confronted with bullies and sex-perverts as I was.’
THE charitable fundraising capability of Sophie Wessex, pictured, pales before that of Kate and Meghan, to judge by the performance of The Earl and Countess of Wessex Charitable Trust. Set up with her husband Edward to help young people, it has failed to publish an annual report. With the most recent annual expenditure to June 2019 totalling £154,400 and income a measly £770 this is probably wise.
MICHAEL Sheen, playing Chris Tarrant in the TV drama Quiz, inadvertently cheered Tarrant’s grandson Haris, five, during lockdown, telling Radio Times: ‘There was this lovely video that his daughter Fia put online of her little boy watching me on screen, and saying, “Grandad!”. That is the best review I’ve ever had.’
NOEL Edmonds mourns his creation Mr Blobby. ‘He never got over the end of House Party. He went to open a bar in southern Spain, Mrs Blobby briefly went with him,’ explains Noel. ‘She left him, took the kids, he hit the bottle. The last I heard, he was getting counselling.’ Does Noel also still believe in the Tooth Fairy?
STAR-smitten Alastair Campbell, invited to Eric ‘Slowhand’ Clapton’s Chelsea home, babbles: ‘Christ – if I could write music like he does, I’d have sat down there and then and written a new bagpipe tune... The Joy Of Becoming Eric Clapton’s Soulmate.’ That, Alastair, would have terminated any friendship with Slowhand.