Ephraim Hardcastle
NO surprise if Ian Hislop and Paul Merton are currently quaking over suggestions that new BBC DG Tim Davie has placed Have I Got News For You on top of his list of Leftleaning comedy shows facing the axe. For behind Tim’s woke, denim-clad persona lurks a dormant Tory. When deputy chairman of Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Party in the 1990s, he pursued what local Labour MP Andy Slaughter describes as a ‘particularly Right-wing, very aggressive agenda’. Slaughter asks, pertinently: ‘Can leopards change their spots?’
PRINCE Philip, correcting the proof copy of Gyles Brandreth’s biography, summoned his Boswell, asking: ‘What are you saying here, that I served on HMS Ramillies?’ ‘I said, “Well, sir, you did serve on HMS Ramillies. You kindly lent me the log books”. He said, “I did not serve on HMS Ramillies! I served in HMS Ramillies! You don’t live on your house do you? You live in your house. Don’t you know anything? Stupid bugger!”’
LADY Judge, who has died, was likely denied the Order of the Garter after accusations of racism and sexism cut short her term at the Institute of Directors. At the time Barbara was gallantly defended by her deputy Sir Ken Olisa, now Lord-Lieutenant of Greater London. Since the lieutenancy was created in 1965, five of Olisa’s seven predecessors have been gartered, so he is likely to be honoured, making him the first black Knight Companion.
THRICE-married Ulrika Jonsson, pictured, jokingly describes herself as a ‘4 x 4 mum’ because of her four children by four different dads, complaining that women are judged differently from men. ‘We never talk about Rod Stewart [who has eight children with five women],’ she says. ‘Or Boris Johnson. He just hasn’t counted his.’ No festive card from Downing Street this year, Ulrika.
HISTORIAN Simon Schama gets carried away describing Shelley in a BBC documentary about the Romantics. Not only was he a believer in free love, a vegetarian and anti-war, he was, according to excitable Simon, ‘always fussing around with his hair in a kind of Sid Vicious way. You know it’s pure punk, it’s total aristo punk’. Deep breaths, Simon.
PROMOTIONAL material for Kay Burley’s relaunched breakfast show has been defaced by colleagues at Sky HQ in Osterley, replacing the slogan ‘always direct, always striving, always searching’ with ‘always going on and on’ and ‘always patronising’. Who is responsible? As the doctored posters are in the men’s lavatory, the perpetrators are likely to be male.
FORMER Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik reminds new leader Ed Davey that he had predicted catastrophe when previous leader Nick Clegg embraced coalition with David Cameron. ‘I warned them all,’ he says. Considering he’s been predicting a lethal asteroid strike on Earth for decades, it’s hardly surprising that Davey, bafflingly absent from PMQs yesterday, will be giving Jonah Opik a wide berth.