Ephraim Hardcastle
PRINCE Harry may have to dip into the Netflix kitty to supplement the £2.4 million he has already paid for the Frogmore Cottage refurbishment. Royal household accounts published tomorrow will show further expenditure not covered by the last balance sheet. The tally to March 2019 describes work as ‘substantially completed’. My bespoke hod carrier calculates that the outstanding liability could amount to a six-figure sum.
WITH Barbados about to abolish the monarchy, neighbouring Antigua remains loyal to the Queen. Could Cuban dictator Fidel Castro take the posthumous credit? When then PM Lester Bird told Castro of the island’s plan to ditch HM, Fidel asked: ‘Why? Does she interfere with your government?’ A flustered Bird had to admit that she didn’t. ‘In which case,’ counselled Castro, ‘You might consider remaining as you are.’ But for how much longer?
HILARY Mantel, pictured, accused of an ‘astonishing and venomous’ attack on the Duchess of Cambridge when she called her a plastic princess, recalls being dubbed Monster of the Month in 2013 when her impertinent essay Royal Bodies appeared. ‘My husband came to tell me that the prime minister and the leader of the opposition were denouncing me,’ she remembers. ‘If it had been bonfire season no doubt I would have been burned in effigy. I have to live with a traitor’s name.’ Is she bothered? The offending treatise appears next week in book form.
JOAN Collins experienced a foreboding about Covid-19 before it became official claiming: ‘I had a feeling that something was going to happen, that a disease was on its way.’ The old girl concludes: ‘Percy tells me I’m a witch.’
CONCLUDING her grilling of Michael Gove, Sky’s Kay Burley asks about his Christmas lunch plans, cheekily suggesting he might invite Dominic Cummings. Gove responds: ‘Kay, if you’re free on the day, please come round.’ Kay responds: ‘OK! You know what? I might take you up on that, Mr Gove!’ Mrs Gove might have a view, Michael!
CAROLINE Flint’s daughter Hanna has had her Voodoo Marasa bike stolen, prompting mum to invoke Liam Neeson’s chilling ‘I will look for you, I will find you’ mantra. ‘I have a very particular set of skills,’ she tweets ominously. ‘Skills I have acquired over a very long career, skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you give my daughter her bike back, that will be the end of it.’ Me? I’d pedal back to Hanna asap.
BAKE Off’s Paul Hollywood asks fellow presenter Matt Lucas to telephone his mother, a Little Britain fan, in the character of FatFighters’ Marjorie Dawes saying: ‘Mum’s lost a little bit of weight. Can you wind her up?’ Lucas takes him literally, calling mum Gillian: ‘I believe you’ve lost an ounce...’