Ephraim Hardcastle
WILL National Trust president Prince Charles applaud the Trust’s inclusion of Churchill’s home Chartwell on its naughty list of properties with links to slavery and colonialism? Unlikely. For the prince’s beloved Clarence House ticks all the boxes for the wokery industry. It was commissioned by the Duke of Clarence, later William IV, a vocal defender of slavery. In his 1799 Lord’s maiden speech, he said he was ‘an attentive observer of the state of the negroes’ and found them ‘in a state of humble happiness’. He also attacked the leading abolitionist William Wilberforce as either a ‘fanatic or a hypocrite’. Deep waters, Charles.
NINE months after he was forced to resign from ITN, Alastair Stewart accuses fellow newscaster Tom Bradby of turning him into a ‘non-person’. Alastair took offence at Bradby’s 30th anniversary review of his career at the broadcaster in which he included a picture of ITN staff Trevor McDonald, John Suchet, Jon Snow and Stewart at the Berlin Wall in 1991. Stewart was the only staffer unnamed. Social media complaints prompted ITN to add his name last night after Alastair exclaimed: ‘Blimey I have become a non-person…’
BBC director-general Tim Davie hires headhunters Russell Reynolds to find a group director of corporate affairs to sweet talk Boris over the continuation of the licence fee. The successful candidate will report directly to Davie and be a ‘key member of his streamlined top team leading the BBC’. Salary? £220,000. What’s happened to Tim’s pledge to cut the Beeb’s battalion of bosses?
PORTRAYING Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’Toole, pictured in the role, needed Dutch courage for a gruelling desert battle scene on a camel. ‘Peter was so alarmed at the prospect of filming that he drank himself insensible with brandy and milk,’ says a C5 documentary next Wednesday.’ Surely perfectionist director David Lean got the hump with an inebriated O’Toole aboard an ungulate?
HOW did Brain of Britain presenter Robert Robinson get his hands on a bargain basement LS Lowry painting? Robinson, who died aged 83 in 2011, was Hunter Davies’s boss on the Sunday Times Atticus column and sent him to a London art gallery, where he met the painter. ‘I talked to LS Lowry and we got on so well that he agreed I could visit him at his home in Lancashire,’ Hunter tells the Oldie. ‘But when I told Bob he said he was the boss, he would do it. I was furious. He bought direct from Lowry one of his paintings, later worth a great deal.’
IS Malvern College old boy Professor Chris Whitty living up to his school motto Sapiens Qui Prospicit, translated as ‘Wise is he who looks forward’? If he is, perhaps the Covid-19 boffin might let us know what exactly he is looking forward to.
SYLVESTER Stallone’s mother, psychic Jackie, who has died aged 98, gazed into her crystal ball for Fergie after her divorce from Andrew and urged her to marry a rich sheik. ‘All of these men dress alike,’ she explained. ‘All are very rich and with no underwear. Perfect for a single girl.’
Email: john.mcentee@dailymail.co.uk