Ephraim Hardcastle
GEORGE Osborne, extracting too much glee from Boris’ Marcus Rashford food voucher embarrassment, delivers a panoramic lecture on political food disasters through history including Margaret Thatcher’s ‘milk snatch’ and Theresa May’s free school meal abolition. No mention of the disastrous 20 per cent VAT imposition proposed for hot takeaway food in 2012. And who was responsible for the Pastygate row that followed? Step forward, Chancellor Osborne.
THE Queen’s talent for subtle adjudication was demonstrated after she lost confidence in her Australian governor-general Sir John Kerr. She wanted him to resign but was determined not to sack him. After they had lunch on board the Royal Yacht Britannia off Western Australia in March 1977 and had an audience at the Palace, Kerr was left in no doubt she wanted him to fall on his sword. He subsequently did. ‘It was a masterful study in psychology,’ says a study of the affair from the Melbourne University Press.
GEORGE Clooney, pictured, fails to erect the bunting for the re-release of 1983’s Grizzly II, his first major film role co-starring fellow newcomers Laura Dern and Charlie Sheen. ‘I haven’t seen it,’ he says. ‘And I actually don’t know that I want to.’ Adding: ‘It was a lot like Jaws, in the sense that they didn’t have the bear. They just had a guy holding a bear claw on a stick.’
ARCHAEOLOGY lecturer Eric Tourigny’s conclusion that Victorian dog lovers believed they’d be reunited with their pets in the afterlife would have delighted Tory defence minister Alan Clark. On his death bed in 1999 he was on the brink of converting to Catholicism by ecumenist Fr Michael Seed when he asked if he would meet his doggies in paradise. Fr Michael, apparently, advised that as dogs had no souls they could not enter heaven. Alan died an Anglican.
DEAD Ringers impersonator Jan Ravens complains of Priti Patel’s diction, failing to finish words like hangin’ and relaxin’ . Asks Jan: ‘I always wonder why politicians who have crap voices don’t work a bit more at them. If politicians had a voice like Emily Thornberry’s they might take more notice of them.’ Heaven forbid!
DESPITE selling over 25million records none of the Nolan Sisters, with the exception of Loose Women’s Coleen, are comfortably off. ‘Our money was squandered,’ says Linda. ‘I rent my home from Coleen.’ She adds: ‘I asked if she was going to give me a rent holiday due to the pandemic and she replied, “Are you serious?” ’
THE literary estate of Oscar Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas complains of critic Roger Lewis’s description of him as an ‘awful poet’, insisting he produced six decades of fine verse. Counters Lewis: ‘His sonnets are full of archaic diction. It’s all moonbeams and swooning. His verse is truly ghastly.’