Ephraim Hardcastle
HAS the Queen finally settled the theological question on whether dog lovers are reunited with their pets in the afterlife? In a conversation with her Domestic Chaplain, Canon Anthony Caesar, HM was asked: ‘Do you not expect to see your corgis in the afterlife, Ma’am?’ She replied: ‘No. Oh, imagine the flies and the fleas! And beetles. No.’ Canon Caesar, who died in 2018, was overheard broaching the subject after presiding at a service for animals attended by the monarch. As head of the Church of England, the Queen seems to have concluded that even royal corgis don’t get to enjoy a curious sniff at the Pearly Gates.
BELGIAN ex-King Albert endured a DNA test to confirm his paternity of Princess Delphine, a scientific practice yet to be personally approved by our Queen. She persistently declines permission to carry out forensic tests on the two children’s skeletons discovered buried in Westminster Abbey. Until she does, they cannot be confirmed as the murdered Princes in the Tower. ‘She is yet to be convinced on DNA,’ says one courtier.
FILM producer Jemima Goldsmith, pictured, enthuses about ex-boyfriend Hugh Grant’s latest TV series, gushing: ‘The Undoing with Hugh Grant is so brilliantly gripping, I’m just livid that I can’t binge it all in one sitting.’ Jemima and Hugh confirmed their ‘amicable’ split in 2007 amid tales that the presence of Hugh’s famous ex Elizabeth Hurley had proved troublesome. Liz referred to Jemima as ‘the schoolgirl’, while Jemima nicknamed her rival ‘Camilla’ due to there being ‘three people in the relationship’.
CHOOSING a Latin motto for his coat of arms, Sir David Jason opts for Conata Perficere – ‘to reach one’s goals’, explaining: ‘I drew on my extensive readings of the writings of Julius Caesar in their original Latin, and particularly his account of the Gallic Wars, which are my favourites.’ Adios Del Boy’s hardearned Only Fools and Horses reputation for brainlessness.
FRANK Bough, exposed in a cocaine and prostitution scandal at the height of his BBC fame in the Eighties, did not go quietly according to his then boss Will Wyatt, who tells The Oldie how the presenter reacted when he fired him. ‘“You’re making a grave mistake,” he said, “I’ve had letters from viewers asking me to stay. Tomorrow, I’m opening a fete for a vicar and I’ve just received a letter from royalty asking for my support for a charity”.’ It was still ‘cheerio, Boughie’.
JACOB Rees-Mogg’s sister Annunziata suggests she and fellow Catholics are ready to resort to 17th-century measures to defy the lockdown church services ban. ‘Once we had to have illegal covert masses and secret priest-holes,’ she tweets, adding: ‘We are accustomed to surviving hostile rulers and we shall again.’ Surely the Rees-Moggs have his and hers priest-holes hidden away?