Ephraim Hardcastle
MIGHT the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee be crowned with the Nobel Peace Prize? While HM has never been nominated, her husband Philip’s 100th birthday prompted talk about proposing him for his conservation work and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. But he never reached the milestone. Only one of the family, Princess Anne, has been nominated – in 1990 by President Kaunda of Zambia for her work with Save the Children. A proposal from a single public representative is sufficient for inclusion. Surely HM would be an exemplary laureate?
WHO advised London mayor Sadiq Khan to clamber on to the stage during the interval in Pakistani singer Rahat Fateh Ali Khan’s Wembley Arena concert on Sunday? Khan’s declaration that ‘London is open again’ was greeted with boos from many of the 12,000 fans of Qawwali music. Could Sadiq pass muster as a theatrical villain in one of the city’s seasonal entertainments? Oh yes he could!
SIX years after Daniel Craig’s statement that he’d rather slash his wrists than do another Bond, he tells Radio Times that the outburst followed his broken leg making Spectre. Listing the other injuries he sustained as 007, Craig included lost teeth and a gashed face in Casino Royale, a torn shoulder muscle in Quantum Of Solace and three ankle tendons severed filming the latest No Time To Die. No wonder Dan is retiring
HELP star Jodie Comer swaps her Liverpool Scouse for a French accent playing Marguerite de Carrouges in the forthcoming movie The Last Duel. She portrays the wife of Matt Damon as a medieval knight who fights a deadly trial by combat with his best friend, played by Adam Driver, after she accuses him of rape. Jodie, pictured, was relieved that screen husband Matt won. Says a friend: ‘If he’d lost, Jodie’s character would have been burnt at the stake for perjury.’
GEORGE Bernard Shaw was sent a limited-edition advance copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the futile hope he might endorse it, according to a new volume of literary letters revealing GBS’s disapproval. ‘It is a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilisation, foul mouthed, foul minded derision and obscenity,’ he replied sweetly. ‘Dublin is still what it was, and young men are still drivelling in slackjawed blackguardism.’ Methinks the Irish tourist board might stick to promoting Riverdance.
NEW Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi inherits his hapless predecessor Gavin Williamson’s headache of the education establishment woke brigade lobbying for Shakespeare to be replaced on the school curriculum by trendy modern authors. Fortunately Nadhim is MP for the Bard’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon, with one Tory colleague observing: ‘If Nadhim drops Shakespeare from the syllabus he’ll be dunked in the Avon.’
EX-Python Eric Idle reacts to Miriam Margolyes’s claim that John Cleese was ‘vicious’ to her when she performed with the Cambridge Footlights in 1962. ‘A picture of me not bullying Miriam, whom I always liked,’ he tweets.