Ephraim Hardcastle
DOWNING Street party fact-finder Sue Gray actually runs the country, according to former Treasury secretary David Laws. ‘Unless she agrees, things just don’t happen,’ he writes in his Coalition memoir. ‘Nothing moves in Whitehall unless Sue says so. Our poor, deluded voters think the Prime Minister holds the reins of power. Wrong! The truth is our real leader, Sue Gray, sits at a small desk in the Cabinet Office.’ Sue, who recharged her batteries in a career break pulling pints in Newry’s Cove Bar with her country singer husband Bill Conlon, is not to be trifled with.
BAKE Off victor Nadiya Hussain, who made an orange drizzle cake for the monarch’s 90th birthday, could shed some light on HM’s dessert preferences for the Platinum Pudding Contest. Despite the Queen favouring iced honey and cream sponge, Nadiya was advised that she should avoid fruit cake and any icing should be soft. The reason? HM suffered a rare public malfunction in 2015 when, unable to cut through a heavily-iced fruit cake at the Women’s Institute centenary, she had to ask Princess Anne to finish the job.
AND coronets aloft to Fortnum & Mason for organising the pudding competition given that the Queen, who used to bulk order Fortnum’s Christmas puddings for staff presents, switched to Tesco’s Finest range to cut costs.
AS MORE and more Downing Street illicit lockdown shindigs emerge, spare a thought for Sir Kenneth Branagh, pictured. He is playing Boris in Sky’s This Sceptred Isle about the PM’s pandemic leadership. It is in the final editing stage for transmission in the autumn. Will Sir Kenneth have to Bring His Own Booze for the wine and cheese garden re-shoots?
SEVENTY-NINE watercolours by Prince Charles are currently on show in Chelsea’s Garrison Chapel, all signed by his artistic alter-ego A G Carrick. Is he any good? Judging by the demand for his daubs – selling for around £15,000 – he is one of the country’s most successful living artists. Lucian Freud begged to differ. A nonplussed Charles, offering one of his watercolours in exchange for one of Freud’s works, was told: ‘I don’t want one of your rotten paintings.’
DOG lover Ricky Gervais has taken issue with Pope Francis’s claim that people who choose pets over children are selfish. ‘How could it be selfish not to bring something into the world that doesn’t exist on any level?’ he asks Jane Garvey’s Radio Times podcast. ‘There’s not a big line of unborn foetuses going “We want to be born”. It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s a stupid thing to say.’ As the Pontiff didn’t say: Non est vita grandis?
BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew, co-hosting an Australian online charity auction of clothing donated by sporting greats, apologised for having nothing in his luggage to offer. ‘How about your underpants?’ a bidder suggested. He duly sacrificed his black boxers but how to autograph them? Fortunately, former England women’s spin bowler Alex Hartley had the solution – her silver Sharpie pen.