Ephraim Hardcastle
INVESTIGATING Plebgate – Andrew Mitchell’s altercation with Downing Street police in 2012 – Sue Gray recreated the incident outside No 10 with a civil servant repeating Mitchell’s alleged remarks as she stood at the spot where PC Keith Wallis claimed to have overheard the row. She couldn’t hear the exchange and Wallis was subsequently sentenced to 12 months for misconduct in public office. So Boris, beware Sue’s forensic meticulousness. And has she asked for a party sound level meter?
NICOLA Sturgeon, admitting that she suffers from imposter syndrome, said she feels like she is ‘not really good enough to be doing this and there are better people that could do it’. She adds: ‘I sometimes look at people like Boris Johnson and I think, “My God, a little bit of imposter syndrome would do you the world of good”.’ Hasn’t the PM suffered enough, Nicola?
CHANNEL 5’s Secrets Of The Royal Palaces recalls Prince Charles waving at his great-grandmother as she departed from Sandringham railway station, with historian Dr Jonathan Foyle saying: ‘He was there to see off Queen Mary. He saw the guard’s whistle and asked if he could have a look at it. Then he blew into it and set off the train before it was supposed to leave!’ Did an irate Mary brandish her fist at mischievous Charles as she chooed chooed into the Norfolk haze?
FORMER royal chef Darren McGrady mischievously speculates that the Duchess of Cambridge, pictured, would have proved a far easier employer than the Queen or Princess Diana. He enthuses: ‘Kate even likes to go shopping for her own food! That would have saved me so much time. “Your Royal Highness, would you mind running down to Marks & Sparks for me?” She’s a godsend in the kitchen.’
KENNETH Branagh’s Belfast is damned with faint praise by historian Max Hastings. ‘I am not for a moment suggesting that his Belfast represents a falsehood,’ says Hastings, who covered the Troubles at the time Branagh’s family decided to flee to Reading. ‘Only that it is a lot less ugly than the city I knew.’ He adds: ‘Branagh is a brilliant film-maker but back in 1969 his tribe bestrode the dunghill, while Catholics suffered terribly at Protestant hands.’ Watching the acclaimed film, did Max choke on his jumbo popcorn?
WELSH First Minister Mark Drakeford may require sedation after reading polemicist Jonathan Meades rant against his government’s policy of achieving one million Welsh speakers by 2050. ‘Why condemn a million Welsh to a parochial linguistic strait jacket,’ Meades asks in The Critic. ‘A nation where on a Friday night in its capital the tattoos from Penarth greet the big girl’s blouses from Rumney with neighbourly broken bottles and vomit.’
DAWN French, suffering from nerves filming Kenneth Branagh’s Death On The Nile, was soothed by the director. ‘He’d say, “Nancy Nervous isn’t welcome here but Catherine Calm is welcome any time you like”,’ recalls Dawn. Kenneth’s next project? Teletubbies The Movie.