Ephraim Hardcastle
ANDREW Bailey, 63, the Bank of England governor since March 2020 – and the first not to be knighted – is not on the Jubilee Honours List, I gather. Five of his eight predecessors, in addition to seats in the Lords, were also made Knights of the Garter. Bailey’s recent prediction of ‘apocalyptic’ food prices was deplored as tactless but I wonder if being appointed by ex-chancellor Sajid Javid (2019-2020) rather than Rishi Sunak explains his knight starvation?
DAN Walker, 45, pictured, joins 5 News from the BBC as a £1.5million news anchor on Monday. ‘DAN WALKER DRESSING ROOM. PLEASE DO NOT ENTER,’ says a sign there. My source says: ‘Other presenters don’t have their own dressing room – and certainly wouldn’t dream of putting a sign like that on it if they did.’ Was it put up by someone who resents Walker’s arrival?
CHARLES Gordon-Lennox, the wealthy Duke of Richmond and Gordon, has angered members of his money-spinning concern the Goodwood Road Racing Club (GRRC) by restricting access to its Kinrara Enclosure during the Festival of Speed from June 23 to 26. My source says: ‘Free admission to the Kinrara Enclosure for GRRC members was only ever for the Thursday each year until now. The Thursday freebie was much appreciated by non-wealthy GRRC members. Friday’s ticket is £160, Saturday’s £195 and Sunday’s £195. This year a limited number of freebies were allowed. By the time we received the email all had been booked. There’s anger because members were persuaded to “donate” their annual subscription to the GRRC during lockdown.’
FRUITY TV property presenter Kirstie Allsopp announces: ‘I am very proud to be the daughter of (the sixth) Lord Hindlip. A clever, hardworking, funny, talented man whose life is dedicated to knowledge of art and architecture. For some reason tossers think who my father is relates to my work. This is because they live in the dark ages.’
IS ladies’ man TV baker Paul Hollywood a mummy’s boy? He confides in Woman & Home magazine: ‘Mum still lives in the semi-detached house where I grew up. I love going back and I stay in my old bedroom when I’m visiting. It’s very small and I remember having my bed next to the radiator. It was like being next to a furnace and you’d get bar marks across your face.’
TELLY boffin Professor Brian Cox, recalling his earlier career in the pop band D:Ream, says their 1994 chart-topping single Things Can Only Get Better ‘was scientifically inaccurate’, explaining: ‘The second law of thermodynamics tells you that things get worse.’ Indeed so. Didn’t Tony Blair use it in his 1997 general election campaign?
ELIZABETH: The Unseen Queen on BBC1 had film from South Africa in 1947 of a motorcade through Cape Town. What it didn’t show was the local man jumping on to the running board of the open-top Daimler and Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, beating him off with her parasol. When arrested, he told police he was trying to give a ten-shilling note to the royal visitors.