Hardcastle
LIZ Truss was the only minister Dominic Cummings ever shouted at in No 10 for her ‘compulsive pathological leaking’ of Cabinet discussions, claims the prolific troublemaker who dubbed her the human hand grenade for causing chaos rather than getting things done. Answering his own question: Why is Boris supporting Liz, he blogs: ‘He knows she is mad as a box of snakes and is thinking: “there’s a chance she blows, there’s another contest and I can return”.’
WHERE was French passport holder Stanley Johnson when his son announced his resignation? Watching the Downing Street lectern moment on French TV as he enjoyed a feast with distant French cousins. Paris Match reports that the recently discovered cousins are minor aristos occupying a huge chateau. Stanley lands on his feet again!
FAILED prime ministerial candidate Kemi Badenoch’s husband Hamish tells the Spectator that after she was elected in 2017, Theresa May’s spouse Philip convened a meeting of the Denis Club made up of the husbands of female MPs, adding: ‘Being an MP’s spouse,’ he told us, was the best of both worlds, 10 per cent of the pressure and 90 per cent of the fun.’
IT wasn’t just Boris Johnson saying goodbye to his troops on Wednesday at Prime Ministers Questions. ITN chief executive Deborah Turness had tears in her eyes as she bade farewell via Zoom. She’s off to be the boss of BBC News this month. Staff might have thought they were actually genuine tears except for the fact that Debs announced she was leaving to join the enemy after only nine months in the job.
ACTRESS Tuppence Middleton, 35, pictured, reports: ‘Absolutely raging with my local ice cream van man for not keeping a regular schedule of times / locations. Running hopelessly between streets trying to blindly follow the jingle whilst 9 months pregnant…’ Flakey behaviour?
IVANA Trump danced from lord to lord at Claridge’s after ‘entrancing’ the Dukes of Marlborough, Roxburgh and Northumberland with organiser Sir Humphry Wakefield subsequently receiving many invitations from the nobility for Ivana to stay at their great houses. Because of a dispute over payment he failed to pass on the invites prompting Lord [Charles] Moore of Etchingham to remark: ‘If she had received the invitations she might have ended up a dynamic duchess.’
PLAYING Satan’s sister in the 1999 action horror turkey End of Days Miriam Margolyes, 81, recalls being killed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. ‘He had me in a position where I couldn’t escape, lying on the floor. He farted in my face,’ she wails, adding: ‘Now, I fart, of course I do – but I don’t fart in people’s faces.’