Ephraim Hardcastle
BORIS Johnson’s resignation honours list is ‘signed off and ready to go’, I hear. The late Queen’s late Lord Chamberlain, Baron ‘Chips’ Maclean (1971-1984), suggested that PMs should issue their own medals to distance the monarch, and the honours system, from being tainted by scandal. Nothing came of the idea.
THREE Degrees star Sheila Ferguson will discuss her ‘complicated’ relationship with King Charles in a long-promised autobiography. She has suggested that there was no impropriety: ‘I didn’t want to be a notch on his bedpost. I valued myself a little more than that.’
JUDGING by the photo of them together at Charles’s Privy Council accession ceremony, a cheery-looking Gordon Brown ,71, is weathering life storms better than frowning Tony Blair, 69, who appears to have dyed his hair unsuccessfully.
SIR Rod Stewart’s statuesque, 6ft 1in wife Penny Lancaster, recalls being required to walk alongside our 5ft 10in King Charles after a dinner: ‘He commented on my height, so I said, “I can do something about that”, and took my shoes off. He held my hand as we walked along.’ No doubt humming Sir Rod’s Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?
ADDRESSING Tory leadership candidate Penny Mordaunt as she made her debut as Leader of the Commons, show-off Labour MP Chris Bryant added a sly
dig: ‘I warmly welcome her to her new job – not least, because she got to be leader after all.’ Once he was known as Captain Underpants after posing in his Y-fronts on a dating site. Now it’s Captain Smartypants.
THE BBC’s international editor Jeremy Bowen criticises his ex-colleague, Emily Maitlis, saying it was ‘appropriate’ for corporation mandarins to ‘have a word with her’ over her controversial monologue about ex No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings. She should have written it ‘a bit more cleverly’, he remarks. Who cares? Licence fee payers might be more interested in why the BBC needs a world affairs editor (John Simpson), a chief international correspondent (Lyse Doucet) and an international editor (Bowen).
BEWIGGED Tory MP Michael Fabricant says he backed Liz Truss for the top job because Rishi Sunak didn’t return calls from West Midlands mayor Andy Street, the ‘life partner’ of the resident House of Commons clown. He gloats: ‘I’ve been on a walking holiday in North America with Andy and the number of phone calls he got from Liz Truss was remarkable!’
HAVING dubbed Boris Johnson The Convict, The Guardian now calls his successor Librium Liz, referencing a drug used to treat anxiety disorders. Doubtless her arrival in No 10 causes jittery Lefties on the paper to reach for their Librium tablets.
Email: peter.mckay@dailymail.co.uk