Daily Mail

Ephraim Hardcastle

- Email: john.mcentee@dailymail.co.uk

CHARLES Moore, attending Monday’s Westminste­r Hall ceremony where parliament­arians pledged allegiance to the new King, spotted one Labour MP who crossed his fingers behind his back while taking the oath in an attempt to avoid swearing allegiance to King Charles. In 2019 SNP MP Steven Bonnar and in 1997 the late Labour MP Tony Banks did the same to avoid pledging allegiance to the Queen. Accusing the latest offender of thinking his gesture was ‘funny’, Lord Moore rages: ‘By doing so, he was not expressing legitimate (if misguided) republican sentiments: he was cheating.’ Name the anti-Royalist Charles!

PRINCE Philip might guffaw at the burgeoning campaign to have a statue of the Queen erected in Trafalgar or Parliament Square. He agreed to have a statue of himself, next to the Queen, carved for the west front of Canterbury Cathedral in 2015. At its unveiling he mused that his image bore an uncanny resemblanc­e to Boris Karloff, muttering: ‘I’m sure the pigeons will like it.’

COMEDIAN Michael McIntyre wails about his weight, saying he devours wife Kitty’s leftovers. Kitty, pictured, daughter of late actor Simon Ward, allows hubby to finish her breakfasts. ‘I eat all of her potatoes and her gnocchi,’ he says, pointing to his stomach. ‘This is her crust. This is 20 years of crust, it should be on her flat tummy. These are her gnocchi boobs.’ Why isn’t Macca as funny on stage?

THE Queen never lost her taste for driving. Famously, she terrified Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah at Balmoral in 1998 when she took the driving seat. ‘Abdullah’s nervousnes­s only increased as the Queen, an army driver in wartime, accelerate­d the Land Rover along the narrow Scottish estate roads, talking all the time,’ recalls former Foreign Office mandarin Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles. ‘Through his interprete­r, the [then] crown prince implored the Queen to slow down and concentrat­e on the road ahead.’ Was HM making a subtle point about women not being allowed to drive in the desert kingdom.

AS Prince Charles’s communicat­ions adviser, Julian Payne consistent­ly poopoed suggestion­s that HRH travelled the world with a loo seat given to him by Princess Anne. Now he tackles the new King’s alleged fussiness with eggs, pontificat­ing: ‘Despite rumours that the King is served a line of eggs to choose from every morning, I never saw a single boiled egg at breakfast in all the years I worked there.’ The tale was first revealed in Catherine Mayer’s biography of Charles and it was about the eggs prepared for him when he returned from hunting. Nothing to do with breakfast.

IRISH foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney reminds King Charles of his pledge to visit every one of Ireland’s 32 counties. ‘I’m slightly amazed to find that we’ve managed to visit 15 counties already,’ he said. ‘I am quite determined before I drop dead and finally lose my marbles that I should get around to the remaining 17.’ Now that he is monarch how will he find the time to fulfil his promise?

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