Ephraim Hardcastle
HAVING axed English National Opera’s £12.6million annual financial lifeline, Arts Council England has awarded an estimated £17,000 to a ludicrous touring show which mocks the death of Diana and has the late Queen admitting to plotting her death. Diana: The Untold And Untrue Story, a solo show by Swedish actor Linus Karp, has Diana surviving and breaking into Buckingham Palace to kill the monarch. Charles and Camilla do not escape theatrical insult with Diana calling the new Queen the ‘sl*g of death’. There is also an offensive sex scene between Camilla (a puppet monster) and Charles (a cardboard popup), where Charles performs what is termed colloquially as a ‘yodel in the valley’. The execrable spoof is subtitled: ‘A very stupid show.’ Ditto the Arts Council.
FINGERS crossed that the King’s invitation to Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, to stay at Clarence House on the eve of his Saturday coronation goes better than the experience of his predecessor Hermann Adler. For Edward VII’s 1902 Saturday crowning he stayed at Westminster’s Western Synagogue so that he could comply with Shabbat rules to be within walking distance of the Abbey. During the coronation, the synagogue was burgled and Hermann lost his travelling case and a pair of silver Sabbath candlesticks. ‘A sad reward for his loyalty!’ wailed the synagogue historian.
SUSANNAH Constantine, pictured, only feels remorse about a single celebrity debunking on her wardrobe critique show What Not To Wear. She told Radio Times: ‘The one thing I do regret was when Jo Brand did our show. I have little whiskers on my chin, which I pluck, and she had a little whisker on her chin, which I plucked and it really offended her. I’m really ashamed, looking back.’ Isn’t bristly Jo a laugh-free zone?
DID Julian Lennon, in his brief selfie encounter with Paul McCartney, kiss and make up after his outburst when not invited to Macca’s 2011 wedding to Nancy Shevell? ‘Wow... snubbed at Macca’s wedding,’ he wailed. ‘What have I done to be ignored in such a way?’ Shouldn’t McCartney have warbled a few reconciliatory verses of We Can Work It Out in the dutyfree shop at Heathrow?
RECORD Company mogul David English, who has died, kept Eric Clapton company while his then wife Pattie Boyd dressed upstairs for an evening out. ‘She was taking ages and he wrote a song while he was fuming at her,’ recalled David, also known as the godfather of English cricket. And the song? Clapton’s most romantic composition Wonderful Tonight.
ACCORDING to Olivia Williams, who plays Camilla in The Crown, Dominic West would happily exchange his stellar acting career to be Charles in real life. ‘Dominic swears he would do that deal,’ she notes. ‘He says for Highgrove and the Aston Martin he would be prepared to do it.’ Would he hire Charles’s favourite landscape designer, his wife Catherine FitzGerald, as Highgrove gardener?