Ephraim Hardcastle
SIR Keir Starmer, his electoral binoculars clearly focused on a Downing Street residency, reveals to comedian Matt Forde’s podcast that his 12-year-old daughter, whose name has never been publicly disclosed, recently asked: ‘If you win the election, will you move to Downing Street?’ ‘I said “Yes.” She said “Just so you know I am not coming”.’ Might Keir and wife Victoria, who ferociously guard the privacy of their two children, be inconsolable if she doesn’t have a change of mind?
AT the Coronation one of the former landed gentry who will present the King with gold spurs made for Charles II in 1661 will be the 23rd Baron Hastings. A former actor, Delaval Astley, he played Cameron Fraser in The Archers and disappeared into the night after a fling with Elizabeth, daughter of Phil and Jill Archer.
DONNING his environmental champion crown, King Charles is rewriting his 2017 Ladybird book on Climate Change. Any chance of him reprising his 1990 skit with John Cleese, ‘Grime Goes Green: Your Business and the Environment’? HM played the straight man, mistaken for a drains inspector, to Cleese’s very environmentally unfriendly Grime. Perhaps not.
PRINCESS Margaret’s chauffeur David Griffin, who has died, was once driving her back to her Kensington Palace apartment when she spotted an elderly figure walking on the private drive. ‘Run that man d ow n , ’ instructed Margaret, pictured in her prime. ‘He ruined my life.’ Griffin wisely ignored her instruction to terminate Sir Tommy Lascelles, King George VI’s private secretary who had prevented her marrying the love of her life Group Captain Peter Townsend.
HIS books now being controversially edited by woke censors, Roald Dahl didn’t bond with Sir Sean Connery when hired to write the screenplay for 1967 Bond movie, You Only Live Twice. ‘He was the only man making a million in the film and he never stood anyone a round,’ wailed Dahl. ‘He is not an attractive personality.’ Pot and kettle Roald!
WORLD of Sport’s Dickie Davies, who has died aged 94, once impressed with natty outfits purchased in New York. ‘American clothes were all the rage and I’d come back with suits that were the envy of every dance hall in Southampton,’ he boasted, explaining they were from a shady emporium selling clothes recovered from morgues: ‘You had to check the back of the jacket for invisible mending where perhaps a knife had been stuck in and you always had to watch out for bullet holes.’ Wasn’t life grand Dickie!
SIXTY years after Dick van Dyke unveiled, to derision, his Mary Poppins Cockney accent as Bert the chimney sweep, he offers an explanation. ‘Disney sent me a guy to coach me. His Cockney wasn’t very good to start with... he was an Irishman.’