Ephraim Hardcastle
WILLIAM and Kate’s attendance at last week’s wedding of Jordan’s crown prince underlines how cherished are relations with desert royalty. Attending overseas royal weddings usually falls to Edward and Sophie but a source says that they would have been too low-ranking for this one. And Kings Charles and Abdullah remain best mates despite the latter putting his half-brother Prince Hamzah under house arrest after he was implicated in a thwarted coup last May.
ROYALS are good at looking the other way when the need arises, as with Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed, allegedly involved in the kidnap of two of his daughters and found in court – on the balance of probabilities – to have been involved in a campaign of intimidation against ex-wife Princess Haya. The Sheikh remains an honorary Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George and attended the late Queen’s funeral. No doubt Royal Ascot beckons.
EAMONN Holmes is left red-faced on GB News when, unaware he and co-host Isabel Webster were back on air after an ad break, she exclaims: ‘I’m a bitch... if only they knew!’ Eamonn laughs: ‘If only they knew!’ Isabel adds: ‘Pussycat me!’ Eamonn then grumpily mumbles about his commute: ‘How the f*** do you get home today?’ Makes a change from twisting the knife into Phillip Schofield.
REMINDING Twitter fans of her memorable photoshoot – when she posed topless with a large conger eel wrapped around her neck to protect her modesty – Gillian Anderson, pictured, now earnestly promoting a
Brussels overfishing protest, announces: ‘In 2013, I posed for this picture to support fishlove2020’s campaign combating destructive deep sea fishing in Europe.’ How is the conger career-wise, Gillian?
BLETCHLEY Park omits Philip Larkin from its World Poetry Day celebrations despite his unsuccessful wartime job application there. ‘I felt that soon after I started work there,’ he wrote to friend Kingsley Amis, ‘I should be put in a wooden box and lowered into a hole in the earth.’ Larkin Society stalwart Tim Whittaker observes: ‘60 years later Larkin is still persona non grata at Bletchley.’
BOB Cramp, who has died, photographed the famous ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ dole queue poster. Promised 150 Tory volunteers for the shoot, he had to make do with 30, who posed five times and swapped clothes so no one would notice the duplication. Labour bigwig Denis Healey denounced it as ‘soap-powder advertising’. It worked. Margaret Thatcher ousted Denis and his chums in 1979’s landslide election victory.
HUNGARIAN Ambassador to the Holy See Eduard Habsburg presents Pope Francis with a Spanish-Hungarian dictionary, explaining: ‘Which language will we speak in heaven? Hungarian! Because you need an eternity to learn it.’