Ephraim Hardcastle
EX-BBC producer Sam McAlister, who set up Andrew’s disastrous Newsnight interview, would have cancelled the chat if she was the Duke of York’s agent. ‘I would have faked a fainting fit, pushed an emergency alarm button or pretended he had to answer an urgent call and rushed him out of the room,’ she says. Surely the royal should have smelt a rat when pushy Sam first approached him? ‘I know that calling him “Randy Andy” was risky, crazy risky even,’ she recalls. The lights may be on in the disgraced duke’s head but is there anyone at home?
KING Charles, receiving the Scottish Honours today, is spared the brouhaha which overshadowed his mother’s Caledonian crowning when Scots refused to accept the Queen Elizabeth II cypher on post boxes because Elizabeth I had never reigned north of the border. Boxes carrying the new Queen’s cypher were routinely covered in tar until EIIR was replaced with an image of Scotland’s crown instead. Fortunately for King Charles, whose two namesakes had coronations in London and Scotland, has no such problem.
DAME Joan Bakewell, 90, co-host of Sky’s Portrait Artist Of The Year for a decade, has been made redundant. ‘Sadly I’ve been dropped!’ wails Joan, pictured. ‘It’s not the case in the immediate future, it’s in the longterm when the next year comes around.’ Asked if she’s been told she’s ‘too old’ for the job, Joan responds: ‘I don’t think anyone would dare say that, I think it’s probably against the law.’ Shouldn’t jettisoning evergreen Joan be outlawed?
SPY scribbler Ben Macintyre should have been nudging champagne corks aloft when Operation Mincemeat, a play about his Second World War tale of duping Hitler about the invasion of Sicily, opened in the West End. Alas he is receiving no royalties as the authors claim the story is in the public domain. ‘It’s a slightly sore point,’ he tells Radio Times. ‘There’s a character and details no one knew about until my book. I haven’t been able to bring myself to see the musical.’
REVEALING that Fawlty Towers fans are unlikely to see his remake any time soon, John Cleese blames an overenthusiastic factotum. ‘The trouble is one of the producers wanted to promote himself a little bit and sent out a press release without warning anyone, and suddenly everyone got excited over something that hardly exists,’ says Cleese, adding: ‘We don’t have an idea yet – we have half an idea.’
WHEN Joe Biden meets King Charles on Monday he will become the first US President to meet two reigning monarchs, having greeted the late Queen at Windsor in 2021. Before he was president, Dwight Eisenhower, then an army general, surprised King George VI and his daughter Elizabeth on a visit to Windsor Castle. ‘We all dived under the table and hid until his party had gone,’ recalled the late Queen. Should Trump be re-elected and visit Windsor might Charles and Camilla repeat the exercise?