Ephraim Hardcastle
PUBLICITY addict MP Keith Vaz has jumped on the bandwagon started by Indian MP Shashi Tharoor, who recently demanded the return to India of the Koh-i-Noor diamond – part of the late Queen Mother’s platinum crown – while addressing the Oxford Union. Vaz has called for David Cameron to return the priceless gem when Indian PM Narendra Modi visits the UK in November. The crown was on the QM’s coffin during her funeral procession. Asked if she thought it should be returned to India, the Queen Mother, the last Empress of India, once said: ‘The crown would look terribly odd without it. You can’t just put a piece of glass or a hard boiled egg in its place.’
ADMIRERS of the late Sir Peter ‘Voice of Racing’ O’Sullevan, who has died aged 97, hardly recognised him in yesterday’s Guardian obituary, which said he was difficult to work with, failed to socialise with colleagues and had few close friends. It was written by fellow BBC commentator Julian Wilson, who might have had an axe to grind. He felt betrayed when O’Sullevan continued to work after the age of 65, failing to make way for understudy Wilson, who died last year aged 73.
BRITAIN’S answer to America’s ‘combover king’ Donald Trump, the Tory MP Michael Fabricant, 65, announces: ‘I am stuck on a BA plane at Heathrow with a faulty door. Should’ve taken off 65 mins ago. Can’t we fly with the door ajar for fresh air?’ Isn’t it time we saw Fabricant perform his comedy live at the Apollo?
LORD Lloyd-Webber is disappointed his exwife Sarah Brightman, 54, pictured, will not be performing the special song he and Leslie Bricusse wrote for her now-cancelled visit to the Russian space station. He raises an interesting question in The Stage: ‘No one has really worked out what or whether you can sing in space – a voice is a muscle, and, given that you’re weightless, I’m not convinced as I’d like to be that you can actually sing.’ Would a Lloyd Webber song be the first thing we’d choose Martians to hear?
FOLLOWING news that kooky actress Diane Keaton will play a nun opposite a fictional pope played by Jude Law in a new US TV series set in the Vatican, we may wonder if the casting was cynically designed to provoke controversy. Frisky Law, 42, has fathered five children by three different women (to date) while Ms Keaton, 69, boasts past high-profile romances with Al Pacino, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson and Woody Allen. Perhaps Jack Nicholson and ‘twerking’ star Miley Cyrus would have been worse.
WITH the royal corgis and dorgis at Balmoral, their Buckingham Palace walkers held their annual dog party to celebrate their absence. Footmen are the happiest to see the dogs go, knowing they’ll be spared walking duty for two months. But my source says the staff should not get too cocky. ‘The Queen’s spy network is as robust as ever and she knows those who are most anti-corgi. They might find their Christmas presents are from the Royal Collection’s new range of corgi memorabilia – cuddly dogs for £15.95 or a corgi iPad cover for £14.95 – rather than receiving the traditional gift voucher.’