Ephraim Hardcastle
SIR John Major’s bitterly expressed support for the Remain campaign prompts former lover (and Brexit supporter) Edwina Currie, the former Tory minister, to comment on their 1984-to-1988 affair. Replying to a hostile social media message accusing her of having ‘slept’ with Major, Ms Currie tweets: ‘We didn’t sleep...’ But (as she wrote in a memoir) they did take baths together. Fondly she added that gentlemanly Sir John always sat with his back to the taps. THE 13th Marquess of Lothian, ex-Tory MP Michael Ancram, 70, was startled when his fragrant daughter, Lady Mary Kerr, 35, was described in a Times marriage notice as the new wife of ‘Lady Z Adler.’ In fact, she’d married a Mr Z.Adler. ‘A marriage of titled sapphists looked too good to be true – and so it was!’ says my source. WHY no royal message of sympathy to the family of the late Muhammad Ali, who in 1976 was introduced to the Queen in Washington DC, pictured, during US bicentenary celebrations? Foreign kings and presidents will be in Louisville, Kentucky, for Friday’s obsequies, but a Buckingham Palace official tells me: ‘It’s the same day as the St Paul’s service celebrating the Queen’s birthday. So it clashes. There was no message of sympathy.’ CHARLES and Camilla’s absence from the Queen’s 90th birthday Patron’s Lunch street event on Sunday is a talking point among courtiers. ‘With the lunch dogged by controversy over charging charities £150 a head to attend, poor sales, an undisclosed fee paid to the Queen’s grandson Peter Phillips for organising it, Charles’s retreat looks like a shrewd move,’ says my source. WHILE noisy disc jockey Chris Evans, 50, struggles to establish himself as the new host of BBC2’s Top Gear, predecessor Jeremy Clarkson, 56, posts on social media a three-minute video of himself attempting to put together a cardboard box. Some say it’s more entertaining than the new Top Gear. JOHN Cleese, 76, enjoys taunting former Monty Python colleague and TV travel presenter Michael Palin, 73. He says: ‘His wife [of 50 years] Helen just told me, “He’s away making another f ****** boring travel programme.” ’ I wonder if Palin harbours private doubts about Cleese’s worldwide comedy tours. GMB union chief Tim Roache’s swipe at Tory Brexit campaigner Priti Patel, 44 – ‘Priti Patel, surely a contradiction in her name,’ he sneered – is considered ungallant. Ms Patel is too refined to ponder the abusive possibilities of Roache’s appearance and name. BILLIONAIRE Mike Ashley was accompanied at his appearance before MPs by a foppish-looking figure, Keith Bishop, who describes himself as ‘one of the best names in the PR business,’ with a ‘stunning range of skills,’ and says his address book ‘has been compared with a particularly hefty volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica…’ Certainly a forceful advocate for himself.