Ephraim Hardcastle
DID the Queen congratulate President Donald Trump on the occasion of his inauguration? No mention is made of her doing so on the official website, The Home Of The Royal Family. A spokesman says HM did congratulate Trump, but adds: ‘We have confirmed the fact of the message but haven’t made the text of it public.’ How curious.
THE Prime Minister is expected to issue an invitation from the Queen to Mr Trump to make a state visit here, when she meets him on Friday. Theresa May is reported to have studied (a month before it was made public) the controversial dossier about The Donald’s alleged antics with prostitutes in Moscow circa 2013. Did she pop a copy into the palace’s red box for HM’s perusal?
MRS May has yet to be invited to Clarence House for a one-to-one with the Prince of Wales although she’s been Prime Minister for six months. Might environmentally-minded Charles be peeved she’s abolished No 10’s climate change department, established in 2008 by Gordon Brown and continued by David Cameron?
TOP West End producer Sonia Friedman, 51, pictured, describes the BBC’s new Saturday night talent show Let It Shine – auditioning for a new boy band musical – as ‘massive free advertising’. She tells Radio Times: ‘I do have a moral issue. I still find it difficult to understand how a public corporation can be funding a commercial operation.’ Good point.
PROMOTING her new BBC series, comedienne Tracey Ullman, 57, mentions veteran feminist Germaine Greer, 77, whom she impersonates. She calls her ‘intellectually homeless’, adding: ‘So I play her at a bus stop looking homeless.’ Self-exiled in California for 30 years, Ms Ullman might be displaying psychological projection – displacing unwanted feelings onto another person.
ASKED by the Times Literary Supplement to name her favourite fictional character, US lady of letters Joyce Carol Oates, 78, replies, ‘Our newly-elected US President’, adding that he’s a ‘psychopath crudely plagiarised from absurdist French playwright Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (King Ubu)’. Which you’ll recall was a wild comic satire about power, overturning cultural rules and conventions, which opened (and closed) amid riotous scenes in Paris on December 10, 1896.
WEST Yorkshire Playhouse says its new production of Romeo & Juliet ‘captures the impact of raging inter-generational conflict and social unrest in a sharply resonant present-day setting’. Artistic director James Brining explains: ‘Our staging of this 400-year-old play asks the audience to reflect on how we live together in the present moment; particularly as the UK goes about exiting the EU.’ Might the Bard have been a Brexiteer?
MELANIA Trump, 46, ‘is simply the most beautiful first lady in American history’, tweets thrice-married Republican bigwig Newt Gingrich, 73. The old tadpole then spoils it by typing: ‘She’ll bring a Sophia Lauren [sic] look to the White House.’