Ephraim Hardcastle
WILL Prince Harry take over from Prince Philip as Captain General of the Royal Marines, one of the most prestigious of royal military roles? Since the post was established in 1901, there have been just three holders – Kings George V and George VI and then Philip. In a perfect world Prince Edward would have become Captain General because he’s expected to inherit his father’s dukedom of Edinburgh. But he quit the Marines after four months in 1987. So Afghanistan veteran Harry is the favourite.
FOR her six hours in Luxembourg last week, the Duchess of Cambridge – pictured on the trip – was accompanied by her private secretary, Rebecca Priestley, as well as the Queen’s Sir Christopher Geidt, and ex-diplomat Sir David Manning, a member of Team Cambridge. Coaching Kate on royal do’s and don’ts is wise but not if her natural freshness is lost. Or if it turns her into the scary, monarch-toppling schemer depicted in BBC 2’s fictional King Charles III.
TORY candidate Sir Nicholas Soames, 69, campaigns in his Mid Sussex constituency astride a white horse. The late Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater was also fond of appearing on horseback. Referring to his Arizona background, Democrat rival (and poet) Eugene McCarthy once pointed out: ‘Where, when the sun is at 12 o’clock high, it’s always difficult to distinguish the white horse of victory from the pale horse of death.’
STEPHEN Fry, whose US sitcom The Great Indoors is cancelled after one series, endures unflattering reviews here and in America. ‘An unfunny failure… insufferable bore… shallow and essentially flat’ are comments about the show. Is there a silver lining to this cloud? Fry, 59, and his civil law husband, Elliott Spencer, 29, pictured, might decide not to desert our shores permanently for Hollywood, as threatened!
NOVELIST Kathy Lette, 58, confides: ‘Cute guy on plane just told me rules of Mile High Club – someone new, not the crew and not in the loo’. Sound advice, but isn’t it a mercy that Kathy’s (second) husband of 27 years, Geoffrey Robertson QC, 70, hasn’t become a High Court judge? Her tweets – unthinkable from the spouse of a judge – are increasingly saucy. Commenting on French president Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte – his former teacher, 24 years his senior – Kathy imagines her asking him to include in his homework ‘five orgasms nightly’.
ANT and Dec dedicate their Bafta TV award for fronting the Queen’s 90th birthday pageant to the monarch. She already has one on the shelf (or in some remote royal basement) presented in 2013. Meanwhile, Netflix’s The Crown, a warts-and-all take on the monarchy, admired by practically everyone, fails to make an impression on Bafta judges. Are they kowtowing to their current president, Prince William?!