Ephraim Hardcastle
LOOKING bored and seemingly reading a magazine, Prince Charles’s consort Camilla didn’t look overjoyed while listening to their formal welcome at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane. ‘To be fair, having had her hair done and then being seated in what seemed to be a wind tunnel next to the man who wants to abolish you (anti-monarchy Australian premier Malcolm Turnbull) might test the best of us,’ says my source. Clearly out of her comfort zone, Camilla’s due to fly home today while Charles continues his tour.
LUCIANO Pavarotti died aged 71 in 2007, José Carreras, also 71, ‘simply can’t do it any more’ (says one critic) but Plácido Domingo, 77, pictured, last of the Three Tenors, is getting warm reviews, playing the father of the title character in Verdi’s Luisa Miller at New York’s Metropolitan Opera. ‘It is as if Roger Federer were still winning Wimbledon a decade from now,’ marvels the New York Times.
SUPerANNUATeD Labour dinosaur John Prescott, 79, boasts in his two-part Channel 5 TV series, Made In yorkshire, beginning on April 10: ‘As a politician I’ve spent more time inside factories than most people have had hot dinners.’ yet the exdeputy PM, put to work by the show in a North yorkshire warehouse packing 1,200 premium sausages a minute, is told: ‘you aren’t fast enough – you’re causing havoc!’ Assigned to fill chocolate selection boxes in Skipton, he whinnies: ‘Not sure I’m cut out for this – thank God I don’t have to do it for a living!’ Or anything else!
WHILE gentlemanly Tory MP Jacob ReesMogg is jokingly accused of aping the Beano’s bespectacled, well-behaved schoolboy Walter the Softy, the character did pose problems at the 80-year-old comic. Former Beano editor Euan Kerr has said: ‘The relationship between Dennis [the Menace] and Walter worried me. There were accusations from certain quarters that it was a little like gay-bashing. We decided to make sure that, even though he and Dennis didn’t get along, Walter was completely happy about who he was and a confident, likeable character in his own right.’ Just like Brexiteer Rees-Mogg while being bashed by Remainers.
ANTI-Brexit QC Jessica Simor, of Leftleaning Matrix Chambers, says on Twitter that, as a neutral broadcaster, Andrew Neil belongs to ‘an elite tribe never called to account.’ Paisley-born Neil, 68, referring to French-speaking, St Paul’s educated Ms Simor’s snootier background, responds: ‘There is no more exclusive tribe in the UK than Oxford-educated QCs operating out of elite London chambers. Need some selfawareness here.’ Touche!
OFF to the great parade ground in the sky at the age of 96 is Captain Gerald Bryan of No 11 (Scottish) Commando. While training at Lochailort, Inverness-shire, he spotted a figure in the dark and wrestled ‘the enemy’ to the ground. ‘Do you know who I am?’ asked the man. ‘I’m Lord Lovat!’ Bryan replied: ‘And do you know who I am?’ When Lovat said he had no clue, Bryan whispered, ‘Thank God! and slipped into the night.