Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Duchess of Sussex will continue to receive royalties (!) from Suits, her successful Netflix TV show, but her main income now is from Prince Harry, who relies on the trust fund set up by his late mother, Diana, and cash from his father, Prince Charles. My source says: ‘Meghan’s finances are kept distinct from Harry’s to minimise any confusion while still a US citizen and protect her from America’s aggressive Internal Revenue Service.’ The IRS website warns: ‘Your worldwide income is subject to US income tax, regardless of where you reside.’
MPs on the public administration and constitutional affairs committee call for members of the House of Lords to be culled by 200 and capped at 600. Committee chairman and Tory MP Bernard Jenkin points out: ‘When the cap of 600 peers has been achieved, almost 20 per cent of the Upper House will comprise of bishops and hereditary peers. Such a House will not be representative of the diversity of the modern United Kingdom.’ The threatened removal of hereditaries worries palace flunkeys. They provide ‘a convenient constitutional fig leaf’ for a hereditary head of state.
PLAYWRIGHT Sir John Mortimer’s actress daughter Emily has revealed how she tried to ingratiate herself with Martin Scorcese, pictured with her, telling him he looked ‘dashing’ at an Oscars ceremony. The Raging Bull director replied disconcertingly: ‘Really? I’d come out in hives that morning and smothered myself in hydrocortisone cream. Then I got paranoid that the cream would come off on my tuxedo. So I wrapped tape over the cream and the hives. I didn’t feel in the least bit dashing, but I’m so pleased you thought so.’
OPINIONATED classicist Mary Beard isn’t impressed by a newly unearthed fresco in Pompeii depicting the legend of Leda (wife of the king of Sparta) canoodling with a swan, saying: ‘I don’t think any artist has been able to make Leda and the swan a remotely plausible coupling.’ It was a rape, in other words. I defer to frisky Mary.
RETAIL expert Mary Portas, author of Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto for Change, says: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if Theresa May said she made a mistake?’ Yet ‘Queen of Shops’ Mary didn’t do so after her Portas Pilots scheme to save 12 small town shops saw closures at a rate of one every 22 days.
STEPHEN Fry says on BBC4’s Saturday Live that his elderly parents drove down to Norfolk for his first book launch party, adding: ‘They were the stars of it. I may have produced a book but they produced me. And everybody was more excited to meet them.’ Who can blame them!?
ATTEMPTS by Tory MP Jacob ReesMogg and colleagues to topple Theresa May – likened to a plot from Dad’s Army – have fellow Old Etonian and Tory backbencher Sir Nicholas Soames gloating: ‘I think that, mercifully, we have reached Peak Mogg. There is a God.’ Walrus-like Sir Nicholas has always resented double-breasted Jacob soaking up in the Brexiteer limelight.