Ephraim Hardcastle
SCOURGE of pensioners Clare Sumner – the BBC policy director who wants inspectors to check over 75s TV licences – is no stranger to controversy. When the Queen Mother died in 2002, she was Tony Blair’s private secretary and tried to cover up his bid to muscle in on her funeral. She asked Black Rod, Lieutenant General Sir Michael Willcocks, to back Blair’s claim that accurate Press reports of his meddling were untrue. Willcocks, who was in charge of the Queen Mother’s lying in state, sent her packing.
INTRIGUING similarities between Boris and Edwardian PM Herbert Asquith. Both Balliol College men, neither much bothered by policy detail and both priapic. Asquith enjoyed ‘the companionship of clever and attractive women’ whom his second wife, Margot, named The Harem. Let’s hope the similarities end there. Asquith became an alcoholic in Downing Street.
MARRIED twice and with a maîtresseen-titre, Boris joins a leader’s club including Jeremy Corbyn (three wives), Nigel Farage (two and a long affair) and Donald Trump (three). Monogamy seems to be as out of fashion as Theresa May.
PETITIONERS protesting at the Duke of Westminster’s plans to demolish Stack House in Belgravia should seek support from Prince Charles. It was here, in a ground floor flat, that Camilla Shand – pictured at the time – first invited Charles, then aged 22, for coffee after a night at Annabel’s. Could HRH organise a heritage plaque on the site?
WHY has Alan Rusbridger, principal of Oxford’s Lady Margaret Hall, appointed football pundit Gary Lineker as a visiting fellow? Perhaps because they’re both prominent Remainers. Might Gary use his first lecture to explain why he refused a pay cut from his £1.75million salary? He’s still the BBC’s highest paid star.
STRAP-HANGING on the tube, Jeremy Paxman is eyed by a young woman who smiles at him. ‘Joy oh joy!’ he tells Saga magazine. ‘She opened her mouth. She was going to speak to me! Then she said: “Would you like to sit down?” Is there any sentence in the English language more passive-aggressive?’
TALKING up the Boris Johnson premiership, Spectator editor Fraser Nelson recalls him meeting with opposition when he started editing the magazine in 1999, reminding BBC Radio 4’s Today programme listeners: ‘When he was doing my job, somebody said: “It was like handing a ming vase to an ape. But that ming vase ended up in good shape.”’
RECALLING Boris’s selection of Here Comes the Sun on Desert Island Discs, Sarah Montague asks his long-time critic Matthew Parris to sum him up in a song. ‘I’ve settled on The Prodigy’s Smack My B **** Up.’ An embarrassed Montague retorts: ‘I’m not sure you’re allowed to say that on Radio 4!’ Parris responds: ‘Too late!’