Ephraim Hardcastle
LIBIDINOUS Rod Liddle claims that when he was editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today show in the Nineties male and female staff were enthuastically indulging in sex, telling The Spectator: ‘Everybody was at it then, all the time. All over the place. Most memorably for me underneath the giant satellite dish on top of the White City building.’ Shouldn’t his successor Sarah Sands organise a heritage plaque for Rod?
THE Queen put her foot down when Boris requested a lunchtime audience on Wednesday. He wanted to be filmed departing Buckingham Palace and going straight to the Downing Street lectern to start the Tory election campaign. HM was off to Kent on Royal British Legion Business, so BoJo was told to pop up the Mall after breakfast instead.
PLEASED-with-herself actress Olivia Colman, pictured, ludicrously says the Queen – whom she plays in The Crown – is ‘a leftie’. Her evidence? She ‘loved’ Harold Wilson. This is an old canard, put about by Wilson himself. In fact her favourite PM after Churchill was tweedy Alec Douglas-Home, who knew his way round a grouse moor.
WHAT would War of the Worlds author HG Wells make of Eleanor Tomlinson starring as ‘Amy’ in the BBC’s adaptation? He’d probably scour the manuscript in a fruitless search for any reference to her. Says Eleanor: ‘She doesn’t actually figure in the book so I had free rein.’
RAISED eyebrows at Labour MP Dennis Skinner seeking re-election at the age of 87, in the hope of succeeding Ken Clarke as Father of the House. The pro-Brexiter’s constituency voted 70 per cent for Remain and his majority dipped from over 27,000 in 1997 to 5,000 in 2017. The voters might not grant the Beast his wish.
DOWNTON’S Hugh Bonneville complains that writer Julian Fellowes makes his character the Earl too stupid, saying: ‘Sometimes I’d get frustrated with the character’s low IQ – he would finish the season relatively well and then suddenly he would be incredibly thick at the beginning of the next.’ Has anyone noticed the difference?
THE resignation of Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns, over claims he lied, means four of the last ten holders of the job have resigned over scandals. Ron Davies fell on his sword in 1998 after a moment of madness during a homosexual encounter, Peter Hain and Stephen Crabbe, both later Pensions Secretaries, resigned in 2008 and 2016 respectively. Poisoned chalice?
THE late Arthur Miller might chuckle at theatrical paper The Stage’s review of his Death of a Salesman at London’s Piccadilly Theatre, where a ceiling collapsed. ‘Unremittingly crushing,’ it observes.