Ephraim Hardcastle
PRISON chaplain Jonathan Aitken, finishing a ten-day Christmas ministry at Pentonville, marks a bizarre 20th anniversary. On December 30, 1999, the former Cabinet minister, with only two weeks left in his seven-month term for perjury, was switched to a high-security jail after wardens uncovered a plot to dope him with sex drug Rohypnol and photograph him in bed with a naked fellow prisoner in a £40,000 newspaper sting. ‘They wanted to sell a story that I was gay,’ recalls turn-the-other-cheek Jonners.
BBC Radio 4’s weekend dramatisation of Spike Milligan’s comic novel Puckoon might be interpreted by Brexiteers as pro-Remain. Set in 1924, it’s all about the ‘inadequacy of bureaucrats’ creating the border after the partition of Ireland. Charged with sorting out the mess, the lead character Dan Milligan is described as manipulated, feckless and lazy. Surely no dig intended at Boris, who will be doing it for real.
MIA Tindall, pictured, already inhaling in preparation for extinguishing her six birthday candles next month, is about to visit Australia, with mum Zara admitting she doesn’t want her playing rugby like her dad. ‘They say rugby is like being in two car crashes a week,’ says Zara. ‘I don’t think I would be able to watch my daughters do that.’ Dad Mike reassuringly adds: ‘I keep giving Mia a golf club. Why don’t you play golf, I say?’
PRINCESS ANNE’S Gatcombe Park cleaner Sandra Marshall gets the Royal Victorian Order, an honour entirely within HM’s personal gift. Also favoured are the Queen’s national hunt manager, a secretary, a buildings adviser, two postmen, Charles’s head valet, several archivists and conservators, an accountant and private secretary Edward Young. This latest batch of Royal Victorians should think themselves very lucky. The gong used to be in lieu of a pay rise.
APROPOS the RVO: Despite Harry and Meghan’s lack of Court Circular engagements, Clara Loughran, their senior programme manager, gets the RVO. So too does Princess Anne’s programme supremo Susanna Cross. With Anne vying with Charles as the busiest royal, who works hardest – Susanna or Clara?
JOHN Cleese, 80, tweets: ‘Gutted to have missed out once again on the New Year’s Honours List .... relieved HMG have not revealed my private information to the hordes of hackers, burglars and assassins lurking out there.’ The Lib Dem supporter turned down Paddy Ashdown’s offer of a peerage because it would have meant spending winters in the UK.
TOM Watson, known as Tommy Two-Dinners before his dramatic diet, squirmed next to Health Secretary Alan Johnson in 2008 as he set out his anti-obesity strategy. Says Watson: ‘I knew people would think, “Try telling that to the guy next to you!”’