Ephraim Hardcastle
THE national lockdown prompts discreet redrawing of Operation London Bridge, the contingency blueprint for the Queen’s funeral. While her demise is highly unlikely, the current emergency rules out the elaborate procession, lying in state, public Westminster Abbey service and Buckingham Palace mass vigil in the original plan. The pageant would be reduced to unprecedented simplicity, while for Operation Forth Bridge – for Prince Philip’s funeral – the planners might opt for his wish for a ‘no fuss’ sendoff with a small scale funeral at Windsor, followed later with a thanksgiving service at the Abbey.
THE formal opening of new hospitals has become a royal tradition but not in the case of the emergency 4,000-bed Nightingale Hospital at the Excel Centre in London. Not having a royal inauguration would not meet with the approval of Queen Mary who relished the task declaring: ‘We are never tired and we love hospitals.’
JEREMY Corbyn’s spin doctor Seumas Milne was kicked out of the Commons press gallery during his boss’s last PMQS for taking photographs. This contravened rules and a doorkeeper promptly told him, ‘Get out!’ He took his dismissal like the public schoolboy he was, leaving without a protest.
ITN’s Mary Nightingale, pictured, confirms that TV make up artists are not key workers with her tweet: ‘For all of you worried I don’t look well, it’s probably because I’ve started doing my own makeup... I can’t really lecture viewers on social distancing if I’m having someone that close to me every day. So I’m on my own now.’
TWO months after the death of Terry Jones, his fellow Python Eric Idle tweets John Cleese in Los Angeles: ‘This is not a good time to die as no one would come to your funeral.’ Cleese’s response? ‘So Jonesy was cleverer than we thought.’
PESTERED by fans to repeat his catchphrase from the TV series Succession, Scots actor Brian Cox obliges, explaining: ‘People are asking me all the time to tell them to “f*** off’’. Quite frankly, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to do, because you really do want them to f*** off.’
IN CONTRAST to the closure of the Ritz Hotel – the first in its 114-year existence – King Vajiralongkorn of Thailand is enjoying luxury in a Bavarian hotel with a large retinue including a harem of 20 women. Despite all German hotels being closed, he has been given a special dispensation.
MORE than 400 years before the toilet roll panic, Rabelais, in his satirical novel Gargantua and Pantagruel, suggests various alternatives, plumping for ‘the neck of a goose, that is well downed’. To paraphrase Blue Peter: ‘Don’t try this at home.’