Ephraim Hardcastle
DISTINGUISHED broadcaster Tom Mangold accuses the BBC of justifying BLM’s claim that Winston Churchill was a racist after News at Ten’s huw edwards presented Tuesday’s report on the wartime PM’s handling of the 1943 Bengal Famine. Mangold says it ‘effectively makes it a hard fact that Churchill was a racist who was indifferent to the death of thousands of Indians’. In an email to a senior BBC News executive, ex-Panorama presenter Tom adds: ‘BLM must today be sobbing with gratitude that their attack on Britain’s greatest statesman has been justified by the most authoritative, credible broadcast news outlet in the world.’
MEANWHILE Radio 4’s Today dedicated a lengthy segment on Tuesday to lambasting Churchill’s record in India with a rant from Indian MP and author Shashi Tharoor, accusing him of being an ‘odious figure of reprehensible views and racist attitudes’. And, recalling the 1943 Bengal Famine, Oxford historian Yasmin Khan claimed Churchill prioritised ‘white lives and European lives over south Asian lives’. Surely someone should have been invited to defend the PM? His biographer Andrew Roberts, who wasn’t asked on the programme, insists: ‘Churchill was in London concentrating on trying to win the Second World War. He is innocent of all the charges brought against him.’ Explains the BBC: ‘The report made clear Churchill didn’t cause the famine but has been accused by some of making it worse.’
LORD Archer’s legal action against his former literary agency Curtis Brown, claiming £500,000 plus £250,000 interest in allegedly unpaid book deal cash, put paid to Jeffrey’s regular squash games with his friend and Curtis Brown president Jonathan Lloyd. Now that the case has been settled, with the two sides agreeing they are ‘no longer in dispute’, will the cosy sports sessions resume? And might Jonathan get a summer invitation to Jeffrey and Mary’s palatial retreat in Majorca?
THE Duchess of Cambridge’s school chum Emma Sayle, pictured, has been busy with her bespoke swingers club Killing Kittens, discovering what lockdown Britons have been utilising as DIY sex aids. She explains: ‘Using wine racks as a sex toy was a new one even for us.’ When she and Kate next meet they’ll have more to chat about than dorm life at Downe House!
A ShARP intake of breath from Dame Cressida Dick when asked by LBC’s Nick Ferrari for her recollections on yesterday’s 15th anniversary of the fatal police shooting of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes (she was police commander on the day). ‘I just remember the moment when I heard a man had been shot,’ she eventually replied. Small comfort, perhaps, to the de Menezes family.
CAMP crooner Boy George complains on Twitter: ‘I’ve been interfered with by Russians.’ Actor Laurence Fox cheekily asks: ‘Who hasn’t, darling?’ Email: john.mcentee@dailymail.co.uk