Ephraim Hardcastle
TIPPED as the next chair of the BBC, ex-home secretary Amber Rudd mentions on the radio being chatted up by a male colleague: ‘I was sitting on the backbenches and a rather, erm, friendly Conservative MP came up to me. He’d heard about my outspoken feminism on various issues and in order to ingratiate himself to me, said: “Do you know (Victorian era author) George Eliot was a woman?” I was able to reassure him that I did.’
AFTER the ‘nice car’ occupied by black Labour MP Dawn Butler and a friend is stopped by police, who are filmed at the scene, Tory MP Michael Fabricant announces: ‘I’ve been stopped by the police a number of times. Maybe it was because I am white. Or maybe it was because they thought I had done something wrong. In any event, I treated them with respect, didn’t video it, and didn’t give them gob.’ This won’t have endeared him to Ms Butler, but can he now expect a bouquet of roses from the police?
THE late Princess of Wales forgot she had to put petrol into her car after dispensing with her protection officers who normally filled up the vehicle, says former BBC Royal correspondent Jennie Bond, who appears in Channel 5’s documentary about Diana’s final months tomorrow night. ‘She jettisoned her body guards, her protection officers, which wasn’t a good idea and she said, “I went downstairs to get the car the other day and there was no petrol in it.’’ So she was learning a new way of existing.’ Jettisoning her protection team had far more tragic consequences of course.
BBC weather presenter Carol Kirkwood, pictured, appearing in Greenwich Park just before 8am yesterday told viewers: ‘Look at it, fabulous. The sun is beating down. We’ve seen lots of doggers.’ Hastily correcting herself, she clarified: ‘Lots of not doggers of course. Lots of dog walkers and joggers.’ Later Carol, 58, apologised: ‘That will teach me to try and say joggers and dog walkers in the same sentence. Sorry!’ For those who have lived a sheltered life, doggers are lost souls who prefer to have sexual intercourse al fresco.
ANNOUNCING that Virgin Australia will shed about 3,000 jobs, Sir Richard Branson added that each sacked employee would receive a ‘heart-felt gift’ – a photograph of a Virgin Australia jet signed by himself. He truly is all heart.
DURING HM’s long lockdown at Windsor our 94-year-old monarch occasionally retreated to the small family chapel gutted during the Windsor fire and which was redesigned by Prince Philip. Used for baby Archie Sussex’s secret baptism, the chapel isn’t on the public route. My source says: ‘It’s a bright, cheerful space with a stained glass window, also designed by Philip, depicting firefighters battling the blaze and the castle rising serenely above it all like a phoenix.’
PRINCESS Anne will mark her seventieth birthday this week by cruising around Scotland with her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy James Hamilton Laurence, KCVO, CB, ADC, 65. On a previous voyage their Rustler 44 boat, Ballochbuie, broke down on the remote island of Eigg. A local garage mechanic eventually fitted a £15 part from a Vauxhall Astra to set them on their way.