Ephraim Hardcastle
CHARLES and Camilla shouldn’t fret that former Appeal Court judge Sir Peter Gross’s review of the Human Rights Act will affect their 2005 Windsor wedding. Their civil union, arguably forbidden under the 1949 Marriages Act, was enabled by the legislation. Tony Blair’s Lord Chancellor at the time, Charlie Falconer, masterminded a scheme to prove the European convention protected Charles and Camilla’s human right to marry. Curiously, the secret legal opinions cannot be tested as they’re sealed until after the death of Charles. Fingers crossed Camilla doesn’t discover she’s not royal after all!
RECALLING the BBC’s unflattering coverage of John Major’s successful 1992 general election campaign, Andrew Neil remembers a summons to Downing Street where an irate Major declared: ‘Andrew, I’m going to get the BBC! They’ll never do this again to me! I’m going to destroy them!’ What happened? ‘That was July,’ adds Andrew. ‘By September comes along Black Wednesday!’
KEIR Starmer contradicts Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden’s call for a fictional disclaimer on episodes of The Crown. ‘I think he’s over the top there,’ he says. ‘I think people should watch it and form their own views.’ Alas we won’t see the Labour leader in action in the Netflix series. The tiaras are packed away before his election.
GRAHAM Greene wasn’t alone in falling out with John le Carré. The spy writer was incandescent when Tina Brown, pictured, editing The New Yorker, published a diatribe against his friend William Shawcross after he wrote a sympathetic biography of Rupert Murdoch. John accused Tina of printing Francis Wheen’s ‘shameful’ attack because Tina’s husband Harry Evans had been sacked by Murdoch, adding: ‘She has produced one of the ugliest pieces of partisan journalism that I have ever witnessed in a long life of writing.’ No surprise this failed to make it on to the dustjacket of Tina’s Diana Chronicles.
VANESSA Redgrave, straining her thespian muscles for a festive appearance on BBC One’s Worzel Gummidge, wants the episode to be shown on big screens in streets, adding: ‘God bless any family that hasn’t got a TV.’ Shouldn’t Vanessa get out more?
STILL stung by criticism of his stewardship of Desert Island Discs by the widow of creator Roy Plumley, Michael Parkinson says: ‘At a dinner party, Alan Whicker, David Frost and I played a game of “Who are the worst interviewers you’ve ever had?” We all put down Mr Plumley.’
GYLES Brandreth still misses schoolfriend Simon Cadell, who played camp manager Jeffrey Fairbrother in Hi-de-Hi! ‘Years ago Kenneth Williams came to our house for supper and met Simon,’ he says. ‘Kenneth told him he was the most brilliant actor of his generation. Simon was thrilled until I explained to him later that Kenneth had thought he was Simon Callow.’