Ephraim Hardcastle
JON Snow’s impending retirement prompts the BBC broadcaster Evan Davis to propose a knighthood. The Channel 4 News anchor has already turned down an OBE and doesn’t have a high opinion of the world of gongs, to judge from his 2002 documentary Secrets of the Honours System. It was not entirely a triumph, according to TV critic Nancy BanksSmith, who observed: ‘Even colleagues like Sir Trevor McDonald, Sir David Frost, John Simpson CBE or Kate Adie OBE [now CBE] wouldn’t talk to him on the subject.’ Does this man have no friends at all?
THE commissioning of a £200million Duke of Edinburgh flagship prompts Philip’s biographer Gyles Brandreth to recall the late consort’s fury when then Tory defence secretary Michael Portillo supported the 1997 decommissioning of Royal Yacht Britannia. Says Gyles: ‘He told me, “And then Portillo got involved and made a complete b ****** s of it. Absolutely idiotic”.’
A NEW history of BBC Radio describes Sir Terry Wogan frantically ditching a vinyl record he’d been about to spin, ripping it from the turntable and throwing it to the floor, just after he’d played a Remembrance Sunday poppy appeal recorded by Second World War pilot Douglas Bader, who had lost both of his legs. Fellow DJ Paul Burnett retrieved the discarded disc. It was Andy Fairweather Low’s Wide Eyed And Legless.
THE cringe-inducing Irish accent adopted by Emily Blunt, pictured, in Wild Mountain Thyme gets off lightly in film critic Mark Kermode’s BBC review of what he describes as ‘cod Irish whimsy’ and the ‘most preposterous tosh ever to grace the Emerald Isle’. It is Christopher Walken’s fake accent that ‘sets alarm bells ringing’, as Kermode concludes: ‘It seems to have been cooked up after a night on the ale in one of those terrible theme pubs, where drunken Americans sing along to the Pogues while loudly reminiscing about a country they claim to love but have never actually been to.’ Do get off the fence Mark!
TURBO-tongued Kathy Lette, shopping for a summer swimsuit, is helped into a bikini by a shop assistant. ‘Venturing a glance into the mirror, I saw with alarm that my breasts were now strapped up on my neck, like a couple of spare double chins,’ she recalls. ‘Be warned. It’s called a “wonder bra-kini” because when you take it off, you wonder where the hell your breasts went.’
TEETOTAL Sir Anthony Hopkins, rummaging through his Oscar winner’s goodie bag, probably dumped the designer tequila and vodka along with the intravenous vitamin shots, free liposuction and Shropshire essential oil candles (he has his own brand). As the owner of two rescue cats, he is likely to have kept the pets activity tracker and a Peta hammer to save animals trapped in hot cars.