Ephraim Hardcastle
ONE motivation for ex-Irish president Mary McAleese’s antagonism to the Catholic Church – she called it ‘an empire of misogyny’ – is traced by writer Mary Ann Sieghart in her new book about women not being taken as seriously as men. She cites McAleese’s meeting with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican when he ignored her and addressed her husband. Furious McAleese grabbed the Pope’s hand. ‘Let me introduce myself. I am the president of Ireland,’ she raged. ‘Elected by the people of Ireland, whether you like it or whether you don’t.’ Bet the Polish Pope’s hand still ached at Benediction.
NO SOONER has Carrie Johnson settled into married life in Downing Street than up pops her husband’s ex-mistress Petronella Wyatt offering sartorial criticism in The Spectator. Claiming Boris is under ‘the showgirl-red manicured thumbs of the First Wife’, Wyatt compares Carrie’s choice of clothes to a mixture of ‘Stepford wife and human sacrifice’, adding: ‘She did recently don a blue trouser suit, but she rather resembled one of the victims of Carousel in Logan’s Run.’ Shouldn’t you be watching the tennis, Petsy?
STILL turning heads, Ingrid Bergman’s daughter Isabella Rossellini, pictured, confesses to an autumn romance, confiding: ‘I didn’t expect that at 68 you can have a fling. I have to say it was very pleasant and very surprising. It was delightful.’ Confirming that the tryst was now over, she quotes her mother’s encounter with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca: ‘You know the line is, “We’ll always have Paris,”’ she says. ‘I always say to this man, “We’ll always have Covid.”’ Che cosa?
BLEAK Irish playwright Sam Beckett is invoked by Donald Trump’s biographer Michael Wolff describing the desertion of the President by family and aides as the Capitol was stormed. ‘No one wanted to be in the room,’ says Wolff. ‘Only Rudy Giuliani was left, the two men chattering in the Oval Office like the tramps in Waiting for Godot.’ ‘Tis a mercy Godot didn’t turn up. Trump would have fired him.
CAROL Boyd, alias Archers super snob Lynda Snell, regularly adapts her character’s Penelope Keith-like haughtiness when dealing with troublesome gas and electricity suppliers. ‘I finally find myself saying without even thinking about it, “No I’m sorry. I’m sorry, just because it is your first day in the job simply isn’t good enough and no I am not prepared to bear with you while you talk to your supervisor.”’ Crucially, does it work Carol?
BARMY cook Heston Blumenthal, asked by GQ for the secret of his creativity, says he can be inspired by anything: ‘If I’m on a walk and the tarmac is warm, I might smell coffee, chocolate and burnt avocado. I’m not claiming to have superhuman sensibilities, I’ve just become so immersed in this multisensory world.’ Memo to kitchen staff. Has Heston been toping the vodka from his fizzy blackcurrant sorbet?