Ephraim Hardcastle
DOMINIC Cummings’s latest attack on Boris Johnson, in a BBC2 interview last night, makes some wonder why the Prime Minister ever hired this outspoken figure as his chief adviser. Might he have been influenced by his fondness for Cummings’s attractive wife, Mary Wakefield, 46 – Boris’s deputy when he edited the Spectator? ‘Men are always falling for Mary and Boris was no exception,’ says my source. ‘he might well have hired Dom partly for this reason. But some think Boris’s biggest mistake was hiring Dom instead of Mary, who is considered cleverer.’
APROPOS Cummings, his father-in-law – Sir Edward Humphry Tyrrell Wakefield, 2nd Baronet, 85 – must be concerned by his son-in-law’s attacks on the PM, if only for the ‘blowback’ effect they might have on the family. Thrice married, this genial expert on antiques and architecture bought and restored Chillingham Castle in Northumberland, which, he says, is the ‘most haunted in England’. Might its ghosts be joined one day by ‘Dangerous Dom, who brought down a prime minister’?
HIGHLIGHTING the latest political hostilities between her ex-husband, Pakistan PM Imran Khan, and his political opponent Maryam Nawaz Sharif, Jemima Goldsmith, pictured, who has two sons with Khan, tweets: ‘My kids are “being raised in the lap of the Jews”, announced Maryam Nawaz Sharif today.’ She adds: ‘I left Pakistan in 2004 after a decade of anti-Semitic attacks by the media and politicians, and weekly death threats and protests outside my house. But still it continues.’ her sons are Kasim, 22 and Sulaiman, 24.
KNOWN worldwide by her first name, kitchen goddess Nigella Lawson says: ‘Well, that’s only because I’ve got a stupid name. I mean, I didn’t even need a surname when I was at nursery school. I find [the fame] a sort of very frightening, weird compliment. But I never think of it like that because the thing about food is you’re always connecting with people. It isn’t like being a film star; it’s much more intimate.’ More lasting, too, perhaps. She is more famous than the father after whom she is named, ex-Tory Chancellor Nigel Lawson, 90 next March. In 1998 her first cookery book, How to Eat, sold 300,000 copies. Nigella has been a household name ever since.
COMEDIAN Frank Skinner, who wrote england’s soccer anthem Three Lions with funnyman chum David Baddiel and The Lightning Seeds frontman Ian Broudie, says he didn’t realise that Neil Diamond, who wrote rival fan favourite Sweet Caroline, was Jewish. Baddiel put him right on this, he says. ‘Dave has a list of all the Jewish celebrities in the world. he said Neil Diamond is known as The Jewish elvis, adding, “I believe he’s kosher”. I texted back, “What about [his song] Cracklin’ Rosie?”’ his misunderstanding I fear. Cracklin’ in Diamond’s 1970 hit refers to wine, not the fat from roasted pork.