Ephraim Hardcastle
FATHER-of-six Jacob Rees-Mogg responds to Boris’s suggestion that he has as many children as the Commons leader. ‘The Prime Minister and I are, I think, even-stevens at the moment. So if it were a competition, I‘d be falling behind. I’d be having words with [wife] Helena.’ As Carrie is expecting her second child with the PM, Jacob may have to loosen his double breasted pyjamas and romantically board the four-poster with Mrs Moggy.
MIGHT Boris administer healing balm to the rift with France’s Emmanuel Macron by persuading the Queen to issue an invitation for a state visit? French embassy sources suggest Macron would be delighted to accept a Royal invitation, particularly as his re-election next year is not guaranteed. Says my source: ‘He doesn’t want to suffer the same embarrassment of his predecessor, the one-term Francois Hollande, the only Gallic leader not to meet Her Majesty.’ Every leader from Giscard in 1976 to Sarkozy in 2008 was charmed by HM. Why not Emmanuel?
WHEN former chanteuse Carla Bruni accompanied husband Nicolas Sarkozy to London in 2008, Prince Philip suggested she might sing after the state banquet. His wish was thwarted and bagpipers provided the traditional entertainment. She subsequently sent Philip some of her discs. Did the duke prefer the bagpipes?
USUALLY word-perfect BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Mishal Husain, pictured, got her tongue in a twist yesterday while interviewing Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng about the gas crisis. Householders whose gas companies went bust would have to pay more because new suppliers could charge them the ‘maximum allowed under the price crap,’ she claimed, before correcting herself. Not quite in the mega howler class of former Today host James Naughtie once introducing Tory Cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt as ‘Jeremy **** .’
DAME Judi Dench’s rummage through her family’s origins for BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? has unearthed a previously unknown connection with Danish royalty. Having won an Oscar for her Queen Elizabeth I in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love and portrayed Victoria in 1997’s Mrs Brown, Judi will be more than comfortable with future curtsying at the Sainsbury’s checkout.
CABARET singer Kit Hesketh-Harvey, the star turn at the Prime Minister’s Chequers centenary dinner, delivered a politically incorrect ditty celebrating Viscount Lee’s donation of the estate to PM Lloyd George to provide an unpolluted haven away from London. ‘Lloyd George was none too wealthy/And Welsh; therefore unhealthy,’ he recited. With Theresa May the only one of five surviving PMs to attend, might he have added: ‘No Major, Cameron, Brown or Blair/To enjoy Boris’s fresh air.’