Ephraim Hardcastle
PRINCE Charles, discommoded by the cash for honours debacle, faces further embarrassment with next month’s tenth anniversary of Jimmy Savile’s death and a Netflix documentary focusing on his friendship with the paedophile. charles accepted Jim’ll Fix It badges for William and Harry and sent Savile a box of cigars and a pair of gold cufflinks on his 80th birthday. The prince also visited the DJ’s Glencoe home, accompanying him to the post office to collect his pension. With his birthday gift, charles wrote: ‘Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.’ It was only after Savile’s death in 2011 aged 84 that charles, like the rest of us, learnt the odious truth.
LAST night’s Prince Philip TV tribute featured grandson Peter Phillips recalling the duke shouting at a new printer that failed to work for him. It was ever thus. At a star-studded Buckingham Palace reception, he approached what he thought was a production engineer and asked: ‘Do you know how to fix my broken DVD player? There’s a cord sticking out of the back and I don’t know where it goes.’ The flustered woman said she’d ask around for someone to help. Philip hadn’t recognised Cate Blanchett.
PRIVATE Eye editor Ian Hislop adamantly declines repeated requests to dance on BBC’s Strictly, saying: ‘There’s a family veto and my children quite rightly have said, “You are not doing that”.’ This doesn’t extend to Hellenophile Mrs Hislop, who is poised to pirouette in Greece. ‘I will be Dancing (With The Stars) on Star channel Greece,’ tweets Victoria. Should Ian require assistance with an apt Greek phrase, he could utter: ‘ase kato ayti the gynaika’ – ‘Put that woman down’.
SIR Ian McKellen, concluding his age, colour and gender-blind Hamlet at Windsor, is keen to give co-star Francesca Annis a juicier role than fleeting appearances as the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Francesca, pictured, was chuffed when Sir Ian considered reprising the acclaimed 1976 RSC production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in which Francesca played the female lead. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind playing Juliet,’ says gender-blind McKellen.
BEFORE his passing, John ‘Boycie’ challis was gratified that his wife carol had a much more colourful pedigree than Marlene, his vulgar Only Fools and Horses spouse, and visited the cape Town birthplace of her great-great-grandmother christina Meyndrina. She was the product of an affair between Lady anne Barnard’s colonial administrator husband, andrew, and a servant. ‘Her ancestors,’ explained challis, ‘were an English army officer married to a posh bird friend of George IV’s favourite bit on the side who had a love child by a black slave girl in africa who came back to England and married a gent.’
KATHY Lette endorses compulsory maskwearing, explaining: ‘Thanks to masks, bullies, braggarts, numbskulls and namedroppers have no idea they’re annoying the tooth enamel off us.’