Ephraim Hardcastle
MIGHT the BBC’s postponement of Have I Got News For You on the day Sir David Amess was murdered accelerate the demise of the now antiquated show? A fixture since 1990, it’s not a favourite of director general Tim Davie who was irked by the recent jibes aimed at BBC critic Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries. Its departure would not come as a total surprise to panellist Ian Hislop – who with Paul Merton trousers £20,000 a show. At last year’s Cheltenham Literature Festival, Ian – the Private Eye editor – admitted he sometimes worried that he might get the chop. He should have a shoulder to cry on in Sue Barker. She was dumped from the revamped Question of Sport.
THE Duchess of Cornwall’s attendance at yesterday’s Oldie of the Year awards at the Savoy recalled Carol thatcher’s mistaken belief that she’d won the accolade after returning from her triumph in ItV’s I’m a Celebrity. She immediately wrote widely about following in the footsteps of her late dad Denis, who had been a previous Oldie of the Year. Richard Ingrams, then editor of the Oldie, had asked Camilla’s friend Jilly Cooper to accept the supreme accolade and was unnerved. ‘We were considering switching the prizes and giving it to Carol,’ he says. ‘She was supposed to be Old trout of the Year.’
MEANWHILE, Liverpool poet Roger McGough, accepting an award yesterday, recalled that it was over 80 years since he won his first accolade – the bonniest baby on Merseyside. ‘The prize was an electric iron,’ he explained. ‘We were the first family in our street to have an electric iron. Sadly we didn’t have any electricity.’
DOMESTIC goddess nigella Lawson, pictured, recalls as a child never being allowed to share meals with her politician dad nigel, adding: ‘I really dreaded mealtimes, it was very Victorian. If you didn’t eat, you had to sit at the table until you finished. and if you still didn’t finish it, at the next meal you would be given your cold plate.’ Shades of Prince Philip insisting if you helped yourself, you must finish your plate.
CONFESSING to teenage flirting with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, Professor Mary Beard, 66, is asked on Jay Rayner’s Out To Lunch podcast: ‘So you went off and s **** ed a lot of men twice your age?’ Chuckling Mary replies: ‘Jay, I couldn’t have put it better myself. Yes!’
PROMOTING her one-woman show on Charles Dickens, comedian Eddie Izzard announces: ‘It’s intriguing and very 21st century because as a trans person, I’m playing male and female characters. and why not? I think Dickens would have wanted it this way.’ Should that be Charlene Dickens, Eddie?