Ephraim Hardcastle
NOW that Andrew has been effectively neutered, will the Queen finally honour Anne’s husband, Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence? HM planned to mark Laurence’s long naval career by promoting him to the rank of a full admiral on his 65th birthday in 2020. It was postponed when Andrew was torpedoed by Emily Maitlis. As the prince was due to join Laurence as a full admiral as a 60th birthday gift from his mum, it was felt that Tim’s elevation might rub salt into his wounds. Honouring Laurence is now back on the agenda. It seems only fair. He and the missus could sport identical tricorns. Anne became a full admiral in 2012.
COULD Andrew’s curious obsession with teddy bears – he has 72 – be traced to his childhood enthusiasm for BBC TV’s Watch With Mother? One now retired courtier recalls the prince’s delight at watching Andy Pandy – the striped pyjama-ed puppet whose devoted best friend was a teddy bear. ‘Andy Is Waving Goodbye’ was the show’s parting ditty. Prescient?
CHEF Fergus Henderson, of London’s ‘nose-to-tail’ St John restaurant, is asked by the New York Times about the pornographic animal paintings by Francis Bacon, pictured, at the Royal Academy’s Man And Beast exhibition. ‘I’m afraid his pictures rather put me off meat,’ he says. You are offal Fergus, but we like you.
PRINCE Andrew Romanoff – a greatnephew of murdered Russian tsar Nicholas II – who has died, was delighted when a batch of jumbo Easter eggs was delivered to Frogmore House where George V had installed the family after their escape from the Bolsheviks. His grandmother, Grand Duchess Xenia, received an irate phone call from nearby Windsor Castle – the eggs were for princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. Unfortunately, Andrew’s childhood chin dripped with chocolate after he’d devoured the seasonal treats of the future Queen and her sister.
BBC3 controller Fiona Campbell rejects criticism that 80 per cent of the programmes shown in the first week of the rebooted channel are repeats. ‘The channel is part of a content discovery ecosystem,’ she says, apparently with a straight face.
MOCKING the minuscule Irish Naval Service’s inability to monitor Russian war games off its Atlantic coast, polymath Fintan O’Toole observes: ‘Perhaps, given that one of our nine vessels is called after Samuel Beckett, we hope to ward off maritime space invaders by driving them into such existential despair that they just lie on their bunks contemplating the absurdity of it all.’ Waiting for Putin?
TATLER, highlighting the wealthiest London-based foreign families, features Natasha Poonawalla gushing: ‘A darling on the international jet-set scene, Mayfair-based, Indian-born “Nats Poo” as she is fondly called…is the toast of society.’ Is someone having a giraffe?
OH GOD. She’s so brave. Kate Winslet has been filmed wiping off her make-up in a new cosmetics advert. Why? To show us all she is Ordinary Like Us and also Because She’s Worth It. From porridge-faced Mare of Easttown to the face of L’Oreal, there is no stopping her — but I wish she wouldn’t talk to women as if we were all as stupid as soap and didn’t grasp that Beauty Is Only Skin deep. Last year’s L’Oreal hair advert was bad enough, with her marching about, tossing her curls as if she were President of the United States of Shampoo. This is worse.