Ephraim Hardcastle
WILL William kick up a fuss at Camilla’s crowning as Queen Consort? Not over any objection to the Coronation of his father’s former mistress, but because Camilla’s sceptre will be an ivory rod topped by a dove, made for James II’s wife Mary in 1685. William is a vehement opponent of ivory, wanting all such items in the Royal Collection destroyed. And he won’t be overjoyed that Camilla will be preceded by an ivory cross carved from a tusk presented to Westminster Abbey in 1924 by Haile Selassie, the future Emperor of Ethiopia. Poignantly, it is the same cross that led his mother’s coffin into the Abbey.
FROM Moscow to Washington and across the EU Britain is being mocked and Boris ridiculed, claims Andrew Marr in a savage criticism of the PM in The New York Times. Chairing a debate between pro-Greek Boris and pro-Rome Mary Beard about which was the greater civilisation, Marr recalls: ‘He was verbally slaughtered, diced and sliced by Ms Beard and he lost the debate.’ When BoJo didn’t show for a dinner afterwards, Andrew adds: ‘One family member who did attend told me Mr Johnson would be padding around central London like a wounded bear – he hated to lose.’ Come on, Andrew, name the treacherous Johnson!
LADETTE pin-up (Retd) Ulrika Jonsson, 54, is on the prowl for a younger lover, complaining that 60-year-old men have given up on life and just want to go for a long walk. ‘I don’t want my lightbulbs changed,’ says Ulrika, pictured. ‘I don’t need someone who can load the dishwasher and be a father to my kids. I want something unconventional.’ Mothers! Lock up your sons PDQ.
PROUD Welshman Huw Edwards suffers a fit of the vapours at polemicist Jonathan Meades taking aim, in The Critic magazine, at plans to increase speaking of the ‘moribund’ Welsh language. ‘I can only assume he’s skint,’ rages the BBC News anchor. ‘Nothing else can explain this bilge.’ At least Meades didn’t cite national poet Dylan Thomas’s unpatriotic observation: ‘The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.’
BROADCASTER Jane Garvey programmes her sat-nav and sets off for the 25-minute journey to Heathrow airport to collect her daughter. ‘Something went badly wrong,’ she wails. ‘I took a wrong turning, and then I took another wrong turning, then the M4 was closed. I ended up somewhere in the middle of Buckinghamshire.’ She adds: ‘It was the longest drive I’ve done in living memory – four and a bit hours.’ Don’t call Top Gear, Jane, they’ll (not) call you.
CELEBRATING its 30th birthday, The Oldie republishes the late Auberon Waugh’s column proposal ‘inveighing against the ignorance, idleness, stupidity, dishonesty and sexual incompetence of the young’. And his point? ‘Insulting the young in any and every manifestation.’ It did carry a health warning. It was called Rage.