Ephraim Hardcastle
PRINCE Charles says he has no knowledge of his aide’s alleged offer to upgrade a Saudi tycoon’s CBE in return for donations. But could the storm have been easily avoided? My source says: ‘There was no need for [former charity chief] Michael Fawcett to have gone down that route. Charles has access, via his mother, to the exclusive Royal Victorian Order which includes ranks such as lieutenants, commanders and two classes of knighthood which come with some exclusive gongs, sashes, robes and badges and don’t require government approval. As with other honours, the Royal Victorian can be awarded to non-Commonwealth citizens on an honorary basis.’
DID the BBC’s slinky Emily Maitlis hasten Prince Andrew’s rush to a settlement with Virginia Roberts? What’s left of Andrew’s inner circle blame her for his downfall. ‘Andrew still believes himself to be irresistible to the fairer sex and thought that he would be able to handle Maitlis easily and was later convinced that the Newsnight interview went well. He even gave her a guided tour of the Palace afterwards.’
CHANNEL 4’s Cathy Newman, pictured right, comes across as a serious-minded woman who more than holds her own against full-of-themselves male colleagues Matt Frei and Krishnan Guru-Murthy. But I wonder if viewers of Ozark, the Netflix series about a Mexican drug cartel in Missouri, agree that she’s a dead ringer for the show’s trailer-trash anti-heroine Ruth Langmore, played by Julia Garner (left).
YORK Central MP Rachael Maskell’s attempt to get her city’s dukedom removed from Prince Andrew is ongoing. After his 2019 Newsnight interview, a petition was launched to remove his secondary title, Earl of Inverness. It read: ‘We the residents of Inverness feel that it is inappropriate that Prince Andrew is associated with our beautiful city.’ Only 1,455 people signed before it was closed. HM ignored it.
PANDEMIC heroine Dame Kate Bingham, ex-head of the Covid vaccine taskforce, is celebrated by Radio 3’s Private Passions show on Sunday. She says: ‘I screamed and danced around the table… To get the 90 per cent efficacy was brilliant.’ As for accusations that she got the job through cronyism – she’s married to Tory MP Jesse Norman – she says: ‘It did not mean I was not able to do the job but it gave the critics ammunition.’
ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury Justin Welby’s new Radio 4 series, The Archbishop Interviews, beginning on Sunday, is described as ‘conversations with public figures whose work engages with big questions about humankind’. First guest is novelist Elif Shafak, a self-confessed ‘metalhead’ who used to buy heavy metal cassettes then ‘listen to them endlessly while eating sunflower seeds’. She says: ‘I find in [heavy metal] a raw, honest expression of all human emotions and a mixture of good and bad, light and shadow, faith and doubt that shapes... every human being.’ Isn’t life grand?