Ephraim Hardcastle
ANGELA Rayner is not the first parliamentarian to be engulfed in a Basic Instinct-like leg-crossing brouhaha. In 2016 recently elected Cambridgeshire MP Lucy Frazer unwittingly stole the limelight at Theresa May’s first PMQs when adjusting her short skirt. Sitting behind May, she distracted viewers, and other MPs, by crossing and uncrossing her legs occasionally. The Twitterati went into a frenzy comparing Frazer to Sharon Stone and wondering whether she was auditioning for a Basic Instinct sequel. It certainly hasn’t damaged her career. Frazer, 49, is currently financial secretary.
WESSEX bashers have been mocking Edward and Sophie’s presentation of framed photographs of themselves as gifts to their Caribbean hosts – unaware the photos are the standard diplomatic trinket on top of the main present, a Jubilee box. During the Queen’s 1979 tour of the Gulf, rival emirs outdid each other, presenting HM with gifts worth millions – including gold goblets studded with amethysts and even a gold handbag. According to my colleague Robert Hardman in his Queen of Our Times, she ensured they all received identical gifts in return: a silver salver engraved with the Royal Yacht. Price? £15,000.
INTERVIEWING handsome actor Prasanna Puwanarajah, soon to be seen playing disgraced former BBC correspondent Martin Bashir in the next series of The Crown, perky ITV presenter Lorraine Kelly, pictured, cheekily suggests: ‘A gorgeous fellow like you playing him? That’s like Brad Pitt playing Michael Gove!’
SMARTY pants Stephen Fry sought to amuse Garrick Club members at their annual dinner this week by delivering a tongue-in-cheek history of London’s gentlemen’s clubs, spouting that the Savile Club was named after dead paedophile Jimmy Savile. It prompted an irate squeak from behind the port decanter from Downton Abbey producer Gareth Neame. Who he? Chairman of the Savile Club!
EMMANUEL Macron’s frostiness towards Boris could thaw if he and wife Brigitte were invited by the Queen to pay a state visit. Part of Macron’s froideur might stem from his failure to receive such an invitation in his first term, an honour given to five predecessors starting with de Gaulle in 1960 and including Giscard d’Estaing and Sarkozy. But he may have to wait. The state visit programme ground to a halt in 2020 when the emperor of Japan’s trip was postponed due to Covid. And at 96, the Queen is hardly up to a Buckingham Palace entente cordiale waltz with nimble-footed Emmanuel.
CONCEPTUAL artist Cynthia Albritton, who has died aged 74, was an unsuccessful LA rock groupie who found success by persuading performers like Joan Collins’s exhusband Anthony Newley to pose for plaster casts of their manhood. She famously took a mould of Jimi Hendrix, noting: ‘Jimi has got just about the biggest rig I’ve ever seen.’ Shall we ever see the like of Cynthia Plaster Caster again?