Ephraim Hardcastle
MIGHT Prince Charles be a mite stung by Canada’s indigenous tribes seeking an apology from the Queen? First Nations groups frequently asked HM for help in disputes with the Ottawa government and conceded they were much better off under British colonial rule. More pertinently, Charles once endured having his hirsute chest shaved and painted with red, yellow and black pigments by Sioux Indians in Alberta. Bare chested, he sat for more than an hour in a teepee with elders smoking profusely despite his aversion to tobacco. Where’s the gratitude?
DESPITE her status as a Queen in waiting, the Duchess of Cambridge was outranked by Edward and Sophie at Wednesday’s Buckingham Palace garden party. Unaccompanied by William she ranks below Edward, son of the Sovereign. Sophie, a fellow commoner, outranked Kate as Edward was present. The court circular tells us that the Wessexes ‘on behalf of the Queen’ were the hosts. Kate was merely ‘present’. Isn’t this precisely the sort of male-privilege Royal archaism which infuriated Meghan?
HAS biographer A N Wilson restored the reputation of the Queen’s childhood nanny Marion Crawford, sacked by the Queen Mother for writing a kiss and tell memoir The Little Princesses? In Lilibet, a new life of HM, Wilson argues that the essence of the Queen, her whole existence and life of service is contained in Crawford’s 1950 book. ‘What I have written is not made up,’ explains Wilson, acclaimed for his life of Victoria. ‘It is, however, a work of the imagination.’
EX-HEART FM presenter Lilah Parsons, pictured, returns from her twomonth Kenyan sabbatical just in time to remind Netflix of her uncanny resemblance to Kate Middleton. The subscription channel is seeking a Kate lookalike to play the duchess in The Crown, citing acting experience as ‘non-essential’. Might it help if the clapperboard boffins were made aware that Lilah’s dad Sir John Parsons KCVO was once the Queen’s Deputy Keeper of the Privy Purse?
REFLECTING on Scarlett Johansson being forced to drop out from playing a trans role in a movie after a backlash in 2018, Rupert Everett highlights the ‘blinkered attitude’, telling Piers Morgan Uncensored: ‘People forget that Hollywood is a business. So for example, when Scarlett was stopped from playing a trans role, there simply wasn’t a trans actress at that point big enough to sustain a 50-60 million dollar movie.’ Tin hats at the ready, Rupert!
THE BBC’s obsession with Partygate reached a surreal height on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday when Justin Webb said Rangers lost in the Europa League Final after a ‘fixed penalty shoot-out’!
PRESSED by journalists for a response to the chaos at ScotRail, Green MSP Gillian Mackay turned to an aide and asked: ‘Do I have to?’ Another politician happy to clamber aboard the gravy train without offering much in return, it would seem.