Ephraim Hardcastle
RESIGNATION Honours are dished out by PMs after they leave office. Often, the list is not complete when they quit No10. ‘So Boris must be tempted to push through his list before he resigns as PM,’ says my Honours source. ‘That would prevent his successor as PM removing some of his tastier choices.’
HAVING ennobled brother Jo, might Boris send his cheerleading father Stanley and sister Rachel to the red leather benches, unless the former’s French citizenship is an obstacle? ‘The gloomy forecast from Tories lunching at the Long Table in the Peers’ Dining Room is that we’re getting sad Dad and mad Nad,’ says my Lords source, referring to Stanley and sane minister Nadine Dorries. Might Boris ennoble himself? It’s never been done, but it’s thought that if a PM advises the monarch to send him to the Lords, they have to do as he suggests.
TWENTY years since he was axed as host of Have I Got News For You over claims about him snorting cocaine with a sex worker, Angus Deayton reflects: ‘It’s not something I’m particularly happy about, but I’ve had 20 years to get used to it.’ His co-stars on the show – Ian Hislop and Paul Merton – wanted him fired, purportedly finding the stories about him unseemly. They’re still employed on HIGNFY. ‘History is written by the victors, isn’t it?’ says Deayton, 66.
LIKE a shark lurking in Twitter’s shallows, Lord Sugar preys on other big names going public. When BBC sports presenter and ex-footballer Gary Lineker revealed he was worried about losing his memory, former Spurs boss Sugar commented: ‘I still can’t work out how much we got for you when I sold you to [Japanese club] Nagoya Grampus Eight.’ Uncalled for!
PLAYING the poet Robert Burns in a dance show, Burn, pictured, at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh, Alan Cumming, 57, says he learned his moves from the Spice Girls while making the film Spice World. Judging by The Times’s review yesterday – ‘watching him caper round the stage is a reminder of just how much training and technique is needed to make a real performer take flight’ – the Girls have grounds for complaint.
THE Royal Shakespeare Company’s forthcoming children’s shows focus on ‘sustainability’ and ‘structural disadvantage’, with plays boiled down to 90 minutes. Director Robin Belfield says: ‘It’s been an incredible journey.’ As such types are fond of saying...
WHY did Germany’s ex-chancellor Angela Merkel leave it so dependent on Russian energy that its response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is considered tepid? She is thought to be something of a Russophile. At 15, she won a trip to Moscow as a prize for her performance in communist East Germany’s national Russian language competition.