Ephraim Hardcastle
DAME Prue Leith may be holding her head in her hands after the Princess of Wales’s pancake nightmare this week. A recipe involving just flour, eggs and milk should have been easy for Kate who, in 2014, undertook an intensive course at Leiths School of Food and Wine in central London. Founded by Prue in 1975, the course, then costing around £1,600, should have left Kate competent in sauces, de-boning, tackling souffles and whipping up ice creams and canapes. Maybe Kate was off waving somewhere when they covered pancakes.
IF Harry and Meghan attend the Coronation, will they be seated near Wills and Kate? That’s the question a Channel 5 documentary will pose tomorrow. Commentator Daisy McAndrew describes the clear rift between them when they sat in separate rows at St Paul’s Cathedral for the Jubilee service. ‘There was no eye contact or conversation between them whatsoever,’ she claims. ‘The fact that they were seated on separate sides of the aisle confirmed to most observers that there hasn’t been any sort of patching-up.’ Might a four-stool boxing ring be installed with a good view of King Edward’s Chair?
HAVING managed to rid her life of stress, will Joanna Lumley, 76, suffer a tension relapse with vintage-film TV channel Talking Pictures screening Games That Lovers Play, a 1971 soft-porn flick in which a sometimes topless Joanna, then 24, plays 18th-century prostitute Fanny Hill. In the risible plot, the star, pictured in the film, competes with Lady Chatterley to seduce as many men as possible. It concludes with a three-in-a-bed romp with a bald wine merchant. And who plays the lucky chap? None other than Richard Wattis, the Seventies sitcom neighbour of Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques. Isn’t life grand?
FOOTBALL commentator John Motson, who has died, once covered Wimbledon for radio, and interviewed Jack Nicholson during a match. Unaware that the film star was wearing headphones and could hear their conversation, the controlroom editor urged Motty to keep listeners abreast of the game. ‘As the umpire called the next point,’ John recalled, ‘Jack turned to me with a laconic smile and growled, “Give ‘em the score, Johnny!”’
A NEW account of the 1953 Coronation by Hugo Vickers recalls Lord Mowbray, representing the barons and seated in front of the dukes, gloating to his son: ‘My dear boy, these upstart dukes were still tilling the fields when we were barons!’ The Duke of Rutland took offence – and hid Mowbray’s coronet containing his stash of sandwiches.
HUGO also tells of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Marie Louise, mistaking a jumbo glass of gin for water and hurriedly quaffing it as she left Westminster Abbey. ‘It went straight to her head,’ he recalls. ‘She nearly fell out of the coach and her tiara slipped down as she leaned further out of the window, waving to the crowds.’ All together: ‘See what the boys in the back coach will have...’