Hardcastle
A NEW page of honour took to the stage on Garter Day – the Hon Guy Tryon, ten, son of the King’s godson Lord Charles Tryon. His mother was Dale Tryon, a glamorous Australian nicknamed Kanga by the King and once Camilla’s rival for the post of mistress to then Prince Charles. She was routinely described as the only woman who ever really understood him. She suffered ill health for much of her life and died aged 49 in 1997, three months after Princess Diana, a double blow that deeply upset the King.
PRINCE Andrew, banned from being seen in public but still royally indulged, has been busy with behind-the-scenes Royal Ascot duties. He is currently on hand at Windsor Castle to entertain the King’s house guests. It apparently comes as quite a shock to some, assuming he’d been banished, to find Andrew gurning at them across the drinks table when they arrive. When they set off for the races he stays behind, presumably to do the washing up.
WHILE Kevin Costner now proudly recalls being told by Prince William that his late mother had ‘fancied’ him, another Hollywood A-lister got the thumbs down. After meeting Tom Cruise on the set of the first Mission: Impossible film in 1996 with sons William and Harry, Diana concluded on returning to Kensington Palace: ‘That’s another one off the list – he’s too short!’
IMELDA Staunton, pictured, didn’t stifle a yawn at her damehood but it was close. ‘Honest to God, I don’t care,’ she says. ‘All I ever wanted to do was work and I have done that.’ And referring to her long and happy marriage to Downton Abbey’s Jim Carter, she adds: ‘We have had such a really great and fortunate career and life together that no medal can top that.’
ITV’S Anushka Asthana got Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner to admit that as a teenager she had bedroom wall posters of East 17 and The Prodigy. Turning to Rachel Reeves, she asked: ‘Who did you have on your wall?’ The Shadow Chancellor replied sheepishly: ‘A framed picture of Gordon Brown.’ When was he on Top Of The Pops?
NIGEL Farage’s chum Jamie Blandford, Duke of Marlborough, threatens to turn up at Royal Ascot today sporting a Reform party rosette. But will the flunkies at the entrance of the ultra-Tory White’s club marquee in the Royal Enclosure, Jamie’s chosen watering hole, ask his grace to remove his Farage bloom?
FEVERISHLY campaigning as an independent in Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn accuses the Tories of wrongly claiming that he acquired his beloved Finchley allotment by jumping the queue. ‘I make jam from the fruit grown on my allotment,’ he boasts. Will it be more jam tomorrow if Jeremy gets the heave-ho on July 4?