EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Will the King keep Andrew handouts from the Duchy of Lancaster?
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Anxious times for Andrew as King Charles takes control of the vast income from the Duchy of Lancaster.
This was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow from which the Queen provided Andrew with an undisclosed annual sum – as well as providing him with help towards his legal fees and settlement with Virginia Giuffre.
Anxious times for Prince Andrew
Whatever Charles decides on Andrew’s future status, he is likely to be less generous with Duchy largesse.
Might the disgraced prince settle for a small allowance as Keeper of the Corgis, the Queen’s dogs that have been banished to live with Andrew at Royal Lodge?
Should the Queen’s pallbearers be gonged for their faultless stewardship of her final journey, they might raise a toast to Prince Philip. He made their job easier. When their predecessors carried Winston Churchill’s half-ton coffin away from St Paul’s, it was so heavy a pallbearer dislocated his shoulder. This distressed the Queen, who asked Philip to investigate how future state funeral caskets could be made lighter. As a result her own lead-lined oak casket, at 500lb, was half the weight of Winston’s.
Good news for Boris Johnson, bracing himself for Sky’s Kenneth Branagh hatchet job This England on his Covid leadership. Producer Michael Winterbottom confirms details of the Partygate scandal, which unravelled Johnson’s premiership, did not break until it was too late to include. And further glad tidings. It ends with bete noire Dominic Cummings’ Barnard Castle trip to laughingly test his eyesight.
Directing boyfriend Harry Styles in her film Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde exploited his penchant for wearing gender-neutral clothes by giving him a ruffled apron for a kitchen scene.
‘What do you think about wearing this?’ The actress, pictured, asked him.
‘It’s a practical thing to wipe your hands on. And it’s also sending a message that this man isn’t insecure about his masculinity and he is making himself equivalent to his wife.’
Harry’s response? ‘Yeah, great.’
Roman Catholic comic Frank Skinner has his tongue firmly in his cheek, claiming he queued to see the relics of St Bernadette. ‘There was a very nice queuing atmosphere. It wasn’t that long. I queued for half an hour,’ he says. ‘What annoyed me is I saw Phil and Holly going in upfront, laminates on. Not even Catholics. Couldn’t believe it. Just nosey!’ Can the This Morning presenters ever live this down?
The Queen’s biographer AN Wilson is unimpressed with the £8million price tag on LS Lowry’s matchstick men painting Going to the Match. ‘I have never really taken to Lowry’s signature works,’ he says. In his biography Confessions, Wilson recalls spending an afternoon with Lowry at his Longdendale home. His verdict? ‘He had an animal smell given off by people who had a bath once a week. The only place it lingers is in an Irish pub in Camden Town.’
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