London - How did Prince William’s message on mental health go down with his father?
The heir to the throne’s son wrote: ‘It is often said that fathers can often find it hard to talk about their own feelings, so there’s no wonder they struggle to speak to their son or daughter about the topic.’ Charles’s schooling was chosen by his father, Philip, and great-uncle Earl Mountbatten of Burma – wartime gents from ‘the school of hard knocks’ unconcerned that he was thumped, kicked or trampled during football matches at Hill House, London, and Gordonstoun, Moray. He threatened dire retribution one day on some of his fiercer persecutors.
Clement Freud’s joke about his grandfather Sigmund Freud selling him his gold watch on his deathbed – I mentioned it here yesterday – ‘is a straight pinch from Woody Allen’s act in the 1960s’, says a source, adding: ‘I remember Allen doing it at The Palladium. Freud was doing a stand-up monologue at his theatre restaurant above the Royal Court Theatre at that time.’ So, a paedophile and a plagiarist.
The Queen is lukewarm on the EU because it marginalises the influence of her beloved Commonwealth, courtiers think. So is it a coincidence that on referendum day HM hosts a palace reception and awards ceremony for the Commonwealth Queen’s Young Leaders? ‘Highlighting the youthful, energetic and forward-thinking Commonwealth in contrast to a bureaucratic EU is as close as the Queen can come to expressing a referendum opinion,’ says my source.
Meryl Streep, pictured, who plays elderly, tone-deaf heiress Florence Foster Jenkins, ‘the world’s worst opera singer’, in her new film, says: ‘I took lessons to do a song as badly as she. I thought it would be a piece of cake but it wasn’t. The vocal coach started with me singing properly. Then came the landscape of mistakes.’ Couldn’t Britain’s Got Talent’s Simon Cowell have made her worse sooner?
Announcing his backing for the Remain campaign, David Beckham, 41, is evidently eager to prove useful to No10. He also put out a statement urging Scots not to vote for independence in their 2014 referendum. Only a cynic would connect his actions with a desire to collect a long-mooted knighthood.
Jeremy Corbyn remarks on Channel 4 that he’s never met German Chancellor Angela Merkel but looks forward to doing so. The Labour leader has met French President Francois Hollande (who hasn’t?) but Frau Merkel is fussier. However, she might wish to know more about his 1970s motorcycle escapade to East Germany with well-nourished pillion passenger Diane Abbott, now one of his loyal MPs.
Outspoken actress Miriam Margolyes, 75, who has been with her partner Heather for 48 years, says: ‘Marriage is for straight people. The thought of referring to one another as “wife” makes me feel sick. I don’t understand why gay people are so anxious to get married.’ In the glad-to-be-gay Guardian, of all papers.
Daily Mail