Prince Andrew enjoys a higher degree of support from the King than has been supposed, I hear.
Why so? ‘Charles suspects that Andrew is innocent of the more lurid allegations against him,’ says my source, adding: ‘Fears that former confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, who brought paedophile Jeffrey Epstein into Andrew’s world, would throw him under a bus as part of a plea bargain, or that Virginia Giuffre would finally produce a smoking gun have come to nought.’
Might the King regret his role in Andrew’s defenestration? Epstein’s former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, blamed the late Queen for forcing Andrew to reach a reported multi-million-pound settlement with Epstein victim Giuffre.
Charles also pushed Andrew to settle with a person he still maintains he never met. Dershowitz believed Andrew should have held out.
He did when similarly accused by Giuffre, who exonerated the lawyer in the end and admitted: ‘I now recognise I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr Dershowitz.’
Sir Rod Stewart is confirmed for the Sunday teatime ‘legend’ slot at Glastonbury next summer.
Might it elicit a titter from his old foe Sir Elton John?
Sir Rod claimed unkindly that Elton’s recent ‘farewell’ tour was ‘money-grabbing’ and ‘stank of selling tickets’.
Is Sir Elton tempted to remind Sir Rod that his own Glastonbury outing in 2023 was in the more prestigious Sunday night finale slot?
Justin Welby’s decision to hand in his mitre on January 6 – which is the date of Epiphany and his 69th birthday – wasn’t what he wanted.
A Lambeth Palace source says his first intention, after his ineptitude was exposed over the handling of former pal, sadist and abuser John Smyth, was to brazen it out.
When resignation became the only option, Welby, pictured, thought he could leave it open-ended, allowing him to carry on for as long as he wanted.
He hoped to stay until later next year – when he planned to go anyway – while trying to salvage his reputation.
Many wanted him to go now rather than being allowed to oversee Advent and Christmas, but charity won out – which was more than Smyth’s victims got from his canes.
The usually blameless Country Life describes the kinky history of sewing machines, recalling that, in 1867, a psychiatrist claimed female machinists regularly experienced ‘palpitations, giddiness and tingling thighs’.
In 1895, a German psychologist linked excessive work on sewing machines to ‘a growing fashion for lesbian love’. Calm down, Mabel!
The Archers, Radio 4’s ‘everyday story of country folk’, has finally got round to the hottest topic affecting real farmers – inheritance tax.
Almost a month after Chancellor Rachel Reeves dropped her bombshell, farmer David Archer mused: ‘I’ve never seen such a big farming demo in London. There’s a lot of anger about this new inheritance tax on farms.’
Non-farmer Leonard replied: ‘Yeah, but David, we need those taxes to pay for things like the NHS.’ Pathetic!