Is a new book by Aatish Taseer, ex-boyfriend of Princess Michael of Kent’s daughter Gabriella, set to revive spurious claims that Michael was the ‘royal racist’ unnamed by Meghan in her infamous Oprah interview? Harry said it wasn’t the Queen or Prince Philip. Omid Scobie named, without evidence, the King and Kate. Meghan claims she had been angered at her first meeting with the extended royals at an annual pre-Christmas family lunch at Buckingham Palace in 2017 over a discussion on the ‘skin tone’ of a future Sussex baby. A year later Aatish revealed that Princess Michael had two black sheep named Venus and Serena. The royal who made the comment which made Meg bristle has never been identified.
Marking the 12th birthday of Prince George yesterday, perky name-dropper Gyles Brandreth enthuses: ‘July 22 is always an important date on my calendar, I send out a lot of birthday cards. The Prime Minister of Jamaica, it’s his birthday. My friend Bonnie Langford, I always send her a card. The actor Terence Stamp, I always send him a card.’ Thank goodness Gyles can afford all those stamps.
Colonel-in-Chief of the camp fraternity Julian Clary sabotaged a take of Blankety Blank when asked by host Bradley Walsh to complete the statement: ‘If you want to convince someone that you’re highly intelligent, tell them you’re a world authority on *blank*.’ ‘I don’t know why, but I put “lesbians”,’ explained Julian, pictured. ‘They had to stop the recording to tell me to tone it down.’ Surely harmless fun compared with his 1993 British Comedy Awards claim he had been intimate with Norman Lamont. The Tory Chancellor was in the audience with his wife.
Donald Trump’s porky pie about never drawing pictures has been ridiculed as one of his doodles fetched $15,000 at Sotheby’s. Someone who might be in the market for a Trump original is Keir Starmer, due to meet him in Scotland this weekend. One of Trump’s more playful sketches is of a ‘Money Tree’, with dollar bills drifting from its branches, which sold for $8,500 in 2020. Starmer desperately needs one of those!
Ex-Tory MP Michael Fabricant seems to have lost faith in his party, saying: ‘Whether James Cleverly returns to the Conservative front bench is, for the foreseeable future, irrelevant. Deck chairs on the Titanic.’ Bewigged Michael and party leader Kemi are feuding. After he announced he ‘wasn’t in love’ with Kemi’s leadership, she cheekily said of Michael: ‘I’m not surprised he’s not in love with me – he’s a gay man.’ Michael fumed: ‘I’m not a gay man. I’ve been making it very plain that I’m bisexual!’
Spare a thought for horror rock star Alice Cooper. ‘I just can’t get a good supply of snakes any more,’ he wails. ‘My guy in London always found me excellent snakes, but now I just can’t get the permits.’ Is Brexit to blame?