EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Royal tour past Cambridge’s new home
William and Kate’s new Windsor home, Adelaide Cottage, is currently occupied by Simon Rhodes, son of the Queen’s late cousin Margaret Rhodes. Embarrassingly, it’s also the registered business address of Simon’s former royal tours business, which offers £18,000 champagne cruises around Buckingham Palace with access to Windsor’s Royal Library as well as Sandringham, “run by a member of the Royal Family”. When the company came to light, websites were quickly shut down, links disappeared and nothing more came of it.
Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Castle estate is pictured in 2013 during its most recent refurbishment
The host of the new University Challenge, Amol Rajan, managed to answer just four of the 18 questions asked as he refereed Cambridge’s Downing College against Durham during a celebrity 2020 edition. “I want to blame sleep deprivation for my brain not being what it used to be,” he tweeted. If he’s goofy in the chair, will multitasking Amol blame his plethora of other BBC jobs for tiring him out?
On the occasion of Paxo’s retirement, Radio 4 Today presenter Justin Webb recalled paying another diner’s restaurant bill when his credit card was declined, saying: “You know where I work. Send me the money when you’ve got it sorted.” Co-host Mishal Husain, pictured, spoke up, citing Paxman’s large bank balance: “I thought it would be even better if he said, ‘Don’t worry about that you pay me back!”
Mishal Husain suggested that Paxman may have offered to foot the other diner’s bill altogether
Bestselling James Patterson renewed his falling out with Stephen King after the horror author complained about his book The Murder of Stephen King. Patterson withdrew it “out of respect,” but now says, “I still enjoy King’s horror novels … But I think he has trouble with thank-you notes.”
Is Lady Archer taking running lessons from husband Jeffrey for next month’s Cambridge Chariots of Fire charity race? Lord Archer is an Oxford blue in athletics and ran for England. Given his competitive spirit, will he expect the flea fit Mary to break the sound barrier?
As well as my reference to the bookshop’s matriarch, Christina Foyle, former BBC correspondent Michael Cole recalls that she lived in a penthouse above the shop in 1961 when he was working there. ‘Every morning she swept out of the store in the company of her large French poodle dog, who in New Novels would inevitably stop to defecate.’ Isn’t life great?
Ozzy Osbourne recalls his drug abuse in classic rock: “I took ten LSD tablets and then I went for a walk in a field. I ended up standing there talking to this horse for about an hour.” The stupid rocker adds, “At the end the horse turned around and told me to fuck off. That’s it for me.’
Today’s Times literary supplement highlights graffiti in the toilets at Oxford’s Bodleian Library: “My mother made me a homosexual,” beneath which someone wrote, “If I send her the wool, could she make me one?”