Hardcastle

THE statement confirming the Queen had been in King Edward VII’s Hospital for ‘preliminary investigations’ is now seen as unwise for implying there were more to come. And was it necessary to say HM was ‘in good spirits’? This phrase was chosen to describe Prince Philip’s condition as he neared his end. Is the royal communications office in need of a thesaurus? Could No 10 help? They said Boris Johnson was ‘working hard from his hospital bed’ after falling ill with Covid. The PM had been moved to intensive care.

At 57, Elle ‘The Body’ Macpherson, pictured, who grew up in Killara on Sydney’s north shore, mused on a Vogue video: ‘My eyes are almost black, that’s the Aborigine in me. Being seven generations Australian, they don’t reflect light the same way blue eyes do.’ When her publicists were asked if she was claiming to be Indigenous – and if not, did she regret using the term ‘Aborigine’ – there was no response. But her sister Mimi is quoted as saying: ‘We are not Indigenous nor have we traced our ancestry.’

DAVID Beckham is taking flak for agreeing to be the public face of Qatar’s World Cup despite the country’s poor human rights record. But might it help him get the knighthood he craves? Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad Bin Abdullah AlThani pours millions into British racing. The Queen entertained the sheikh at Qatar’s flagship racing day at Ascot this month. Perhaps the desert nobleman will put in a word for our soccer prince. In 2017, leaked emails indicated that Beckham, who got an OBE in 2003, wasn’t happy at not getting a K, complaining: ‘They’re a bunch of c **** , I expected nothing less…’

VETERAN pop star Engelbert Humperdinck tells Reader’s Digest: ‘Prince Philip knew all my songs. I once played for him at a charity show where he sang along from start to finish.’ The Hairy Bikers disclosed recently that the prince was a fan of their TV cooking shows. Clearly Philip had hidden depths.

DISCUSSING his frosty relationship with fellow Old Etonian Boris Johnson, ex-Tory minister Rory Stewart says on Radio 3: ‘I always felt a bit overly pious whenever I was talking to him about anything... You end up feeling like a sort of puritanical Roundhead and he gets to be the Cavalier.’ Asked whether he ‘still likes, if not admires’ Boris, he added: ‘I’m not on his Christmas list, nor he on mine.’

PUBLICATION of Jonathan Franzen’s latest work, Crossroads, excites literary folk. His best-selling 2001 first novel, The Corrections, evoked, said one expert, ‘the sullen mood of America in the waning years of the 20th century’. Might Crossroads secure an even greater accolade – Britain’s Bad Sex In Fiction Award? I commend this passage about his Crossroads protagonist to the judges: ‘He clasped her delicate head to his chest, and his testosterone manifested itself in his long johns… it was astonishing how comprehensively his genital nerves now felt connected to her’.