Ephraim Hardcastle

HAS the Queen played an unwitting part in saving Boris? With the Platinum Jubilee looming, it would be terribly bad form to depose the PM. The last time a change of PM threatened to overshadow a jubilee was in 1935. With Ramsay MacDonald in ill health, it was agreed that his resignation should be deferred a few weeks until after George V’s Silver Jubilee and an orderly transfer of power to Stanley Baldwin was arranged to make things as smooth as possible. Within a few months, George was dead, 1936 became the year of three kings and Baldwin had to sort out the abdication crisis.

CHARLES and Camilla’s Jubilee EastEnders appearance is a far cry from the BBC’s inept attempt to mark the Queen’s 1977 Silver Jubilee by asking Buckingham Palace what was HM’s favourite show. Advised that she liked The Good Life with Felicity Kendal, it was hoped she’d accept an invitation to a recording. A diary clash prevented her from attending and at the end of the jubilee year the cast reassembled for a one-off in the presence of HM and Prince Philip. Presented with flowers on her arrival by Felicity’s son Jacob, the monarch asked: ‘Who is Felicity Kendal?’

REVERED children’s TV presenter Johnny Ball doesn’t approve of Harry Styles, pictured, reading a bedtime story on CBeebies, saying: ‘It’s a waste of time as nobody watches it any more. Wouldn’t it have been lovely to get Harry to do Jackanory when children’s television was where it should be – on BBC1 from 3.30pm until 5pm?’ CBeebies’ audience may be small Johnny, but not as tiny as Jackanory’s has been for 26 years. The popular show was taken off-air in 1996.

SUE Gray, pontificating on Downing Street’s illicit parties, has a skeleton in her own closet, according to Irish comedian Patrick Kielty. He alleges that when she and her country and western-warbling husband Bill Conlon owned the Cove Bar near Kielty’s birthplace in County Down there were regular 2am weekend lock-ins. ‘This bar was meant to be officially shut most Friday nights at 11.30 and was flat to the mat with Willie Nelson at 1.40am!’ claims Kielty mischievously.

NO sign yesterday of Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle despite Rishi Sunak’s emergency financial statement plus tributes to the Queen on her Platinum Jubilee. Hoyle had scooted off early to the Falklands to join next week’s 40th anniversary celebrations of the war victory. He is cross with the Government for not holding the jubilee tributes earlier but ministers felt disinclined to help him out. They think Sir Lindsay has been getting a bit big for his boots recently.

ROD Stewart, expressing regret about the number of women he has slept with, tells a US podcast that Maggie May, his 1971 hit about a schoolboy being seduced by an older woman, was based on the truth. ‘It was my first s***,’ he says. ‘It lasted about four seconds.’ With Sir Rod nearly seven months shy of his 78th birthday, my abacus makes Maggie odds-on for a centenary card from the Queen any time now...