The truth about The Crown? Peter Rhodes on a playboy prince, a new anti-Brexit hero and cheapskate telly from Auntie
I'M enjoying The Crown (Netflix), even though we don't know how much of it is factual. Was the party-animal Duke of Edinburgh really given the title 'Prince Philip' as part of a deal to make him behave?
FOR what it's worth, I once interviewed the Duke in his office at Buckingham Palace. We were alone for about an hour and he was good company, sharp as a knife and had a keen sense of humour. But my abiding impression was that here was a man who very rarely heard the word 'no'.
HIS Serene Magnificence the Right Honourable The Lord Malloch-Brown KCMG PC is to lead a campaign against Brexit. This is excellent news for Brexit. Remember those howls of rage when Sir Martin Moore-Bick was appointed head of the Grenfell Tower inquiry? The people demanded to know how a white middle-class retired judge could possible relate to them. Expect more of the same. Malloch-Brown is a double-barrelled product of Marlborough and Cambridge who was never elected to anything by anyone. He was appointed to the House of Lords to serve in Gordon Brown's cabinet. That government ended seven years ago yet milord still wields power. So let him present his plans to overturn the result of our EU Referendum. Let him try to convince us that someone like him, a gilded veteran of the diplomatic corps and the World Bank, a member of the globetrotting elite and consultant to big businesses, knows anything about the life of a fisherman from Grimsby or a foundry worker in Wolverhampton. Every time a Malloch-Brown, or a Tony Blair, or a Gina Miller tries to tell us what is good for us, it's worth another million votes for Brexit. The toffs versus the people. Bring it on.
IF you want an example of the gulf between real life and the elite, look no further than the bible of the Remoaners, the Guardian, which has a feature on the plight of graduates working in low-status and low-paid manual work. "Labourer Tony wishes he could be more intellectually challenged in his job," it tells us. Labourer Tony's plight is illustrated with an image of bricklaying in progress. Which tells us that somebody at the Guardian - and I'm guessing it's a graduate - thinks bricklaying is labouring.
THERE is an air of desperation in Jeremy Corbyn's assertion this week that he will 'probably' be prime minister by this time next year. The next General Election may not be until May 2022. If he won then, Mr Corbyn would enter Number Ten just before his 73rd birthday and would be 78 at the end of his first term. His only realistic hope is a snap election in the next couple of years. Even if the polls were for him the years are against him. Probably.
THIS year's Humbuggery Award for mean, grasping and cheapskate yuletide telly goes to the Beeb for the Detectorists Christmas Special which was no such thing, merely a repeat of an earlier episode. Ebenezer would be proud of you, Auntie.
