“Why did Sir Keir Starmer not wear his KCB insignia, given by Elizabeth II, with white tie at Lady Mayor’s Banquet?” asks royal expert Alastair Bruce, after the Prime Minister attended the glitzy dinner in the City of London this week. “Normally, a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath would wear the oval neck badge, below a bow tie, and star, on his left breast below pocket. The accolade and the Bath are why we call him ‘Sir’, so it’s sad he doesn’t wear it – for this, or State Banquets, as far as I am aware. Sir Winston Churchill, as PM wore his relevant insignia at No 10.”
Does the Prime Minister need an etiquette adviser?
Andrew’s heirs
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor lost his Knight companion of the Order of the Garter and Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order this week. But he is still a Duke. This is because, while the King authorised a Royal Warrant to remove the Duke of York from the Roll of the Peerage in October, only a law passed by Parliament can actually remove his dukedom.
Norman Baker, the ex-MP and author of Royal Mint, National Debt, tells me: “This is all unsatisfactory. Andrew should have his dukedom properly removed. What is to stop it being unfrozen in the future if not?”
Tory turkey
Culture spokesman Nigel Huddleston has a political gift idea this Christmas. “Ask a Lefty friend to buy you this,” he says, holding a £15 mug on sale at the party’s online shop. It bears the legend: “Don’t blame me, I voted Conservative.” If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.
The tall guy
Author and podcaster Richard Osman, who is 6ft 7in, has worked out a title for his memoir, he told an audience at the Leicester Square Theatre for a recording of Richard Herring’s podcast this week. “Everyone looks the same height to me – everyone looks 5ft 7in. If I write my autobiography it’s going to be called ‘Perspective, Innit?’,” he said.
Leader of the opposition
Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP might have once led the Conservative Party and served in David Cameron’s Cabinet, but he feels forever the outsider. Looking back on his battles over Britain’s China policy, he told me on GB News’s Chopper’s Political Podcast: “It seems to me at times that it doesn’t matter who is in Government, I am in Opposition.”
We wouldn’t want it any other way!
Radio gaga
Writer Sir Tom Stoppard, who has died aged 88, was asked to write the screenplay for Jaws by the film’s director Steven Spielberg. Playwright David Mamet recalls: “Tom said he couldn’t as he was writing a play for the BBC. Spielberg said, ‘I’m offering you a fortune to collaborate with me on a Hollywood blockbuster, and you turn me down to write a play for BBC TV? ‘No,’ Tom said, ‘BBC Radio’.”
Short-sighted
Actor Bill Nighy, 75, says his trademark glasses are often just for show. “I don’t need to wear glasses all of the time because I had my eyes done,” he told his podcast Ill-Advised. “But I wear them because I think they make me look really good. I think they make me look more attractive. They’re always going to look better than just my face. It’s like my body is always going to look better in a suit.”
Never in town
Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty hosted David Burt, the premier of Bermuda, in London this week.
“Their discussions focused on matters of mutual importance to Bermuda and the UK,” according to a spokesman for Bermuda. James Price, a former Tory adviser, had some questions. “It’s not the most important thing in the world, but why is a Foreign Office minister wearing brown shoes and no tie to meet a head of Government?” Price has a point.
One carol to the tune of another
Rev Richard Watson, from St Saviour’s Church in St Albans, has been donning his sparkly gold jacket and heading to the city’s pubs, with a skilled keyboardist, to lead regulars in “Carols Till Closing”, a three-hour singalong. Regulars are also asked to sing carols to the unusual tunes. So at The Boot pub in St Albans his week we sang O Little Town of Bethlehem to the tunes of both Love Me Tender and the Monty Python theme. Then Angels from the Realms of Glory to the tune of Cwm Rhondda and Deck the Halls to the theme from The Muppets. The words all scanned perfectly.
Can Peterborough readers better these?
Peterborough, published every Friday at 7pm, is edited by Christopher Hope. You can reach him at [email protected]
