10-07-2025
The Queen's Mick Jagger knighthood snub: EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE
Emmanuel Macron 's touchy-feely approach breached royal protocol at the start of his state visit. Inspecting the guard of honour with the King at Windsor, he chummily patted the Grenadier Guards captain on the back.
That you should never do. Guards on ceremonial duty are taught that should any tourist touch them, they should instantly shout 'Hands off the King's guard!' Fortuitously, the captain turned to see who was interfering with his person and bit his tongue. Apparently, the King couldn't resist a chuckle.
Having done away with the role of Mistress of the Robes, Queen Camilla fetched up at the Macron state banquet improperly dressed. She arrived wearing only the Royal Family Order of the King and not that of the late Queen.
All the other royal ladies present wore both – and wore them (correctly) on the left shoulder, whereas Camilla wore hers on her right.
At least she made an effort. Keir Starmer forgot to pack the badge and star of a Knight Commander of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath, awarded to him in 2014, which would have set off his white tie and tails nicely.
The late Queen might have had a royal harrumph if she'd seen the name of Mick Jagger on the banquet guest list. HM was so irked by tax exile Jagger's repeated postponing of his 2003 knighthood that she declined to gong him. The job instead went to Prince Charles. A courtier later recalled: 'The Queen looked at Mick Jagger's name on that list and there was absolutely no way in the world that she was going to take part in that.'
When Norman Tebbit's thuggish Spitting Image puppet liquidised TV inquisitor Robin Day's hand in a blender and began to drink the contents, the Independent Broadcasting Authority told producer John Lloyd: 'You can't broadcast this.'
Lloyd explained: 'But it's Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal.' As soon as the IBA heard Swift's name, it went: 'Oh, it's proper satire then, we'll let it through.'
Did ITV political editor Robert Peston let his hair down at Wimbledon? Er, no. On ITV's Talking Politics podcast he boasts about drinking non-alcoholic English sparkling rose at the tennis. What a blameless life he leads!
Ozzy Osbourne, in a new documentary, expresses no remorse for biting the head off a bat thrown at him during a Black Sabbath concert. 'I thought it was rubber and crunched down and realised it was real,' he explains. 'I had to go to hospital and get my rabies shots.' Do we know if the treatment worked, Ozzy?
Thursday's National Geographic Channel tribute to Steven Spielberg's Jaws at 50 contains an observation from late comedian Richard Pryor. 'I loved Jaws,' he remarks. 'I really did because he didn't eat up no black people.'
