EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: BBC man tackles Gary Lineker over anti-Tory bias

EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: BBC man tackles ‘untouchable’ Gary Lineker over anti-Tory comments claiming he would be sacked for doing the same

As the BBC’s highest earner on an obscene £1.36million per year, Gary Lineker acts as if he’s untouchable.

But one of the corporation’s toilers has bravely taken on the Match Of The Day fatcat over his blatant anti-Tory bias.

After Lineker’s latest social media pop at the Government, foreign news editor Neil Henderson asked: ‘Do you have the freedom to tweet about this sort of thing because you have a different contract to mine? Because I’d be sacked if I did.’ Lineker claimed that impartiality rules don’t apply to him as he doesn’t work in current affairs, sneering: ‘Surely you know this?’

Gary Lineker is the BBC’s highest earner on an obscene £1.36million per year

Henderson pointed out most BBC presenters avoid flaunting affiliations, saying: ‘I don’t see the Strictly people giving me their sixpence worth on politics.’

He also stressed the importance of impartiality ‘the BBC lives and dies by… if you can’t abide it, get off it’. If only…

After the Duchess rap fan, now Queen is up to scratch on her DJs

Not to be outshone by the Duchess of Kent, who spoke about her penchant for gangsta rap music by the likes of Ice Cube at the weekend, the Queen has been revealed as an admirer of DJs — that’s disc jockeys rather than dinner jackets.

William Orbit, a music producer for Madonna, tells me he spun tunes for Her Majesty — and her fascination with the art of DJ-ing was evident.

‘I DJed for the Queen at Buckingham Palace for her Christmas staff party,’ he tells me at a launch party for his new album, The Painter, at Blacks private members’ club in Soho. ‘Her parties for Palace staff are enormous. Every gardener, every security guard, it’s all in the Palace, in the ballroom.

‘You have to be working for Her Majesty for a year to be invited, and two years if you want your spouse to come.’ On his conversations with the Queen, he says: ‘She’s lovely. She always chats to you. She’s so beautiful and charismatic. We had a nice chat about DJing.’

Party at the Palace: William Orbit DJed for the Queen at Buckingham Palace 

Orbit, 65, admits the monarch, 96, did not hit the dance floor herself. ‘She goes to bed at nine because she’s a bit old for dancing, then everyone starts going nuts.

‘At the end, I had my own butler. He says: “Mr Orbit, sir, I’m going to give you this CD of the National Anthem and when you play that, on my signal, the party’s over.”

‘Because the Queen is in the house, you play the whole thing and the flag rises, but when she’s not there they only play half it.’

In an interview last weekend Katharine Kent, 89, married to the Queen’s cousin, admitted ‘I don’t know all their names’ when talking about rap artists she liked, but could confirm Ice Cube and Eminem.

The Crown star Debicki makes a statement on the food run

It is not a fashion look ever favoured by Princess Diana… 

Actress Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Diana in the forthcoming series of The Crown, slipped into what appeared to be a pair of pyjama bottoms as she popped out to the shops to buy some fruit near her home in North London. 

Actress Elizabeth Debicki, who plays Diana in the forthcoming series of The Crown, slipped into what appeared to be a pair of pyjama bottoms as she popped out to the shops

The Australian, 32, who made her name with Tom Hiddleston in BBC hit The Night Manager, also made a political statement by wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Abortion is healthcare’, as she clutched cartons of cherries. 

Debicki will take over from Emma Corrin as Diana in the Netflix drama, portraying the princess (below) as her marriage to Prince Charles collapses amid acrimony. But at 6ft 3in, the star is five inches taller than Diana was.

Debicki will take over from Emma Corrin as Diana in the Netflix drama, portraying the princess as her marriage to Prince Charles collapses amid acrimony

Downton’s Hugh gets a dark twist  

Best known as the morally upright Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey, Hugh Bonneville is surprisingly convincing as a man hiding a seedy secret in forthcoming Netflix film I Came By.

‘You may say it’s a dark twist but others will say I’m revealing my true self,’ he tells me of his character, retired judge Sir Hector Blake, at a screening at the Ham Yard Hotel in London.

Bonneville, 58, (pictured with co-star Kelly Macdonald) has also appeared in films Scenes Of A Sexual Nature and Conspiracy Of Silence.

Bonneville, 58, (pictured with co-star Kelly Macdonald) has also appeared in films Scenes Of A Sexual Nature and Conspiracy Of Silence

•  Countess Bathurst has revealed she broke bones due to her fear of wasps. ‘I’m petrified of buzzing insects,’ says the chatelaine of Cirencester Park in Gloucestershire. ‘I was relaxing on a sun lounger in our garden when a wasp decided to land on my leg. I slapped my thigh hard to dislodge it — and in the same movement, lurched from my sunbed. As I got up, convinced I was about to receive a sting, I tripped. To make it even worse, in the confusion I forgot to break my fall — and my hand remained under my body. Not only did I wind myself, but I also broke two fingers.’

• BBC chairman Richard Sharp was mistaken if he hoped for an easy ride at an Edinburgh International TV Festival session chaired by Homeland actor David Harewood. ‘We’re both pretending,’ said the star. ‘I’m an actor pretending to be an interviewer and you’re a banker pretending to be chair of the BBC.’ Sharp, who worked at Goldman Sachs, said he was a shoo-in for the BBC role. ‘I was going up against [journalist] Charles Moore so that was a low bar I had to hurdle.’ Ouch! 

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