EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Royal tour past of Cambridges' new home

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Royal tour past of Cambridges’ new home

William and Kate’s new Windsor home, Adelaide Cottage, is currently occupied by Simon Rhodes, son of the Queen’s late cousin Margaret Rhodes. Embarrassingly, it is also the registered company address of Simon’s previous royal tour business offering £18,000 champagne trips around Buckingham Palace with access to Windsor’s Royal Library, as well as Sandringham, ‘guided by a Royal Family member’. When the enterprise came to light, websites were swiftly closed, links disappeared and nothing more came of it.

Adelaide Cottage on the Windsor Castle estate is pictured in 2013 during its last refurbishment

New University Challenge host Amol Rajan could correctly answer only four out of the 18 questions asked when he captained Cambridge’s Downing College against Durham during a 2020 celebrity edition. ‘Want to blame sleep deprivation for the fact that my brain ain’t what it used to be,’ he tweeted. If he’s dopey in the chair, will multi-tasking Amol blame his profusion of other BBC jobs for tiring him out?

Marking Paxo’s retirement, Radio 4 Today presenter Justin Webb recalled him paying a fellow diner’s restaurant bill when his credit card was rejected, saying: ‘You know where I work. Send me the cash when you get it sorted.’ Co-presenter Mishal Husain, pictured, citing Paxman’s hefty bank balance, piped up: ‘I thought it would be even better if he said, “Don’t worry about paying me back!”’

Mishal Husain suggested that Paxman might’ve offered to pay the fellow diner’s bill altogether

Is Lady Archer taking running lessons from husband Jeffrey for next month’s Cambridge Chariots of Fire charity race? Lord Archer is an Oxford blue in athletics and ran for England. Knowing his competitive spirit, will he expect fit-as a-flea Mary to break the sound barrier?

Further to my reference to bookstore matriarch Christina Foyle, ex-BBC royal correspondent Michael Cole recalls her living in a penthouse above the shop when he worked there in 1961. ‘Every morning, she would sweep out of the shop accompanied by her large French poodle dog which without fail would stop to defecate in New Novels.’ Isn’t life grand?

Reflecting on his drug abuse in Classic Rock, Ozzy Osbourne recalls: ‘I took ten tabs of acid, then went for a walk in a field. I ended up standing there talking to this horse for about an hour.’ The daft rocker adds: ‘In the end the horse turned round and told me to f*** off. That was it for me.’

Today’s Times Literary Supplement highlights graffiti in Oxford’s Bodleian Library lavatories: ‘My mother made me a homosexual’, to which someone has written underneath: ‘If I sent her the wool could she make me one?’

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