EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: The forgetful Miss Thunberg

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: The right royally forgetful Miss Thunberg

Attending the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020, Prince Charles eulogised the ‘remarkable’ Swedish teenage activist Greta Thunberg in his speech before warmly shaking her hand. 

He clearly failed to make much of an impression. 

Greta, asked on the How To Fail podcast if she’d met the new King, replied: ‘I think I have met him. I can’t keep track of the British Royal Family. There are so many.’ 

As Charles might sigh: ‘Dear oh dear.’

Could Charles achieve his ambition to attend next month’s Cop27 environmental summit in Egypt? Thwarted by short- lived PM Liz Truss, he retains hope her successor Rishi Sunak might reverse the decision. Apparently Truss received a lot of brickbats, public and private, for vetoing the King. After 50 years as an active environmentalist – long before it was fashionable – Charles is reportedly keen to at least attend if not speak at Sharm El Sheikh. For the new monarch is it difficult to jettison decades of being an active, and meddling, prince?

Jacob Rees-Mogg, falling on his quill before Rishi could sack him, dated his resignation letter St Crispin’s Day. He must have known that it commemorates shoemaker twins Crispin and Crispinian, who were martyred for being Christians. They’re the patron saints of cobblers.

Sir Kenneth Branagh, pictured, is to receive the lifetime achievement award at the Richard Harris International Film Festival in Limerick. 

What would the late Harris, who died 20 years ago this week, make of it? 

He less than flatteringly described Ken’s acting as ‘technically brilliant but passionless’.

Does Harris’s archive, just donated to Cork University, contain details of his feud with Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt? The actor paid for the ashes of New York-based McCourt’s mother Angela to be repatriated to her native Limerick. ‘He went to a cheap shipper in Queens and he lost them,’ Harris claimed. McCourt accused Harris of maligning him but finally admitted, shortly before his death in 2009: ‘I did mislay my mother’s urn in a Manhattan tavern but later retrieved the ashes.’

Journalist Charles Laurence, who has died, got his first scoop for the London Evening News when he was invited to join Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton for lunch at Scott’s after they wed for the second time. As Burton concentrated on getting drunk, Taylor whispered to the young reporter: ‘The trouble is, he can’t get it up any more.’

Twitter hearts are a-flutter at the King’s beefcake equerry Major Johnny Thompson greeting new PM Rishi Sunak at Buckingham Palace in his swirling kilt. Flaunting the convention that kilts are not worn outside Scotland, did Johnny recall the joke about the stranger to all things Caledonian asking: ‘Is there anything worn under the kilt?’ ‘Naaw,’ replies the tartan-wearer, ‘it’s all in perfect working order.’

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