Welcome back, Kate! Nothing cheers the British soul more than the sight of our Princess of Wales out and about after her cancer treatment.
This week, Kate attended a ‘Centre for Early Childhood’ programme.
It was at the University of East London’s Institute for the Science of Early Years & Youth. No yawning at the back, please!
No doubt Kate is passionate about ‘early learning’. But a cynic might raise an eyebrow at a billionaire’s wife advising struggling mums to take their children for walks in wild forests.
This week I asked everyone I met – neighbours, friends, journalists, MPs, my hairdresser, even strangers – what they knew of Kate’s early learning initiative. The resounding response was: ‘I’ve never heard of it.’
Kate needs to face an uncomfortable truth: no one cares about her oh-so worthy programme.
During a cost of living crisis, life for many is not about hugging trees but about finding the nearest food bank. We’re all glad Kate is back, but ahead of her first solo foreign visit to Italy next week, we have to say: if you’re well enough to step out, Kate, surely now is the time to step up and champion causes that mean something to British hearts.
Kate is 44, while Princess Diana was 25 when she transformed the world’s perception of HIV by shaking hands with a young man suffering from Aids in 1987. Diana’s later landmine campaign saved hundreds of lives.
This week, Kate attended a ‘Centre for Early Childhood’ programme at the University of East London’s Institute for the Science of Early Years & Youth
Princess Diana was 25 when she transformed the world’s perception of HIV by shaking hands with a young man suffering from Aids in 1987
Kate could learn a thing or two from her dear departed mother-in-law about how to connect with the British people. After she so bravely came through her cancer ordeal, couldn’t she now champion charities supporting women fighting that terrible disease – bringing her experience to bear?
Kate, it’s time to become the life-changing future Queen you were born to be.
Forgive me if this sounds callous but, on hearing a masked stranger threatened the ex Prince Andrew with a crowbar as he walked his corgis near his Norfolk home, I thought of Fergie.
Who’s Nicole kidding?
Much swooning over Nicole Kidman at the Met Gala looking agelessly beautiful in red feathers at 58.
Nicole Kidman looked stunning at the Met Gala in a red dress
There was some scrutiny, though, about how her thin hair had somehow grown to tumble beyond her waist and why she didn’t look a day older than when she starred in Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. As one unsisterly fashion expert quipped: ‘It used to take eight hours to get ready for the Gala.
‘Now, with scar healing from cosmetic surgery, it takes a year.’
A sad sign of the times that in the week of the VE Day anniversary, Princess Anne gave Thursday Murder Club author and former co-host of a quiz show Richard Osman an OBE for ‘services to broadcasting and literature’. These noble honours were once the preserve of the men who fought and died for our freedom. Now they’re scattered like confetti on minor celebs. How utterly pointless.
Tender snap of Kylie’s true love
Ahead of her Netflix docuseries, Kylie Minogue releases intimate photos of her with her ex-lover, INXS singer Michael Hutchence.
Kylie Minogue and Michael Hutchence dated from 1989 to 1991 and remained friends until his tragic death in 1997
Who can forget the haunting pictures of rake-thin Kylie laying a single white lily on his coffin in 1997?
Any woman with one true lost love will understand why Kylie has still never married: she just couldn’t get him out of her head.
M&S’s summer range includes a sheer ‘seaweed top’ over an incy-wincy string bikini. It is paraded on a size zero model with a thigh gap the size of a watermelon and will be sold out by the time you read this. Clearly not aimed at the middle-aged mums who actually buy their clothes.
Harry’s latest brewhaha
On the 100th birthday of our ‘national treasure beyond measure’ David Attenborough, Prince Harry praises him as a ‘secular saint’ who is ‘as essential to the national fabric as a cup of tea’.
Odd that Californian organic mint-tea drinking Harry should reference the traditional British brew.
Maybe he thought it was a chance to flog Meghan’s As Ever tea bags, available in a collectable box for £9 – when you can get 100 Tetley tea bags for £4.29.
My moggie Ted’s hero of the week is Paul Hollywood for speeding at 96mph in a ‘mercy dash’ to take his sick Maine Coon cat Annabelle to the vet. The former Bake Off Judge paid £413 in fines and costs – but it could have been as much as £1,000. Clearly the magistrate, like 11million of us, was a cat-lover.
Paul Hollywood was fined for speeding at 96mph in a ‘mercy dash’ to take his sick Maine Coon cat Annabelle to the vet
The hand-written ‘suicide note’ by Jeffrey Epstein boasted: ‘They investigated me for month [sic] found nothing!!!’ A terrible irony that the monster hanged himself in his jail cell, while his original accuser Virginia Giuffre killed herself aged just 41 trapped in her own prison of abuse.
A ghost of Covid
I can’t be the only one spooked by the idea of two Brits rescued from the cruise ship MV Hondius – stricken by rat-borne hantavirus – being let back into the UK on the proviso they self-isolate at home for six weeks.
Nor reassured by the World Health Organisation saying the deadly disease is not like Covid.
Doesn’t it have horrible echoes of when we first learnt about Covid, starting with a few folk with bad flu in an Italian ski resort and going on to engulf the entire world?
The Spice Girls are in talks with former manager Simon Fuller to create an ‘avatar’ concert like the spectacularly successful Abba Voyage, which has sold four million tickets and makes more than £1.6million a week. Good luck with that, girls! Abba released 53 singles, while you officially only had 11, so no matter how much Money, Money, Money you want, you’ll always be Wannabes.
Cameron Diaz and husband Benji Madden have called their new son Nautas, meaning ‘Sailor, navigator, voyager.’ Good luck with that. ‘Amanda’ in Latin means ‘she who must be loved’ which as any observer of comments below my column online will know is a big fat lie.
And finally, no I have not been sunning myself in Ibiza oblivious to the local elections, which have seen both Labour and the Conservatives demolished and Nigel Farage’s Reform party emerging triumphant. I just decided you dear readers, like me, would like a breather from it all.
