Dear Rowley,
Three reasons to be cheerful. It looks like Cheryl Cole and Simon Cowell are off to American TV so no more X Factor. Hurrah! Betty Driver is on Desert Island Discs tomorrow aka the Rovers Return’s longest-serving barmaid. As Lily Savage said, she’s only had two lines for the past 20-years. ‘Hot pot Ken?’ and ‘Yes lovie’ with a bit of bead fiddling in between. Mind you, she did get a good scene after the viaduct collapsed over Christmas when she was comforting a young girl who had lost her husband.
But for me, the best line in a soap opera of all time was delivered with impeccable comic timing by Barbara Knockers aka Rita Fairclough in Corrie. You will recall, Rita married a mad serial killer who died under a tram in Blackpool while chasing her on the front dressed in a black PVC mac. As y0u know, when the viaduct collapsed and the runaway train ploughed into The Kabin, Rita was buried in the rubble but survived. As she woke up in hospital, she opened one blackened eye and said deadpan, ‘what is it wi’ me and trams?’ Priceless.
My final reason to be cheerful is that we’ve laid out chapter 4 of Fashion at Royal Ascot yesterday and I’m finishing the Queen Elizabeth II chapter this Sunday. I tell you, Peter, Jennie and I never stop laughing when do our editorial meetings every well. At one point I whipped out my i-Pad only to discover a rather saucy image flashing up on screen that I had downloaded the previous night when under the influence of Valpoliparrot. Jennie’s eyes were out on stalks. Then again, she’s a broad with a broad, broad mind. Art director Peter’s only comment was wondering whether it was pay-per-view or a DIY job taken on a webcam in Bloomsbury Towers.
The Daily Mail was on stellar form today with a story branding Tamara and Petra Ecclestone ‘the most spoilt girls in the world’. Funnily enough, I know Petra and met her through the legendary Edward Sexton who was her tailoring master for a short-lived men’s fashion label called Form that wasn’t half bad. As well as being young, blonde, terribly pretty and slim, Petra is also an intelligent, lovely woman. A nicer girl you could not fail to meet. It was heartbreaking for me to read that a TV journalist asked Petra how she could tell someone was interested in her or her money. ‘You don’t’. Her money is the least interesting thing about Petra Ecclestone.
Peter Sissons wrote a terrific whistle-blowing editorial in the Mail about how endemic Left wing bias is in the BBC. I happen to wholeheartedly agree with that. Now ‘the posh’ are once more running the country, I think the BBC should catch-up and drop the PC nonsense. One Lib Dem numpty called Baroness Bombast or some such wanted to do a survey of all of our nationwide art galleries to tot up how many paintings were produced by ‘wimmin’. God give me strength in the middle of economic and social catastrophe.
Nice to see that mad Ed Balls back in power. He has all the fervour of those Germans who deny the holocaust ever happened when he talks about the economy. Do they really think we are all stupid? What I like about the Conservative government is that they are just getting on with it and not operating a trial by media administration as Mr Blair did. We want our governors to govern and keep out of the press as often as is possible. Couldn’t really be less interested in the BBC scrutinising the government’s every spending cut. We are as a nation broke. We’ve got to fix it and tighten a collective belt. OK, we’re not all in this together. Some of us inherited their homes/furniture/jewllery and some of us had to earn it.
Off the soap box Delores. Next thing you know I’ll be at Hyde Park Corner preaching to the crowds about the new austerity. Still not seen Burlesque. I think it’s come off all the London cinemas. How disappointing it did not do good box office. Perhaps they should re-release it under a new title such as Sexual Freedom in Denmark. I stole that line from the Vincent Price Roast for Bette Davis. My favourite joke in the whole show is this one delivered by Vincent Priceless. ‘In Elizabeth & Essex she gave up her beauty. In Dark Victory she gave up her eyesight. In the Virgin Queen…she gave up her hobby’. YouTube it darling.
My poor Dad has broken a bone in his foot. As I said to him yesterday quoting The History Boys, ‘it’s one f******’ thing after another, innit?’ Never mind we haven’t even cleared January. I feel as if Christmas is a very distant memory. So a couple more reasons to be cheerful. Gail in Capri (the Dry Cleaners on Southampton Row not the island) has bought a fab new pair of leopard print stilettos and rocks them with fishnet tights and Liza is back. When asked if she was friends with her ex-husband David Guest, she said no. When the reporter Lina Das said how sorry she was to hear it, Liza replied ‘Don’t be, honey. I’m not. I was married to him for about 20 minutes and I’m doing absolutely great now’. Yes you are darling.
Another fabulous lady is the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire who very kindly sent me the enclosed picture of she at her first Royal Ascot in 1938 wearing a delicious oscelot fur coat and what appears to be a deerstalker made by Madame Rita of Mayfair. Now that’s what I call style. I do love the Mitford sisters. ‘Wasn’t it interesting’, comments the Duchess, ‘that my sister Lady Mosley was probably the only woman on the planet who knew both Churchill and Hitler socially?’