You can’t get within curtsying distance of Meghan Markle or the Duchess of Cambridge these days without getting a big hug, but the royal family wasn’t always so touchy-feely.
A London University graduate tells me he was once selected to dance with the Queen Mother at a college ball at which she was guest of honour.
Before the orchestra struck up, he and the rest of her carefully chosen partners were briefed by a rather large man. “If you touch Her Majesty’s arse,” he warned, “I will take you outside and . . .” He then went into some detail about which bones he planned to break.
Such is the sensitivity and mystique that still surrounds the royal posterior that — more than 30 years after this incident — my source wishes to remain anonymous.
Mr Bolton, are you in the right place?
There’s growing discontent at Ukip leader Henry Bolton’s membership of the National Liberal Club, where he was recently spotted dining with his then girlfriend Jo Marney (please note: the phrase “Ukip leader” was accurate at the time of writing).
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A club source complains: “It’s very odd that the leader of a rival party whose views are totally opposed to most club members is able to eat in the dining room under the gaze of a statue of Gladstone.” Not so odd. Gladstone started his political life as a Tory.
Titbits
● The Evening Standard was quick to condemn “City sexists” after the notorious Presidents Club dinner. So let’s hope nobody was unkind enough to mention editor George Osborne’s time in Oxford University’s all-male Bullingdon Club. “Women aren’t allowed to formal dinners,” another ex-Buller (not a contemporary of the former chancellor) once revealed, “but at informal gatherings we would make them get on all fours like a horse, whinny and bring out hunting horns and whips.” It was, he added, “all done respectfully”. Of course it was.
● Never come between a middle-aged chap and his lounge suit. Godfrey Bloom, formerly a Ukip MEP, once worked for a company that tried to introduce a dress-down Friday policy. Oh, the horror. “I protested by wearing a morning coat to work on Fridays,” says Godders. “The ladies joined the protest by wearing ballgowns. The policy was quietly abandoned.” The formally dressed workers, united, will never be defeated.
● You’d think the former Lady editor Rachel Johnson would be delighted to discover that a woman whose mummified remains were found in a Basel church is her six-times great-grandmother. But after newspapers reported Anna Catharina Bischoff’s connection to the foreign secretary Boris Johnson, his sister notes dryly: “Swiss woman who died in 1787 is still defined by her relationship to living male relative.”
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● Fans of Professor Jordan Peterson were furious at the way he was interviewed by Cathy Newman of Channel 4 News, but the publisher of his new book, 12 Rules for Life, is delighted. “The interview has been seen well over 4m times,” says a source at Penguin, the book’s publisher.
“His interviews in London have made 12 Rules the fastest-selling book in the world. Not bad, considering he wasn’t known in this country.” There really is no such thing as bad publicity. Except, perhaps, for Cathy Newman.