With Anthony Scaramucci challenging Lady Jane Grey for the briefest spell in situ, is Donald Trump running out of people to appoint to the White House? Professor Mary Beard worries that he is starting to emulate some of Rome’s most capricious emperors, noting: “Julius Caesar nominated a man to consulship for just an afternoon. Cicero joked the guy hadn’t slept for his whole term of office.” We should probably be glad the president hasn’t been inspired by Caligula, who reputedly vowed to make his beloved horse, Incitatus, a consul. Then he really would be making policy up on the hoof.
Could you get your diary out to help the president? “Help,” wrote the actor David Schneider. “I’m down to be Trump’s communication director between 3-4pm on November 9, but I’m not free. Can anyone swap shifts with me?”
JE NE REGRETTE RIEN
British voters are a stubborn lot. A YouGov poll found 61 per cent of Leave voters think “significant damage” to the economy would be a price worth paying for Brexit, while 19 per cent of Remain voters want to see the economy suffer to teach Brexiteers a lesson. My favourite statistic is on forgetful voters from the British Election Study. Newsnight’s Christopher Cook noted: “Of people who don’t know how they voted at the general election, 80 per cent say they have no regrets about it . . . whichever way it was.”
The study also shows about 300 people cited anger at the Tory deal with the DUP as their top reason for voting against the Tories in June. Surely those arriving at a polling station by time machine should be barred from voting?
FIRST PAST THE BEDPOST
Labour’s Cat Smith prompted a million teenage shudders yesterday by noting: “At 16 you can have sex with your MP, but can’t vote for them.” Professor Philip Cowley noted that a 16-year-old also can’t legally buy their MP a drink while romancing them, drive them home afterwards or purchase “post-coital cigarettes”, and also can’t buy fireworks to celebrate or use a sunbed to bronze up beforehand. There may be arguments for lowering the voting age, he added, “but this one is spectacularly bad”.
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Kenneth Cranham finally won the Critics’ Circle best actor award aged 71. He told The Oldiehe didn’t expect such a magnality after his stage debut 50 years ago as the lead in Joe Orton’s The Ruffian on the Stair. His character was shot and Cranham, chewing a blood capsule, spat scarlet saliva and moaned: “Am I dying?” A woman in the audience replied: “I hope so.”
CROWNING GLORY
The BBC gender gap actually helped one woman to get a job 30 years ago, when producers needed to keep the sun out of the Queen’s eyes at the Cenotaph. Ella Slack was asked to stand in the Queen’s place during rehearsals as all the BBC managers were “six-foot men”, she told the Great Big Story website. Mrs Slack, 74, has stood in ever since, even in parliament. She said: “I’ve never been allowed to sit on the throne in the House of Lords. I have to lurk above it, it’s a very strict rule.” Is lurking above the throne not Charles’s job?
