Dame Judi Dench presented the acting prize at yesterday’s Oldie of the Year Awards to Geoffrey Palmer, 90, her screen husband in the sitcom As Time Goes By. Dame Judi told him she wished it were for Newcomer of the Year. Her appearance led Gyles Brandreth to recall the first play he saw at the Savoy Theatre next door: Noel Coward’s Waiting in the Wings, which is about three elderly actresses.
At the matinee he attended, one of the actresses forgot a line, so the stage manager prompted in a stage whisper. The silence continued. Then came a louder prompt. Still nothing. Finally the stage manager came out and shouted so loudly it could be heard in the Strand. At which Dame Sybil Thorndike looked at her and said: “We know the line, dear. We just can’t remember which of us says it.”
The Drama King of the Year prize went to Alan Ayckbourn, 78, who recalled hearing a drama student in the 1970s say that he would devote his career to modern comedies. “Like Ayckbourn, then?” the friend said, to which the student replied: “No, I mean living playwrights.”
LORDING IT
The SNP has never been keen on Michelle Mone, the Glaswegian underwear tycoon who received a peerage from David Cameron in 2015. Yesterday one of them boiled over when she tweeted, under the name Lady Mone, about her designer jewellery brand. “How thrilling,” sneered Stewart McDonald, MP for Glasgow South, who observed that Mone has spoken only twice in the Lords and missed 60 per cent of votes. It got a graceless reply. “I’m a Global [sic] entrepreneur not a full-time MP like u,” she wrote. “The difference is I’m a Baroness for life, whereas u will be out of ur MP job in no time.” He should have told the classy Baroness Brassiere not to get her knickers in a twist.
Jacob Rees-Mogg dislikes the claim that he is trying to strong-arm the prime minister into a hard Brexit. Asked yesterday if he is flexing his muscles, the Mogg said: “I don’t have many muscles. I’m a bit of a weed.”
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CAREFUL PREPARATION
Owen Paterson, the Tory MP, broke two bones in his neck and one in his back in a riding accident at the weekend. Ironically, the Brexiteer once raised £60,000 for the orthopaedic hospital where he is now being treated by undertaking a 1,000km charity ride in Mongolia. In 2011 Paterson and his wife rode for nine days, 14 hours a day, on 25 different horses across the Mongolian Steppes in blistering heat and pouring rain. Half the field failed to finish but the Patersons were unscathed. At the end, they were invited to dine with Our Man in Ulan Bator. “I hope we won’t be expected to sit down,” Owen told him.
Continuing our series on put-downs by teachers, Michael Hart says his son’s English teacher once wrote in a report: “Thought he was finally waking up. Alas, he was just turning over.”
HARD WORKER
Sarcasm is not only directed at pupils. Ian Galletley once received a reference from a headmaster about a teacher he was considering employing. “I am advised that Mr X has been employed here for some years,” the head wrote. “I have no way of confirming this.”
