EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: King Charles won’t have to attend the Royal Variety Performance this year thanks to his visit to Dubai

Visiting Dubai at the end of this month will have an upside for the King: he won’t have to attend the Royal Variety Performance. 

He hoped he’d done his last stint in 2016 (the Chuckle Brothers, Lady Gaga and Sting), leaving William and Kate to alternate royal box duties with Harry and Meghan. In the end, the Sussexes made just one appearance, in 2018 (Take That and the cast of Hamilton). 

But instead of putting himself back on the rota, the King delegated the pantomime-like chore to Edward and Sophie. Oh yes he did!

And spare a thought for the late Queen. She sat through 39 RVPs – seeing Arthur Askey, Dickie Henderson and the Cabana Accordion Six in 1946. 

She took herself off the rota as a Diamond Jubilee present to herself, with her final appearance in 2012.

Visiting Dubai at the end of this month will have an upside for the King: he won’t have to attend the Royal Variety Performance

Charles hoped he’d done his last stint in 2016 (the Chuckle Brothers, Lady Gaga and Sting), leaving William and Kate to alternate royal box duties with Harry and Meghan

King Charles is pictured with the Chuckle Brothers at the Royal Variety Performance 2016 

Charles hosts South Korea’s president Yoon Suk Yeol this month. Will he sing for the King? At the White House earlier this year, he surprised Joe Biden with a rendition of American Pie. 

Perhaps fortuitously, Prince Philip won’t be present. When glamorous French chanteuse Carla Bruni accompanied her husband Nicolas Sarkozy on his 2008 state visit, Philip suggested she might ‘do a turn’ after the banquet. But the Queen insisted on traditional bagpipes instead.

Why the pressure on the King to deliver a full apology for Britain’s colonial past? Charles might think that Tony Blair has already delivered an appropriate mea culpa when he was cornered by Ghana’s president Kufuor on his 2007 state visit to London. 

‘I have said we are sorry and I say it again,’ he said. ‘[It is important] to remember what happened in the past, to condemn it…’ Sorry might be the hardest word, but it has been uttered.

Mischievously recalling the protesting days of Dame Vanessa Redgrave, pictured in her prime, Dame Judi Dench describes attending a ‘Ban the Bomb’ protest with her in Trafalgar Square in 1961 when the police arrived. ‘A few officers grabbed hold of Vanessa and tried to throw her in the back of a van,’ remembers Judi. ‘She said, ‘You can’t arrest me, I’ve got a matinee.’ So they let her go!’

Westminster Arms publican Gerry Dolan has retired from pint pulling at the MPs’ watering hole without catching sight of its legendary Victorian ghost. ‘I’ve had customers say they have seen a lady walk into the wall downstairs,’ says Gerry, who is seeking a publisher for his colourful memoirs. ‘In fairness, most of them had had a drink at the time. I think it is easier to see spirits when you are 75 per cent to the wind.’

Sky’s queen bee Kay Burley announces: ‘Happy anniversary to me! 35 years today at Sky News.’ My abacus calculates that when evergreen Kay first cleared her throat at the Osterley studios in London in 1988 her favourite Boddingtons ale was only 88p a pint.

My abacus calculates that when evergreen Kay Burley first cleared her throat at the Osterley studios in London in 1988 her favourite Boddingtons ale was only 88p a pint

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