As the Queen and Prince Philip prepare
for their historic appearance at Baroness Thatcher’s funeral next week,
they will be dismayed to learn of a controversial and intimate
portrayal of the Duke’s uncle, Earl Mountbatten of Burma — in a raunchy
musical.
Lord Mountbatten, who was killed by an IRA bomb in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher became PM, is having his famously open marriage to effervescent wife Edwina exposed and dissected on stage.
Billed as ‘a story of illicit love, racism and betrayal’, the show — Hutch — focuses on the relationship between Philip’s ‘Uncle Dickie’, the last Viceroy of India, and Edwina, whose affair with the West Indian-born singer, pianist and cabaret star Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, humiliated Mountbatten — and riveted London society in the Thirties.
Based on Charlotte Breese’s 1999 bestseller of the same name, the production will feature a diamond-encrusted sheath which Edwina supposedly commissioned Cartier to design as a gift for her lover.
It also refers to claims which have surfaced over the years that Edwina and Hutch were said to have been discovered in flagrante delicto, intimately locked together through a rare medical phenomenon. They had to be taken naked, from Brook House, the Mountbatten residence in Park Lane, to a private hospital, where doctors separated them.
The musical is certain to cause huge embarrassment not only to the Royal Family but to the Mountbattens’ two daughters — Countess Mountbatten of Burma, 89, and Lady Pamela Hicks, 83.
Hutch, who died virtually
penniless in 1969 (his grave and tombstone were paid for by Lord
Mountbatten), is being played by the 6 ft 4 in Sheldon Green at the
Riverside Studios in West London.
Edwina, who died in 1960, is portrayed by young actress Imogen Daines, and the man said to be Hutch’s gay lover, composer Cole Porter whose songs such as Let’s Do It are featured in the show, is played by Sid Phoenix.
Writer Joe Evans says: ‘We have still to finalise the casting of Lord Mountbatten. We are down to a shortlist of two.’
Adds author Charlotte Breese: ‘I haven’t seen the script, but I shall be attending the first night on May 17, and am giving a party afterwards.’
Lissom soprano and unlikely women’s
rugby player Laura Wright — who also happens to be England’s glamorous
rugby anthem singer — has shrugged off the first sporting setback of her
career.
Laura, 22 — dubbed The Scrummy Soprano after a gust of wind lifted up her split-to-the-armpit Jasper Conran dress at the Six Nations in February, exposing her hotpants — was last night performing her first solo concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
But her rugby training as full-back for Rosslyn Park Ladies in Surrey is temporarily on hold after she damaged her leg preparing for the London Marathon.
She has now had to pull out of the race. and tells me: ‘It’s a huge shame, but I hurt my leg training on uneven ground and I now need keyhole surgery on it.’
The injury meant Laura had to take her final year recital exams at the Royal College of Music on crutches.
‘The recital is worth 80 per cent of my marks and the crutches certainly impaired my visual impact, but I still managed to get a first,’ she says.
‘I now have to wait for the rest of my results, but I am hoping for a first overall.’
Of her injured leg, she says: ‘It was painful, but at least it was only my right leg.
‘I am left-footed — I kick with my left — so it’s not so bad that my right leg was injured.’
............................................................................
How rich of Dr Giles Fraser, who resigned as Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s in 2011 over the Occupy protest camp row, to wade into the debate of whether Lady Thatcher’s funeral should take place at the cathedral.
Fraser branded the late Baroness a ‘Marmite politician’ — you either love her or hate her — in a Radio 4 interview yesterday and questioned whether St Paul’s was appropriate because she was so ‘divisive’.
However, the same sobriquet could apply to him. Acquaintances of Fraser recall a dinner with him in Soho where he loudly launched into an appreciation of the opposite sex.
‘Our amazement turned to embarrassment as he discussed porn websites and gave us the name of one,’ says one diner. ‘He was well-refreshed, but we thought it very odd that a priest should talk about porn. We couldn’t ask him his motives because he left early saying he was going to a pub down the road to see a barmaid.’
Writer Daisy Waugh had a minor family
crisis to distract her at the launch of her novel Melting The Snow —
what to do about her beautiful niece Esther Watson.
Going against the grain of the brainy Waughs — her great-grandfather was Brideshead Revisited author Evelyn and her grandfather man of letters Auberon — Esther failed to get sufficient A-levels at school to go to university.
Esther, 18, is the daughter of Daisy’s sister Sophie and is remarkably frank about her failure. ‘I should be going to uni like my friends but I didn’t work hard enough!’ she says. ‘I’ve had to stay down a year. I haven’t done anything seriously bad, just been a bit of a wild child.’
Esther hopes to follow in the footsteps of her father, Julian Watson, an educational consultant who lives in Cambodia with his second wife and two young daughters. Adds Esther: ‘Of course I could always be a writer, but that’s no big deal because it’s in the blood.’
...........................................................................................................................................................
Distinguished historian Andrew Roberts compares the effect of Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministerial resignation in November 1990 to the shock his parents felt on hearing of JFK’s assassination 27 years before.
In this week’s Spectator magazine, the dapper author recalls buying her flowers and handing them over to the policeman at the Downing Street gates. ‘On that never-to-be-forgiven day, a powerful cathartic sense overcame me as I listened to the radio in my flat. To my surprise I started to cry.’
...........................................................................................................................................................
What a hectic life some authors lead.
Jeanette Winterson thought she was due to give a reading in Basel, Switzerland, today — until a late-evening phone call on Tuesday reminded her she was due on stage yesterday.
Grabbing a breakfast-time flight just in time, Accrington lass Winterson — who was to read from her new book Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? — responded in typically robust fashion to the emergency,
‘I had it in my diary for Thursday,’ she panted as she hastily got ready. ‘I’m washing, ironing, having a whisky and going mad.’
...........................................................................................................................................................
Lord Carrington is throwing open the gates of his Georgian estate for next month’s National Garden Schemes spring open day. The highlight for visitors is a two-ton stone sculpture of Guy The Gorilla.
One of the London Zoo’s most loved inhabitants, Guy died in 1978. The statue, by Michael Cooper, reclines in the shade of a fine horse-chestnut and is a surprising addition to the 18th-century house in Bledlow, Bucks, that Lord Carrington, 93, has lived in since 1945. He tells me: ‘It is a personal favourite. Guy is very beloved and a watchful presence in the garden.’
Lord Mountbatten, who was killed by an IRA bomb in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher became PM, is having his famously open marriage to effervescent wife Edwina exposed and dissected on stage.
Billed as ‘a story of illicit love, racism and betrayal’, the show — Hutch — focuses on the relationship between Philip’s ‘Uncle Dickie’, the last Viceroy of India, and Edwina, whose affair with the West Indian-born singer, pianist and cabaret star Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson, humiliated Mountbatten — and riveted London society in the Thirties.
Based on Charlotte Breese’s 1999 bestseller of the same name, the production will feature a diamond-encrusted sheath which Edwina supposedly commissioned Cartier to design as a gift for her lover.
It also refers to claims which have surfaced over the years that Edwina and Hutch were said to have been discovered in flagrante delicto, intimately locked together through a rare medical phenomenon. They had to be taken naked, from Brook House, the Mountbatten residence in Park Lane, to a private hospital, where doctors separated them.
The musical is certain to cause huge embarrassment not only to the Royal Family but to the Mountbattens’ two daughters — Countess Mountbatten of Burma, 89, and Lady Pamela Hicks, 83.
The relationship between Louis Mountbatten, 1st
Earl Mountbatten of Burma and his wife Edwina Mountbatten, Countess
Mountbatten of Burma, fascinated London
Edwina, who died in 1960, is portrayed by young actress Imogen Daines, and the man said to be Hutch’s gay lover, composer Cole Porter whose songs such as Let’s Do It are featured in the show, is played by Sid Phoenix.
Writer Joe Evans says: ‘We have still to finalise the casting of Lord Mountbatten. We are down to a shortlist of two.’
Adds author Charlotte Breese: ‘I haven’t seen the script, but I shall be attending the first night on May 17, and am giving a party afterwards.’
Why soprano Laura Wright's off pitch
Laura Wright now needs keyhole surgery
Laura, 22 — dubbed The Scrummy Soprano after a gust of wind lifted up her split-to-the-armpit Jasper Conran dress at the Six Nations in February, exposing her hotpants — was last night performing her first solo concert at the Royal Albert Hall.
But her rugby training as full-back for Rosslyn Park Ladies in Surrey is temporarily on hold after she damaged her leg preparing for the London Marathon.
She has now had to pull out of the race. and tells me: ‘It’s a huge shame, but I hurt my leg training on uneven ground and I now need keyhole surgery on it.’
The injury meant Laura had to take her final year recital exams at the Royal College of Music on crutches.
‘The recital is worth 80 per cent of my marks and the crutches certainly impaired my visual impact, but I still managed to get a first,’ she says.
‘I now have to wait for the rest of my results, but I am hoping for a first overall.’
Of her injured leg, she says: ‘It was painful, but at least it was only my right leg.
‘I am left-footed — I kick with my left — so it’s not so bad that my right leg was injured.’
............................................................................
How rich of Dr Giles Fraser, who resigned as Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s in 2011 over the Occupy protest camp row, to wade into the debate of whether Lady Thatcher’s funeral should take place at the cathedral.
Fraser branded the late Baroness a ‘Marmite politician’ — you either love her or hate her — in a Radio 4 interview yesterday and questioned whether St Paul’s was appropriate because she was so ‘divisive’.
However, the same sobriquet could apply to him. Acquaintances of Fraser recall a dinner with him in Soho where he loudly launched into an appreciation of the opposite sex.
‘Our amazement turned to embarrassment as he discussed porn websites and gave us the name of one,’ says one diner. ‘He was well-refreshed, but we thought it very odd that a priest should talk about porn. We couldn’t ask him his motives because he left early saying he was going to a pub down the road to see a barmaid.’
Daisy and a Waugh of words
Daisy Waugh has had a minor family crisis
Going against the grain of the brainy Waughs — her great-grandfather was Brideshead Revisited author Evelyn and her grandfather man of letters Auberon — Esther failed to get sufficient A-levels at school to go to university.
Esther, 18, is the daughter of Daisy’s sister Sophie and is remarkably frank about her failure. ‘I should be going to uni like my friends but I didn’t work hard enough!’ she says. ‘I’ve had to stay down a year. I haven’t done anything seriously bad, just been a bit of a wild child.’
Esther hopes to follow in the footsteps of her father, Julian Watson, an educational consultant who lives in Cambodia with his second wife and two young daughters. Adds Esther: ‘Of course I could always be a writer, but that’s no big deal because it’s in the blood.’
...........................................................................................................................................................
Distinguished historian Andrew Roberts compares the effect of Margaret Thatcher’s prime ministerial resignation in November 1990 to the shock his parents felt on hearing of JFK’s assassination 27 years before.
In this week’s Spectator magazine, the dapper author recalls buying her flowers and handing them over to the policeman at the Downing Street gates. ‘On that never-to-be-forgiven day, a powerful cathartic sense overcame me as I listened to the radio in my flat. To my surprise I started to cry.’
...........................................................................................................................................................
What a hectic life some authors lead.
Jeanette Winterson thought she was due to give a reading in Basel, Switzerland, today — until a late-evening phone call on Tuesday reminded her she was due on stage yesterday.
Grabbing a breakfast-time flight just in time, Accrington lass Winterson — who was to read from her new book Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? — responded in typically robust fashion to the emergency,
‘I had it in my diary for Thursday,’ she panted as she hastily got ready. ‘I’m washing, ironing, having a whisky and going mad.’
...........................................................................................................................................................
Lord Carrington is throwing open the gates of his Georgian estate for next month’s National Garden Schemes spring open day. The highlight for visitors is a two-ton stone sculpture of Guy The Gorilla.
One of the London Zoo’s most loved inhabitants, Guy died in 1978. The statue, by Michael Cooper, reclines in the shade of a fine horse-chestnut and is a surprising addition to the 18th-century house in Bledlow, Bucks, that Lord Carrington, 93, has lived in since 1945. He tells me: ‘It is a personal favourite. Guy is very beloved and a watchful presence in the garden.’