Having come to assistance from struggling thespians since 1882, the Actors’ Benevolent Fund has now been renamed the Actors’ Belief following a very fraught few years. The London-based charity, which boasts the King as patron, grew to become embroiled in controversy in 2022 when hostilities within the ranks led to then president Dame Penelope Keith, being ousted from the board.
Issues turned extra sinister when each Keith and fellow veteran actress Dame Siân Phillips obtained poisoned pen letters from a thriller foe, warning they have been “completed” ought to they dare attend final November’s AGM. The revamped Actors’ Belief now talks of “fashionable evolution reflecting the wants of the business at this time”. However are the “luvvie wars” actually at an finish?
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Losing no time speaking up his subsequent and formally “closing” novel – a narrative about Churchill and Hitler – Jeffrey Archer boldly predicts it is going to be “higher than Kane and Abel”, his well-known 1979 bestseller.
“Once I advised my publishers the thought six years in the past, they begged me to cease writing [his recently completed] William Warwick books and do it instantly,” boasts Archer, 85. “And I mentioned, ‘I will dwell to 86. Don’t fret!'”
Modesty’s by no means been Jeffrey’s forte…
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Whereas “King of the North” Andy Burnham confirms Labour MPs have been urging him to problem Sir Keir Starmer, he additionally has loads of detractors. Noting shifting political allegiances down the years, one standard joke amongst Labour comrades goes as follows: “A Blairite, a Brownite, a Milibandite and a Corbynite stroll right into a pub. ‘Howdy, Mr Burnham!’ says the barman.”
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Again on the BBC as Alan Partridge subsequent week, Steve Coogan insists on conserving a framed letter of criticism in his downstairs lavatory, following information the presenter character had landed his debut TV sequence 30 years in the past. Unaware gaffe-prone Partridge, beforehand heard on Radio 4, was a comic book creation, an irate retired colonel wrote: “I used to be appalled to listen to this man was given his personal present.”
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Legendary cricket umpire Dickie Chicken, who’s died aged 92, remained loyal to his native Yorkshire when it got here to summer time holidays. “I at all times go to Scarborough,” Barnsley-born Dickie enthused. “That east coast – I don’t suppose there’s something nicer on the earth on a fantastic day.”
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By no means shy to point out off her enviable determine at 60, Elizabeth Hurley, credit modern-day abstinence, explaining: “I do not drink a lot alcohol in any respect…my physique processes it much less properly than it did once I was youthful.”
Fortunately, Liz’s present squeeze, musician Billy Ray Cyrus, has been off the onerous stuff for over 30 years.
