EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Full steam ahead for Duke of Edinburgh after last year's health scares

By Ephraim Hardcastle for the Daily Mail

Published: 20:26 EDT, 19 May 2014 | Updated: 03:48 EDT, town car ny 20 May 2014









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The Duke of Edinburgh ¿ in faltering health this time last year ¿ is back to full steam ahead

As his 93rd birthday approaches in June, the Duke of Edinburgh - in faltering health this time last year - is back to full steam ahead in royal engagements.

He has no fewer than 25 booked from May 20 to July 14.

Often they include two or three venues a day.

Even on his 93rd birthday (June 10) he attends one of the Queen's huge Buckingham Palace garden parties, involving around 8,000 guests.

That alone merits a medal.

The Rubik's Cube, invented by Hungarian Erno Rubik, is 40 years old this week.

Labour leader Ed Miliband was a youthful fan of the puzzle.

He has boasted: ‘I can do a Rubik's Cube in one minute and 30 seconds.'

Who can doubt it?

He reminded us the other day: ‘I have more intellectual confidence than David Cameron.'

Labour MP David Lammy intervenes in the Nigel Farage ‘racism' row.

He's always keen to speak on race matters. Doesn't always get it right, though. Last year he accused the BBC of ‘silly innuendo about the race of the next Pope' during the papal election.


This was after it reported that smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel was either ‘black or white'.



TV historian Dr Lucy Worsley

It had to be explained to him that white or black smoke is used to indicate whether or not a new Pope has been chosen, not the colour of his holiness.

Perky, small in stature TV historian Lucy Worsley, pictured - known as the History Hobbit - says in an interview that she was ‘quite a freakish kid and looked like ET'.

However, she adds: ‘I'm very good at running. Mainly it's because I have extra-large nostrils. So I can take in the air very effectively.' A disturbing image!

The Who's Roger Daltrey, 70, who warbled ‘Hope I die before I get old' in the hit song My Generation half a century ago, says performances are a trial for town car ny him now.

‘I just forget the words. I'm quite deaf these days - it's come to us all. All that racket in the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.'

The poor old chap now uses ‘ear monitors'. They allow him to hear how he sounds.

 
Thedecision by Dublin's All Hallows College to sell the intensely personal letters young Jackie Kennedy wrote to an Irish priest, Fr Joseph Leonard, has saddened retired secret service agent Clint Hill, 82, JetBlack who jumped on to the presidential limo when JFK was shot in Dallas, Texas.

He says: ‘It is a little intrusive, in my opinion. She obviously trusted this individual a great deal because, in reading what I have seen so far, she really opened up, which was a little bit unusual, in my experience.'

All Hallows came into possession of the letters when Fr Joseph died.

They are expected to fetch more than £1million when auctioned by Sheppard's in Durrow, Co Laois, on June 10.

Wouldn't it have been more seemly to donate them to the Kennedy Library in Boston?



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