News about Hattie Jacques

Bank Holiday weekend and I'm in Lidl . I can never think of anything I want to buy, so I wander aimlessly with a basket, ending up with dog food, a grapefruit, fizzy water, apples. There's no holiday weekend splurge for me, no BBQ food, salty snacks or sweet treats. Standing in line for the tills behind a family with two groaning trolleys, I say, out loud: 'How can you possibly eat all that?' Because food is still anathema to me. The common belief is that anorexia is a young woman's disease. You either tragically die or, given time, you come to your senses. What people rarely consider is what happens when you don't recover. Those of us who were raised in the 1960s and 1970s, an era of Twiggy and Nimble bread, calorie-counters and One-Cal fizzy drinks, are now reaching retirement age and beyond - and many of us still struggle with eating disorders.

As I drop another item onto the bedroom floor, my daughter, Sophie, fixes me with a quizzical look. We're sorting through my cupboards, so I can have a clear-out and she can assess if there's anything worth selling online. Sophie's clearly perplexed by the sheer volume of items being discarded. 'You really want to get rid of all of these things?' she muses with disbelief, as she holds up a size ten lilac-coloured number from Reiss which I bought several years ago. Memorably (for me, anyway), I wore it for my inaugural appearance on Question Time. It's not the only outfit to be jettisoned during this ruthless cull - from the royal blue Max Mara dress, accessorised with a gilt star-shaped belt, that I wore to a family wedding, to a yellow button-down frock sprigged with white roses and which, though only a few years old, would still see me through plenty of summer parties.

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Are the £75 tours of Buckingham Palace's balcony room a dry run for when the Palace becomes a fully-fledged cash-cow?With Charles basing himself at Clarence House and in effect downgrading the Palace, couldn't he raise millions making it available to film crews and organisations for functions? If the Palace tills worked all year, the annual £12 million income from the summer openings could have quadrupled. I'm told the balcony was included in the original tour itinerary, with paying visitors photographed at the historic venue but it was later turned down.

In the world of traditional British comedy, there are two specific genders - battleaxes and nubile maidens; that is, crones or tarts, ratbags, or nymphets; Hattie Jacques, the ward's pounding, is on one hand, but Barbara Windsor, 'joyous, earthy, funny,' on the other hand, said to Frankie Howerd, 'tittering on the brink,'. The Carry On Girls, as ours is a very consequential period of identity politics, has been on the verge of cancellation, but Gemma and Robert Ross, who played the films as social historians, are in danger of cancellation.

The brash banners from the bawdy British 60s classics are known for their seaside postcard-style humour and smuttiness. Despite being a little grubby and selling for three times its estimate, the risque poster for 1963 caper Carry On Cabby (left) shocked auctioneers. In the cab with Sid James thumbing a lift, a 30 by 40 inch poster depicts a yellow Glamcab being push by a female taxi driver, as well as caricatures of actors Kenneth Connor, Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtrey, and Esma Cannon. At Ewbank's vintage posters auction on Friday, August 4, it defeated its initial £700-1,000 estimate and went for £2,210. The poster from Carry On Spying (right) eclipsed its £500-800 estimate to sell for £1,690

HARDCASTLE, EPHRAIM: Since the Princess of Wales' pancake disaster this week, Dame Prue Leith may be clutching her head in her hands. Kate, who undertook an intensive course at Leiths School of Food and Wine in central London, should have had a recipe involving only flour, eggs, and milk. Prue's founder, Linda Lavigne, started by Prue in 1975, the program, which later cost about £1,600, should have made Kate an expert in sauces, de-boning, fighting souffles, and whipping up ice creams and canapes. When Kate covered pancakes, they may have been waving somewhere. IF Harry and Meghan attend the Coronation, will they be seated near Wills and Kate? That's the point: a Channel 5 documentary will premiere tomorrow. When they sat in separate rows at St Paul's Cathedral for the Jubilee service, commentator Daisy McAndrew reveals the apparent disconnect between them. 'There was no eye contact or conversation between them whatsoever,' she says. To most observers, the fact that they were seated on opposite sides of the aisle indicated that there haven't been any sort of patching-up.' Might a four-stool boxing ring be installed with a good view of King Edward's Chair? HAVING managed to remove stress from her life, Joanna Lumley, 76, will suffer a tension with Talking Pictures Screen, a 1971 soft-porn film in which a often topless Joanna, Fanny Hill, an 18th-century prostitute, will have relapsed. The actor, who was shot in the film, vies with Lady Chatterley to seduce as many men as possible. It comes to an end with a three-in-a-bed romp with a bald wine merchant. And who plays the lucky chap? Richard Wattis, the Seventies sitcom neighbor of Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, is better than him. Isn't life grand?