The MCC, said to be synonymous with fair play and friendly behaviour, suffered a painful embarrassment last summer when dozens of its members were caught on camera subjecting Australian batsmen to volleys of abuse on the final day of the Lord’s Test.
The club’s committee subsequently expelled one miscreant from the club and suspended two others, but if she thought the trouble was behind that, she has been forced to think again after being thrown out as a bouncer by disgruntled traditionalists sickened by what they see as the committee’s obsession with political correctness. and by his autocratic manner.
For I can reveal that no fewer than 180 MCC rebels have forced the club to prepare for a special general meeting where it will vote to introduce a ‘fully democratic process’ in selecting a successor to the chairman of the club.
Incumbent banker Bruce Carnegie-Brown announced in November that he would not seek a second term. It was a wise decision, critics say, considering that Carnegie-Brown had made an ill-considered joke about older members having to “empty their colostomy bags,” and that he was widely blamed for the divisive proposal to end to the Eton v Harrow and Oxford v Cambridge matches at Lord’s.
That move, backed by Stephen Fry, who, to the astonishment of many, had been appointed president of the MCC, an honorable appointment for a year, caused a fierce outcry led by the inimitable Henry Blofeld, who had been elevated to status. ovation at Lord’s after giving his final Test Match Special commentary five years earlier.
Former MCC president Stephen Fry pictured at Lord’s in May 2022. He backed a plan to end the Eton v Harrow and Oxford v Cambridge matches at Lord’s, sparking outrage
The MCC suffered a painful embarrassment last summer when dozens of its members were caught on camera subjecting Australian batsmen to volleys of abuse (pictured)
No fewer than 180 MCC rebels have forced the club to prepare for a special general meeting where it will vote to introduce a ‘fully democratic process’ in selecting a successor to the club’s president. Pictured: Lord’s cricket ground
“You can’t tell me the committee can’t find room in the calendar for two student schedules,” said “Blowers,” who ridiculed the committee’s proposal and described its rationale as “palpably untrue.”
On that occasion, Carnegie-Brown and the committee withdrew and agreed that the competitions could remain in force for another five years, after which their future would be voted on again.
That concession appears to have emboldened critics. “It’s time to kick the t**** responsible for the woke agenda again,” one of the rebels tells me.
Mike Hall, leader of the MCC Reform Group, puts it more diplomatically. “The MCC has unfortunately become like many similar institutions in this country,” he said in an email to supporters, “in that there is a revolving door of electing the same people over and over again.”
A sentiment that even those who have nothing to do with cricket might agree with…
Sunny Laura’s trolls can’t get her
Are you feeling the winter blues? A Place In The Sun presenter Laura Hamilton is trying to cheer up her fans on social media with pictures of her in the hotspots from the property series.
Yet she has had enough of the criticism she receives from ungrateful souls.
“People often say, ‘You always post that you’re away,’ and I say, ‘No, that’s the nature of my work,’” she tells me at the European premiere of Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria: In A New Light, at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
“I’ve developed a thick skin, so I don’t let people’s comments influence me.”
Hamilton, 41, who divorced her estate agent husband Alex Goward in 2022, has just finished filming the first series of spin-off show A Place In The Sun: What Happened Next.
A Place In The Sun presenter Laura Hamilton (pictured) is fed up with the criticism she receives when she shares photos of her in the hotspots in the property series
A claim in Country Life magazine that Longleat, the seat of the Marquess of Bath in Wiltshire, was the first private stately home to receive paying visitors in 1949 has caused a stir at Hatfield House, the seat of the Marquess of Salisbury in Hertfordshire.
Its librarian, Robin Harcourt Williams, points out that it opened to the public in 1948, although he admits: ‘The pioneering tour guides then did not have the expertise they do now.’
A guide dismissed “with a light wave of the hand” a group of portraits, saying, “The pictures in this room are mostly kings.” The visitor replied, “I know kings are going out of fashion, but you’d rather know which is which.”
Cate Blanchett proved she wasn’t helplessly addicted to the spotlight in 2020 when she signed up to create a “meditation room” in the grounds of the country house she and her husband, playwright Andrew Upton, acquired in Sussex five years earlier.
However, now the actress has scrapped the plans. The Australian couple wanted to demolish a dilapidated cottage and shed to make way for a new complex that would house both the retreat and an art gallery.
They received a building permit, but failed to complete the work within the three-year period.
Their planning agent said at the time: ‘The applicants are creative people and it is good for them to have a place that is peaceful and inspired by the arts.’
Cate Blanchett has pulled the plug on her plans to demolish an abandoned cottage and shed to make way for a new complex
Film director Guy Ritchie, who bought Ashcombe House, a stately home in Wiltshire, when he was married to Queen of Pop Madonna, has the income to match.
I hear his company, Ashcombe Estates – which oversees his farm, pub, film and barbecue businesses – saw a £7.5m increase in retained earnings last year.
According to newly published figures, the company’s assets have risen from £24.9m in 2022 to £32.4m.
Most of the money in the business is tied up in fixed assets, such as real estate.
Dashing actor Matthew Rhys is determined to teach his children his native language, with mixed results. “I only speak Welsh to our youngest, Sam, but he is at the start of the uprising,” Cardiff-born Rhys, 49, says of the seven-year-old.
Rhys fell in love with Sam’s mother, American actress Keri Russell, 47, after they worked together on spy drama The Americans.
‘I try to explain to him in Welsh what insurance is, and he says, ‘No, just say it in mum’s language.’ Maybe he just doesn’t want to talk about insurance, Matthew?
Campbell’s girl mocks King’s operation
Comedian Grace Campbell, daughter of Sir Tony Blair’s former propagandist Alastair Campbell, finds King Charles’ serious medical treatment amusing.
Grace, 29, posted a crude 40-second video online yesterday of herself delivering a monologue while posing as His Majesty’s prostate and speaking to someone on the phone.
“Apparently I’m everywhere – it’s crazy, they’re debating me on LBC,” she said in character, before making lewd comments about Queen Camilla.
‘I’m on everyone’s lips. . . Maybe I should get an agent. I have to go, he (the king) is going to the toilet.’
How pathetic.
Never mind scandals, slights and indiscretions. . . Gogglebox star Mary Killen explains that journaling has much more practical applications. ‘Every now and then I think: ‘Where is that scarf?’
Then I look through my diary to see where I was when I ‘lost it,’” she tells me at the London launch party for Love From Venice, a memoir based on diaries written 67 years ago by first-time author Gill Johnson, he is almost 92. At the age of 25, Johnson was immersed in the jet set world of the Venetian aristocracy.
