Kim Leadbeater’s Bill to legalise assisted dying leads inevitably to a potentially awkward conversation with King Charles.
Either the royals will have to be exempted from it (as happened with the Marriage Act 1949 in regard to civil weddings) or the Treason Act 1351, still very much in force, will need to be amended.
That makes it an offence to ‘compass or imagine’ the death of the monarch, meaning, for example, that Queen Camilla could end up in the Tower if she did anything to help the King shuffle off this mortal coil.
It is also treason to ‘interrupt’ the line of succession. Deep waters.
Labour MP Kim Leadbeater pictured in her office in the Houses of Parliament
Leadbeater’s Bill to legalise assisted dying leads inevitably to a potentially awkward conversation with King Charles
The only doctor to have deliberately killed a monarch is Lord Dawson of Penn, who injected the dying George V with lethal doses of morphine and cocaine to hasten his death in 1936.
Lord Dawson, who may have been guilty of murder and high treason, was given a viscountcy a few months later, prompting the clerihew: ‘Lord Dawson of Penn / Killed many men / That’s why we sing / God save the King.’
Fashion designer Amanda Wakeley has revealed that she saved the blushes of her friend Theresa May when, in her inaugural appearance as Prime Minister, she spotted that she was wearing a navy-blue Escada suit.
‘Realising it was a company headquartered in Germany, I went, ‘Stop right there. She may feel great in it, but she can’t take office in front of the world wearing Escada’,’ wailed Wakeley.
Suitably warned by Amanda, the new PM changed into a blue coat and dress from… Amanda Wakeley. Funny that.
Fashion designer Amanda Wakeley has revealed that she saved the blushes of her friend Theresa May
Paying tribute to her Good Life co-star more than a decade since his death, Felicity Kendal enthuses: ‘The best leading man is one you can’t wait to work with. It was like that with Richard Briers. There was a chemistry between us that made it so enjoyable.’
But would Richard concur? Shortly before he died in 2013 he suggested it had been a more distant relationship.
‘I don’t really know who she is. Never did,’ he reflected. Was Richard, pictured with Felicity in their 1970s Good Life heyday, having a giraffe?
Frugal painter Frank Auerbach, who has died aged 93, was baffled by the money that flowed his way in his later career, once calling Jacob, Lord Rothschild, who had collected his work for more than 60 years, and asking: ‘What’s a pension fund?’
Frugal painter Frank Auerbach was baffled by the money that flowed his way in his later career
Kathy Burke, 60, reveals on the latest episode of her podcast, Where There’s A Will, There’s A Wake: ‘I remember years ago, when I was drying my knickers on the radiator, I looked over and I thought, I used to be able to get seven pairs of knickers on that radiator, now there’s three. Three that are like f****** distress signals – the size of them!’
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