We were left smiling, nay, tittering, after reading the lead story in Ephraim Hardcastle’s Daily Mail column last Thursday (May 22) about the late Frankie Howerd’s cottage and possessions being put up for sale.
They include his hernia belt that, according to the comedian’s former manager, Chris Byrne, was mistakenly thought to be a giant ‘sleeping mask’by a woman who, after the Up Pompeii star’s death, had stayed in his bedroom for one night.
It seems she attempted to tie it around her head but it kept falling off. Byrne is quoted to have said: ‘I think that must have been the closest any woman got to Frankie’s ****!”
The story bears a spooky resemblance to one that appeared three days earlier in The Stage newspaper’s Tabard column. But as the belt was there likened to huge ‘night goggles”, clearly it must be a different tale.
Naughty, naughty, naughty Ephraim, as the great man himself might have said.
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