So which Prime Minister ducked the task of telling Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor his globetrotting days as International Trade Envoy, and all round freeloader, were at an end?

Appointed by Tony Blair, Gordon Brown renewed him in the post, but the axe fell in 2011 when David Cameron was PM.

There had been a string of controversies over the then Prince's reputation as 'Air Miles Andy', his expenses, complaints about him being rude to his hosts and, of course, his links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

The issue of his conduct had repeatedly surfaced at Prime Minister's Questions – and Cameron had had enough.

But I can reveal that Cameron never himself told Andrew he was out of a job. He deputed instead Lord Marland, a minister, who was the first head of the newly formed British Business Ambassadors. Marland had dinner with Andrew at the 30-room mansion Royal Lodge at Windsor to break the bad news.

'He was very gracious, charming even,' Marland tells me. 'He knew why I was there, and he agreed it was time for him to stand down and do something else.'

At a swish party at a London hotel for Lord Ashcroft's 80th birthday, the compere, Rory Bremner, announced the top prize for the evening's charity draw as: 'Your name redacted from the Epstein files.'

Gaffe prone Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy was at it again last week. In an interview on Radio 4 he referred to Britain deploying RAF 'tycoons' to assist Cyprus instead of Typhoons. Watch your back Lord Sugar, given that you've got a pilot's licence, you might soon be posted to the Gulf! 

Republican Senator John Kennedy, firing a broadside at the Prime Minister over his stance on the Chagos Islands and using UK bases to fight Iran, says: 'He is trying to give President Trump advice about how to conduct the war. That's a little bit like seeking the advice of a nun about sex.

'Sir Keir Starmer is the last person you would want to go to advise you about how to have a military confrontation.'

Finally Labour has completed its purge of the last hereditary peers. But at what cost to its other parliamentary business? Baroness Smith, Leader of the Lords, admitted that one of her aides worked out that the eight-day Apollo 11 mission got Neil Armstrong to the moon and back 'quicker than we conducted our deliberations on these issues'. 

Sartorial oddities in the Commons: Labour MP Dame Siobhain McDonagh came to PMQs in a purple, toga-style dress with a laurel-motif necklace – making her appear as if she was auditioning for the role of Julius Caesar.

Book idea dawns on Archer 

The incomparable Jeffrey Archer celebrated 50 years as an author with a party at his penthouse flat by the Thames.

Archer's latest novel Adam And Eve – about the fates of two children born on Armistice Day – has been billed as his 'final' book. But it seems he isn't yet ready to put down his pen.

His son James tells me: 'Exactly 36 hours and 14 minutes after Dad retired, my phone went at 6.20am. It was Dad. He said: 'I've got this idea for six short stories and a novella.' '

Tory MP Lincoln Jopp was asked by his wife last week what he was going to be doing in parliament. Jopp replied: 'Trying to support the British pub industry.' A deadpan Mrs Jopp retorted: 'Trust me, you're doing your bit already.'