EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Why didn’t Ben Wallace run?

The mystery of why Defense Secretary Ben Wallace is not participating in the Tory leadership race, after he topped a Conservative Home popularity poll, he remains a talking point in the party. Like fellow Tory MP Kwasi Kwarteng, Wallace has long been an admirer of many fancied Liz Truss†

Gary Lineker, again the highest paid star of the Beeb with a salary of £1.35million, sought public sympathy last month by claiming he was the victim of racist jokes about his ‘dark skin’. A reader who went to school with him in Leicestershire in the 1970s says he was teased ‘but it had nothing to do with the color of his skin. As big as his ears.”

Boris Johnson‘s ex-mistress Petronella Wyatt notes: “Rishi Sunak went on [leadership] maneuvers a little earlier than it seemed. You don’t adjust the black veil until your husband is dead.’

Barbara Amiel, who is pictured with him, is celebrating her 30th wedding anniversary with Conrad Black and tells in Rachel Johnson’s podcast that she married the then media mogul.

Lord Black of Crossharbour, ‘Although it was an amazing love match, it was the worst thing I could have done for my career. I went from columnist to socialite. Nothing is worse in life.’

As a socialite, Lady Black had to call The Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore and say that one of her dinner parties “was short of a woman.” He kindly sent one of his reporters, Eleanor Mills. An hour later — hastily groomed and put up — Mills was sipping an aperitif in the Black’s Cottesmore Gardens mansion when, after a male guest had withdrawn, she was told by Conrad, “End your drink and sledaddle.”

Tom Bower’s upcoming book Revenge, about Meghan Markle’s war with the Windsors, is out July 23. An earlier book by Bower about pop impresario Simon Cowell was called Sweet Revenge. Modern publishers are so imaginative, aren’t they?

Stoned age disc jockey David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton recalls a long-ago show by the Rolling Stones in Record Collector: ‘I parked my car at the back of the hall. Someone thought it was Mick Jagger’s and scratched a love note on it. For a week I drove around with ‘I love you Mick’ on the hood.’

Labor MP Tulip Siddiq says: ‘During the vote, I slipped into one of the small chambers of parliament to make a phone call and was shocked to see a Tory veteran hiding behind a chair in the corner. Like you’re really hiding. He said: “I’ve had 11 calls – 11! And I don’t endorse any of them…”