EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Why did Rishi Sunak's dissolution honours list - rushed out on election night - contain more Labour peerages than Tory ones?

Why did Rishi Sunak's dissolution honours list – rushed out on election night – contain more Labour peerages (eight) than Tory ones (seven)? Because, I am told, Sir Keir Starmer, who had wanted Sunak to block Liz Truss's resignation gongfest, would not have allowed Sunak's list through unamended and he had to make concessions.

Sent to the House of Lords by his former flatmate Tony Blair, 71, lawyer Charlie Falconer enjoyed a varied life in the higher reaches of our politics, ending up as Lord Chancellor – without exposing himself to the whims of voters. 

Has he now endeared himself to our new occupant of No10? Asked on Radio 4 if our new PM was boring, he replied indignantly that he knew Sir Keir well and 'HE IS NOT BORING'. 

Knowing the new PM well – and as a lawyer – couldn't he have come up with a little more than a blank denial. Meanwhile, the irrepressible socialite Kathy Lette recalls meeting Sir Keir in the 1980s, when her former husband, barrister Geoff Robertson, hired him as a junior. 

'With his crumpled cardigan, rumpled shirt, intensely earnest conversation and hangdog expression, he would easily have won my vote for Least Likely To Be Prime Minister,' she says.

Apropos non-boring Sir Keir's post-victory tour of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, a monarchical source wonders 'if this is a deliberate copy of King Charles's Operation Spring Tide visit to the same places in 2022?'

Max Peston, 27, pictured, the pop singer son of ITV's political editor Robert Peston, tells Jewish News that his father has attended 70 per cent of his band The New Sticky's appearances, remarking on their debut album that 'it's brilliant'. 

'Super annoying' is a comment on its launch on YouTube.

Pop music scribe Chris Charlesworth tells an amusing tale about Sir Richard Branson's early days. 

Staying at a modest hotel in Cannes during the Midem Festival, he found himself sharing a breakfast table with the then-unknown future tycoon. 

Branson asked if he would do him a favour – pretend to be the chauffeur of a Rolls-Royce which he had borrowed from his father. He didn't have a pass for the festival but if Charlesworth drove him there, security staff would conclude he was a big shot and let him in. Charlesworth agreed. 

Next time they met was on a London-bound jumbo jet from the US. Branson said he wanted to own an airline one day. 'Don't we all,' Charlesworth replied.

Gyles Brandreth says his Tory MP daughter Aphra arrived at the Chester South and Eddisbury count with two speeches prepared. In her left pocket, a loser's speech; in the right one, a winner's. 

'It was five in the morning and [at] the podium, she forgot which pocket her speech was in.' 

Brandreth lost his Chester seat 27 years ago but now aspires to become one of our national treasures.