26 December—My favorite Christmas music is pretty well limited to two carols, “Cantique de Noël,” a.k.a. “O Holy Night” (composed in 1847 by Adolphe Adam to a poem by Placide Cappeau) and “Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,” a.k.a. “Silent Night” (composed in 1818 by Franz Gruber to lyrics by Joseph Mohr). And some Thomas Tallis ditties, of course. Christmas without Tallis would be Kwanzaa.

But there was so much lesser Christmas music interspersed with not-very-subtle seasonal begging on the left-wing radio stations I normally listen to that I pulled out a set of CDs to play on the highly overrated and obscenely overpriced Bose radio-CD player in my office. The lucky CDs I played yesterday were devoted to piano reductions by Franz Liszt of opera music cleverly called “Liszt at the Opera,” played by Leslie Howard. Not the actor, by the way.

I hadn’t kept track of Howard—it’s over two decades since I had bought the CDs and checked him out—so I googled the UK-based Ozzie maestro to refresh my memory.

Well, I never. “World renowned concert pianist drove with man clinging to bonnet in road rage attack” read the headline to the 2008 Evening Standard story. It seems that after a minor fender-bender in London the maestro and the other driver got into an argument—surprise!—and Leslie drove about 50 feet with the other guy clinging to the hood of his Mercedes-Benz. Bottom line, Dr. Howard (he uses the title since having been awarded an honorary doctorate by Melbourne U) was convicted, banned from driving for three years, sentenced to six months in the slammer (suspended) and 80 hours of community service, ordered to pay costs, and likely paid the hood-clinger some more.

You wonder why the other schmuck grabbed the hood of Dr. Howard’s car. But that’s all in the past. It’s the present that concerns us. The now. Now. While I was digitally (but never pruriently) thumbing through the Evening Standard, I chanced upon—i.e., I couldn’t miss—the brand new headline, “Prince Andrew ‘kicked out’ of Buckingham Palace by King Charles.”

King Charles? I had forgot that Prince Charles finally got to be King Charles III. Prince Andrew, as you may recall, is Charles’s libertine younger brother the; Charles’s even younger brother, Edward, isn’t a libertine and therefore doesn’t get many tabloid inches.

Randy Andy, though he’s still Duke of York, will no longer be permitted to hold an office inside Buckingham Palace or use it as an address for correspondence. “Any presence at the Palace is officially over,” according to an anonymous palace source. “The King has made it clear. [Randy Andy] isn’t a working royal. He’s on his own.”

Of course, Andrew is still HRH—His Royal Highness. Just like HRH Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (a.k.a. Mr. Megan Markle)—Charles’s younger son by his late first wife—and his wife are on their own. It’s called having it both ways.

You’ll recall that Randy Andy’s late mum, QE II, helped him pay $14.5 million to a woman who knew exactly what she was doing for Jeffrey Epstein. QE II shouldn’t have helped save her wayward son’s ass, to be sure, but that’s what parents do. Need I cite Joe and Hunter yet again?

But it’s not what older brothers do. So full marks to Charles for showing Andrew the door. For public relations, anyway. (Not that Prince Charles hadn’t himself been tabloid fodder, of course.) And HM Charles III also scored brownie points with his patient wife, Camilla, now the Queen Consort, by canning Andy as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards and giving the title to her. It’s good to have a doting husband who’s king . . .