Ephraim Hardcastle

ALTHOUGH the Queen is said to want no fuss when she overtakes Queen Victoria’s reign of 63 years and seven months on September 9, courtiers say she’ll reconsider if there is a public demand. How about it being celebrated during the July-September proms season, to be announced by the BBC today? a source tells me: ‘it has enormous choral and orchestral forces on the platform on September 9, for Carl Nielsen’s 4th Symphony. They could easily belt out elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory.’ THE upcoming season four of House of Cards ‘will reflect contemporary US politics and will probably be aired when the US presidential campaign gets under way’, its creator Michael Dobbs tells me. Without wishing to spoil viewers’ enjoyment of series three, there are reasons to suppose that ambitious, embittered First Lady Claire Underwood (played by Robin Wright, above, with Kevin Spacey as her husband, President Francis Underwood) might herself become a presidential candidate. But Dobbs says: ‘If I confirmed that, I would have to come around to your office and kill you.’ Sir Bruce Forsyth, 87, deplores 71-year-old Sir Mick Jagger’s dance moves, calling them ‘grotesque’. Should either of the old brutes be dancing ‘moves’? Certainly not sexually suggestive ones likely to paralyse young folk with embarrassment. NOW running for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton is friendly to one and all as she tours the US heartlands. But a new book, The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents, by Ronald Kessler, provides another side to the ex-first lady. A member of her previous White House staff says: ‘If Hillary was walking down a hall, you were supposed to hide. We were basically told, “the Clintons don’t want to see you, they don’t want to hear you, get out of their way”.’ TORY candidate Nadine dorries smells conspiracy in the story of party chairman Grant Shapps being accused of altering (positively) his Wikipedia entries and amending (negatively) those of rivals. She tweets: ‘i even think i know the people who may be involved in this particularly nasty dirty trick.’ No doubt the police will be round to take down Nadine’s particulars. Cynics say Shapps’s support from outspoken Ms dorris – a former i’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! contestant – is a cross to be borne, not a blessing. CUDDLY, benign, never-a-bad-wordabout-anyone Lord Sugar (only joking) is amused by Tesco’s £6billion losses, gloating to Twitter followers: ‘For the next series of The Apprentice I am going to set a Tesco task. I want each team to go out and lose £92million a week.’ Of his own money, I hope. Having made a fortune selling his ill-regarded computer firm, Amstrad, Sugar was fortunate to be selected to present BBC1’s The Apprentice, based on a US show of that name fronted by Donald Trump.