Ephraim Hardcastle

COULD the timing of tomorrow’s start of the BBC Proms season be any worse for the Beeb? Coming a day after the publication of a green paper calling for the BBC to return to its Reithian roots and stop chasing audiences, the first week features a concert hosted by children’s TV celebrities Barney Harwood and Dick and Dom, a late-night event linking in to the BBC Asian Network with Bobby Friction and Naughty Boy, and the much-derided Radio 1 Pete Tong Ibiza-themed prom – an event described by the BBC as ‘less concert and more dance party’. It will be interesting to see who director general Tony Hall will be lobbying in his Royal Albert Hall box during the season – and to see whether Culture Secretary John Whittingdale will be accepting his invite. JENNY Hanley, who fuelled countless schoolboy fantasies as presenter of ITV’s Seventies kids show Magpie, admits losing film work for refusing to go nude. Says Jenny, 67: ‘When I went on to have two sons, I was very pleased that I hadn’t. But I was scared to death one day when one of my sons said to me, “A boy claims to have seen your naked breasts on a computer, but I told him they weren’t yours because the t**s were far too dark brown and you’re a natural blonde!” I thought, how does he know these things? But I suppose it’s nice to have a son who’s educated!’ IRISH novelist Edna O’Brien, pictured in her prime, declined to talk about her affair with John Freeman when approached by the Face to Face presenter’s biographer Hugh Purcell. Freeman, who died seven months ago aged 99, dumped Edna, 84. She got her own back with her 1968 short story The Love Object, revealing that Freeman always folded his trousers with geometric precision before jumping into bed with her. LABOUR peer Melvyn Bragg can’t resist a swipe at David Cameron’s famous ignorance about Magna Carta in a BBC eulogy on his career to be screened on Saturday. ‘Whilst on the (David Letterman) show he was asked what Magna Carta was, and do you know what he said? “You have got me on that one!” This was a guy who told you he was brilliant at Eton, telling Letterman “You have got me there!” He must have learnt some Latin – he could have said: “Big charter!” It was “Magna… ooh!” and he didn’t know that!’ Bragg waspishly adds: ‘Some private schools are rubbish, some are very good. I don’t think Eton is all that good if you take our Prime Minister as an example.’ MAVERICK Tory MP David Davis persuaded Labour donor Assem Allam to give him £10,000 towards his re-election after Assem, the Egyptian-born owner of Hull City, became disillusioned with Ed Miliband. He gave Labour £200,000 in March but complained: ‘Labour is promoting socialism and they’re in danger of promoting communism.’ DID the Queen read Andreas Whittam Smith’s rant against the honours system before she made the old duffer a knight bachelor in her recent Birthday honours? Andreas, 78, founding editor of The Independent, wrote in that paper three years ago: ‘Honours are odious and harmful and it is time they went.’

E-mail: ephraim.hardcastle@dailymail.co.uk