Ephraim Hardcastle

BARONESS Wheatcroft, 65, the journalist and Tory peer who voted in favour of remaining in the eu single market, dismisses PM Theresa May, sneering on BBC TV: ‘Talking about a red, white and blue Brexit was never going to be helpful.’ Lady W used to be polite about her betters when she was plain Patience (and a profound eurosceptic), cannily climbing the upper reaches of our putrid honours system. WHEN new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, pictured, meets the Queen at Scotland Yard on March 23 will HM congratulate her on becoming the Yard’s first female leader? My royal source says: ‘ It’s unlikely. HM likes to point out that she is the fifth English queen to have ruled in her own right since Mary I smashed through the glass ceiling in 1553.’ WHILE ex-PM Sir John Major appears to query the sanity of 52 per cent of voters who opted to leave the eu, Tory MP Jacob rees-Mogg explains compassionately: ‘I can understand why the man who led the Conservatives to their worst defeat in the best part of 100 years is upset with the electorate.’ RE: Sir John, might our ‘Brexit Queen’ seat the Tory ex-premier ‘below the salt’ at this year’s Garter lunch in June? If so, he might find himself short of food. Former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey said his wife, Eileen, was about to help herself to an extra lamb cutlet there when a footman whispered, ‘Please don’t take a third, Ma’am. Mr Kinnock took three and there won’t be enough to go round.’ TODAY is Ash Wednesday – 40 days of denial and fasting, which Prince Charles has joined over the years. his late, funloving aunt, Princess Margaret, tended instead to have an ash cross applied to her forehead at Lambeth Palace before returning for her first cocktail of the day. A former aide said her motto was: ‘Duty done, party begun.’ WAS that Tory MP Michael Gove breakfasting with ex-Tory defence secretary Michael Portillo at fancy Mayfair restaurant Cecconi’s? In 1995, Gove wrote a friendly biography of Cambridgeeducated Portillo but it did disobligingly quote a contemporary saying of the latter’s set: ‘Fellows and undergraduates were given girls’ names, parties were organised in meadows a little out of town and cross-dressing was encouraged.’ UP In The Cheap Seats, a new Broadway memoir by actor ron Fassler, says hollywood film director Mike Nichols (The Graduate) told him the late, Oscarwinning actress Maureen Stapleton – who grew up in a strict roman Catholic family, and with whom he was then working – threw herself on to the steps of the ritz hotel in Boston, demanding: ‘**** me or I’ll start yelling “rape”. It’s a mercy ****. You owe it to me.’ he doesn’t say whether Nichols obliged.