Ephraim Hardcastle
KING Felipe VI of Spain’s state visit to the UK from June 6 to 8 means the Queen will be invited to make a return visit to Spain – her first since 1988. Can she do this and avoid Gibraltar, which she has not visited since 1954 to avoid upsetting the Spanish government and monarchy? In 1988, she went no further south than Seville, despite pleas from Gibraltarians. Otherwise her visit would have been cancelled. King Juan Carlos refused to attend Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981 after it was announced that their honeymoon cruise would begin from the Rock. Discussing 49-year-old Felipe’s coming visit – originally scheduled for spring last year – and Gibraltar, I mused in October 2015: ‘The Foreign Office hopes an old queen and a young king might just be able to heal some wounds.’ Some hope! TONY Blair’s retired mouthpiece Alastair Campbell, interviews writer and Jeremy Corbyn fan Owen Jones for GQ magazine, asking him: ‘Would you ever go to the House of Lords?’ Jones: ‘No. Are you kidding me?’ Campbell: ‘Shami Chakrabarti (the Labour-supporting human rights campaigner) did.’ Jones: ‘Fine. I am not her. Are you going to be in the House of Lords?’ Campbell: ‘Never. Turned it down several times.’ And some wonder why the Labour Party’s said to be dying. CARTOONIST Gerald Scarfe, who auctions some of his drawings at Sotheby’s today, caricatured New York intellectuals Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller (right) in the 1960s. When he arrived at Miller’s place, he was disappointed to find Mrs Miller was out. ‘I consoled myself with the thought that I’d shook a hand that had cupped the breasts of Marilyn Monroe,’ he says. Then of course Mrs Miller, but not for long… HOLLYWOOD veteran Shirley MacLaine, 82, has never made a film with her younger brother, Warren Beatty, 80, despite both having screen careers lasting 60 years, saying: ‘To me, Warren was no more than a little nuisance, forever getting on the nerves of his bossy older sister. He thinks the stuff I write is plain crazy. He’s never been interested in spirituality or reincarnation, or UFOs.’ Women appeared to be Warren’s main interest. PREACHY comedian Steve Coogan, 51, claimed he’d do ‘everything in my power’ campaigning against the businesses of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. Yet his TV comedy series The Trip, now in its third series, has moved from BBC2 to Murdoch-controlled Sky Atlantic. Will he object to the series appearing on a Murdoch-controlled network? AFTER my item about the late disc jockey Jimmy Savile wearing a Royal Marines green beret in his coffin, a reader writes: ‘I was in Commando school when Savile won his green beret. On one occasion he was introduced to the corporals’ wives. As he bent to give them a kiss he actually licked them instead. The wives all thought he was an absolute horror.’