Ephraim Hardcastle
SAYING he’s ‘very much in love’, the morose-looking Dragons’ Den panellist Duncan Bannatyne, 68 – due to marry dental clinic worker Nigora Whitehorn, 36, this weekend – says on Twitter: ‘Just three more sleeps until I marry the amazing Nigora.’ The Clydebank-born health club chain owner says divorcing his second wife in 2011 cost him £345million and nearly drove him to suicide. Let’s hope he’s now destined for lasting happiness. And that whoever said ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a definition of insanity’ was wrong.
VENERABLE crooner and ladies’ man Engelbert Humperdinck, 81, quips that he’s had ‘more paternity suits than casual suits’. Yet his wife, Patricia Healey, has stuck by him for more than 50 years. ‘No matter what kind of stormy weather you go through, there is always sunshine at the end of the road,’ muses the doddery tomcat. His rival, Tom Jones, remained with his late wife, Linda, for 59 years. Both might have had to pay out millions had there been divorce.
RADIO 4’s Today presenter Justin Webb excitedly introduced Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as yesterday’s Thought For The Day contributor. Webb, 56, and Welby, 61, have something special in common. Webb revealed in 2011 that his real father was the late BBC newsreader Peter Woods. Welby disclosed last year that his real pater was Winston Churchill’s private secretary, Sir Anthony Montague Browne.
RISING BBC star Mishal Husain, 44 – heir apparent to her Today colleague John Humphrys – is perceived by colleagues to have had a career setback as host of Wednesday night’s rowdy, Leftybiased, so- called leaders’ debate. ‘The format meant Mishal [pictured] couldn’t play to her strengths,’ suggests a colleague diplomatically.
WHILE Epsom Derby’s free area in the centre of the course is sponsored by the cut-price store Poundland this year, snobbier Royal Ascot is backed by Dubai Duty Free, a favourite of the Queen in her travelling days. During stopovers there the monarch hastened to the Clarins cosmetics counter in Duty Free.
MARTIN Bell, the ex-BBC man and former independent MP, says in a new memoir (War And The Death of News) that he found the opinions of his famous colleague, World Affairs editor John Simpson, ‘a bit elderly and dilapidated’. When Bell departed to become an MP, Simpson complained: ‘He left my World Affairs Unit without a word of goodbye.’ Bell says: ‘ My (his italics) World Affairs Unit? I had thought of it as more of a team than a hierarchy.’ Bad blood?
KEVIN Spacey, as wicked President Frank Underwood in series five of Netflix’s House of Cards, conspires to crash Washington DC computers, grounding all local flights. Might he be responsible for BA’s mysterious, imploding website? It’s about as likely an explanation as the airline’s ‘electrical outage’ excuse.