HAPPY BIRTHDAY

DAME EILEEN ATKINS, 83. The star of Cranford and Gosford Park grew up on a london council estate, the daughter of a gas meter reader and a barmaid. The co- creator of Upstairs, Downstairs (right) said she was sexually propositioned by actor Colin Farrell when she was 69 and he was 28. She turned him down, saying she was ‘too old and too married’. She was rewarded with The oldie magazine’s Refusenik of The Year award. NEIL MACGREGOR, 71. The Glasgow-born former director of the British Museum and the National Gallery, who presented BBC Radio 4’s A History of The world In 100 objects, turned down a knighthood in 1999. Art historian and spy Anthony Blunt, who taught MacGregor (who’d already trained as a lawyer), called him ‘the most brilliant student I’ve ever taught’.