Ephraim Hardcastle
FOLLOWING its damaging-to-themonarchy documentary Diana: In her Own Words, Channel 4 transmits Princess Diana’s ‘Wicked’ Stepmother tomorrow night – a disrespectful film about the late socialite raine Spencer. Told by her mother, romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland, to ‘marry for money and fall in love later if you can’, raine wed the ninth earl of Dartmouth, the eighth earl Spencer and finally Count Jean-Francois Pineton de Chambrun, a French aristocrat. hello! paid £70,000 for exclusive coverage of their 1993 marriage. While the net value of her mother’s estate was nil – despite Dame Barbara selling more than 600million books – raine left £5.8million when she died last year.
APROPOS Dame Barbara, she boasted that she was the first person to be featured twice on TV’s This is Your Life show, founded a travellers’ camp called Barbaraville and answered 40,000 fan letters a year. A friend who visited her Camfield Place mansion in Hertfordshire recalls: ‘I was taken to the grand dining room where a sumptuous tea was laid out. Dame Barbara loaded three Royal Crown Derby plates with a selection of cakes, savouries and sandwiches before summoning her three dogs. They sat on chairs at the table. I had to fend for myself.’
CHANNEL 4 News’s irritatingly smug presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, 47, pictured, appears in a ‘celebrity’ version of ITV1’s afternoon quiz show The Chase. If asked ‘Who was referred to as “a bottom-feeding muckraker” by the actor robert Downey Jr in 2015?’ he’s able to reply, ‘Me!’ and add: ‘he walked out of our interview, you know.’
WITH three weeks still to go until the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death on August 31, Charles and Camilla have gone into hiding until it’s over. After the tenth anniversary, the Queen considered the service at the Guards’ Chapel an end to official mourning, but the 20th anniversary has taken on a life of its own, with the apparent approval of her grandsons. Incidentally, the 25th anniversary falls in 2022, when the Queen, God willing, celebrates her platinum jubilee.
MUSIC producer Phil Spector, 77, jailed for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson, is now totally bald and forbidden to wear wigs by prison staff. he has lost his ‘freedom and dignity’, says third wife rachelle Short, 40 years his junior, pointing out: ‘They don’t allow for much accessorising in prison.’ Despite such loyal protestations, Spector has filed for divorce from Ms Short, a former waitress. he reportedly takes exception to her ‘lavish’ lifestyle.
FRENCH president Emmanuel Macron’s wife Brigitte, 64, receives around 200 fan letters a week – ten times more than her pouting Elysee Palace predecessor, singer Carla Bruni. A local source tells me: ‘She may not have the premier dame title, but she and the Chinese president’s wife are now official godmothers of the newly born giant panda at Beauval Zoo. Wasn’t your late (ex PM) Sir Edward Heath a panda lover – and, like Macron, a childless, raging Europhile and ex-choirboy?’ Possibly!