Ephraim Hardcastle

PRINCESS Michael of Kent is publishing a nonfiction book, A Cheetah’s Tale, in October. It’s all about how, as a child, she nursed an orphaned cheetah cub, which might soften her brittle public image. Unusually she is selling £25 tickets to the book launch, which will include a ‘free’ book autographed by her dainty hand. The former Marie-Christine von Reibnitz, who married Prince Michael of Kent in 1978, claims they live in ‘poverty’ at Kensington Palace. THE play Mrs Orwell, at The Old Red Lion, starring Prince Harry’s ex- squeeze, Cressida Bonas, pictured, is about author George Orwell’s second wife, Sonia Brownell. Ms Bonas is an odd choice to play ‘smallish and brownish’ Sonia, known as ‘Buttocks Brownell,’ who once bedded writer Malcolm Muggeridge and afterwards novelist Kingsley Amis in the former’s small London flat after the trio had enjoyed a tipsy dinner at a West End restaurant. After a short time, Muggeridge emerged from the bedroom and told Amis: ‘Afraid I could not manage anything in there. You go and see what you can do.’ After Amis, too, failed to perform, Muggeridge re-entered the room and brusquely instructed Amis: ‘Get your trousers on and be ready to leave in two minutes.’ This harrowingfor-all-concerned episode isn’t included in Mrs Orwell. Perhaps it should be – with a happier outcome written in – if the play moves to the West End with the pouting Ms Bonas. TALKING on Radio 4’s Today show about President Trump’s dramatic warning to North Korea, White House flunkey Sebastian Gorka, 46, sarcastically remarks to presenter Justin Webb: ‘What do you expect? A stiffly-worded letter to be sent by courier? Is that what the UK would do?’ Tory MP Sir Nicholas Soames rages on Twitter: ‘Who or what is Sebastian Gorka? Someone needs to put a drop noseband on him and tighten the martingale’ – a reference to equestrian tackle designed to control excitable horses. Something more Draconian is needed to rein in foam-flecked Soames. FOLLOWING the death of country music singer Glen Campbell, Channel 4’s political correspondent Michael Crick reminds us that the late ITV newscaster Sir Alastair Burnet was such a fan that Rhinestone Cowboy was played at his memorial service. Masterly Sir Alastair is missed in an age of character-free newsreaders. Accused of drinking a bottle of whisky daily he replied: ‘That’s rather too flattering.’ HOLLYWOOD star Lauren Bacall visited the Ivy, a London restaurant favoured by showbiz types, not long after the smoking ban was introduced, in the company of Jude Law and his wife, Sadie Frost. Ms Bacall lit up a cigarette as soon as she sat down. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Bacall, but you’re not allowed to smoke in the restaurant,’ she was told by a nervous waiter. Ms Bacall told him: ‘**** off!’ and continued puffing. Nothing more was said, we are told in a new book by Ivy Group director Fernando Peire.