Ephraim Hardcastle

WITH bookies now offering odds of 11 to 2 on the Prince of Wales not becoming king, how might Charles counter the increasing public demand that he ought to allow Prince William to take his place as heir to the throne? ‘Possibly by announcing that he’ll only seek to reign for a couple of years, giving William time to prepare for kingship, and then abdicate,’ says a court source, adding: ‘That would almost certainly meet with public approval and allow Charles to attain national treasure status.’ HAVE William and Kate, who return to Kensington Palace in September as fulltime royals, decided on limiting themselves to two children, now the norm for the House of Windsor? The Queen’s own four children all confined themselves to having two. And for Kate, two might be enough. She struggled with hyperemesis gravidarum, which affects one in every 100 pregnant women, and she’s 36 in January. However, nature sometimes confounds such predictions. WRITING about the bibulous late writer Jeffrey Bernard on the 20th anniversary of his death, his friend, obituarist Christopher Howse, recalls in The Oldie that the old soak flew off towards the end of his life to Venice, the location of a book he admired, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. Howse got a nurse to accompany him but ailing Bernard resented this, intending to die there, imagining the headline might be ‘Jeff in Venice’. MARGOT Robbie, pictured left, heads for Gloucester this month to play Elizabeth I in a £180million movie production about Mary Queen of Scots. The producers chose 900-year-old Gloucester Cathedral, which has also featured in Wolf Hall, Harry Potter, Sherlock and Doctor Who. Aussie Ms Robbie, 27, appeared in Neighbours, the afternoon soap opera. Bronx-born Saoirse Ronan, 23, also pictured, plays Mary Queen of Scots. Are our ancient cathedrals more of a draw than our actresses? DAME Joan Collins, 84, after watching an old movie on TV, recalls thinking: ‘Oh, that’s Laurence Harvey. Oh, he’s dead. Oh, Gloria Grahame, she’s dead. Richard Basehart. Oh, he’s dead... Oh my God, they’re all dead! Then I saw this young girl and I thought, “Who’s that? She looks familiar.” It was me, aged 18, in this movie called... The Good Die Young.’ Dame Joanie’s still big – it’s the pictures that got small! COUNTRY star Glen ‘Wichita Lineman’ Campbell, who has died aged 81, is referred to in ex-home secretary Alan Johnson’s award-winning memoir The Long and Winding Road. Describing a friend, union leader Tony Young, Johnson, 67, says: ‘Tony left school at 15 to become a GPO telephone engineer, climbing telegraph poles and connecting lines. In Wichita, it may be a romantic occupation – in Ealing, where Tony is from, less so.’