Ephraim Hardcastle
HARRIET Harman, 67, seems to resemble an oldfashioned long-playing record stuck in the middle of a rant. yet again she regurgitates her hatred for Margaret Thatcher, telling radio 4’s reflections With Peter Hennessey how she and her six-week-old baby hid in a room in the Palace of Westminster rather than allow the thenPM to coo over the bambino. Admitting her behaviour was ‘quite weird’, posh Hattie adds: ‘I had this feeling that I didn’t want her eyes to fall on my perfect baby. That it would be horrific.’ Perhaps her three children, now grown up and thriving, might ask their oAP mum to desist from reheating this tired tale from the 80s. RE Ms Harman, she also says now that she would have ‘definitely’ beaten either Miliband for the party’s top job had she stood in the 2010 leadership race. While she gave Ed his first break in politics after hiring him as her researcher in 1993, she didn’t care for his older brother David, who bitterly turned on her shortly after his defeat by Ed seven years ago. Spotting Ms Harman applauding his brother when he was describing the Iraq war as a mistake, David snapped at her: ‘You voted for it – why are you clapping?’ forMer royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter remarks in an article that Prince charles remained ‘remarkably dignified in the face of his marriage breakdown’, prompting Diana’s former personal chef, Darren McGrady, to fire back on Twitter: ‘Wonder if that’s because he was having an affair all the way through it?’ DONALD Trump has inadvertently helped the Queen by becoming the most expensively protected US President in history. Should Her Majesty face criticism for the estimated annual bill of £106million to guard all members of the Royal Family she has only to point across the pond to Trump’s staggering £80million bill since he won the election nine months ago. He looks set to outstrip, in one year, the entire secret-service protection bill incurred by Barack Obama in eight years in the White House. And the Queen has one thing in common with Trump: Neither share their tax returns. cooK supreme Prue Leith and Mary Berry, both cBes, might become dames while newcomer nadiya Hussain is likely to get an oBe, the traditional starting point for Tv culinarians. Delia Smith and elizabeth David got cBes but the first of the famous Tv cooks, fanny cradock, remained ungonged. So, mysteriously, has nigella Lawson, pictured. Some think this is because of her abusive relationship with charles Saatchi. I prefer to think she turned one down. Danniella Westbrook, 43, announces she is pregnant with her third child. The former EastEnders star famously posed with her collapsed nose in the hope of warning others about cocaine abuse. Telling her chauffeur she was writing a book about her ordeal, he asked what the tome would be called. ‘F*** knows,’ she said. ‘That’s a brilliant title,’ he replied, bringing an end to his career driving Ms Westbrook.