Ephraim Hardcastle

Prince charles is packing his monogrammed pyjamas for malta next month to preach on climate change at the fourth Our Ocean conference. Hurricanes sweeping across the caribbean have, no doubt caused him to wring his hands in desperation. But with so much damage done might not the Prince, future king of so many devastated islands, have bothered to see for himself? The King of the netherlands and the President of France have visited their far flung domains to offer support. BILLIONAIRE Sir Richard Branson is lobbying the United Nations for a new Marshall Plan to rebuild the British Virgin Islands. Hurricane Irma damaged his own Necker Island. He bought it at a bargain price of £140,000 in the late 1970s from Viscount Cobham – whose starting asking price was said to be £4million. Poor Cobham, who died in 2006, also lost his wife Penelope to David Mellor. He had to sell the family silver to fund their £1m divorce. HOLLYWOOD veteran Jane Fonda, 79, pictured, turned heads at the emmy awards with her glamorous appearance. She is frank about having gone under the knife, previously admitting: ‘i wish i were brave enough to not do plastic surgery but i think i bought myself a decade.’ She has also said: ‘i have a fake hip, knee, thumb; more metal in me than a bionic woman.’ DISCUSSING the nation’s culinary history on Radio 4’s Today, John Humphrys asks veteran restaurant critic Fay Maschler, 72: ‘What did you think of [late celebrity cook] Fanny Cradock? Maschler replies: ‘I thought she was grotesque... she seemed a nightmare, horrible to her husband and creating repulsive dishes.’ No-nonsense Fanny isn’t around to fight her corner, she died in 1994, aged 85. MARGARET THATCHER’S biographer, charles moore, says the recent death of wealthy Tory MP edward du cann allows him to amend the first volume of his iron lady trilogy. in it he describes du cann as having a ‘dubious financial record’. now he says: ‘all knew that he was a crook.’ isn’t it rather cowardly of him to wait until du cann was dead if ‘all’ knew he was a crook? NEW York Times star columnist Maureen Dowd describes Nigel Farage, 53, in his Brussels office as a ‘hellraiser’ and the ‘skunk at the garden party’. She adds: ‘Here is the renegade who led the lemmings off the cliff, holed up, wearing a natty dark suit, wreathed in Camel smoke despite the no smoking rules, sipping Welsh whisky and trashing his colleagues.’ Was he putting on a show for the Yanks? PETER HANINGTON, former night editor of BBC radio 4’s Today programme, hasn’t a very high opinion of the assorted rabbis, bishops and imams who spout on the show’s Thought For The Day slot. Describing Today’s annual summer party in his thriller a Dying Breed, he writes: ‘They always arrived early, left late and ate like animals in between.’