Ephraim Hardcastle
THIS weekend is a poignant one for the Queen – it is the 65th anniversary of her first Cenotaph observance as monarch and the first time she has been present but not laid her wreath. Prince Charles will do so on her behalf. On the last occasion HM missed the ceremony, in 1999, when she was in South Africa, she laid her wreath in Durban. The 1999 event here was an awkward affair. Then-PM Tony Blair, who was abroad, sent rough-diamond deputy John Prescott, the Queen Mother was missing with a cold and the then 11-year-old Princess Beatrice fainted on the Home Office balcony.
MARTIAL arts movie star Steven Seagal, 65, allegedly ‘unzipped his leather pants’ in front of US actress Portia de Rossi, 44, in another Hollywood sex scandal development. ‘He said how important it was to have chemistry offscreen, as he sat me down,’ she says. ‘I ran out and called my agent.’ The (female) agent replied: ‘I didn’t know if he was your type.’ Miss de Rossi, pictured right, is an unlikely choice for Seagal. She is married to American TV chat show host Ellen DeGeneres, 59, pictured left.
APROPOS sex scandals, Harvey Weinstein, the movie producer, has hired the legal team that secured an acquittal for French former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn on a charge of the attempted rape of a hotel maid in New York in 2011. DS-K later settled a civil case, paying her more than £1million. His wife, heiress Anne Sinclair, dumped him and this one-time aspirant to the French presidency was subsequently acquitted of aggravated pimping by a court in Lille.
NOW 90, top comic Sir Ken Dodd played an important role in the career of the legal eagle Lord Justice Leveson who conducted the 2011 inquiry into the media. As Brian Leveson QC in the 1980s, he failed to persuade a jury to convict the King of the Diddymen of tax evasion. Sir Ken admitted having £336,000 in cash stashed in suitcases in his attic but was triumphantly acquitted of all charges by the jury. I hope Leveson sent him a birthday card.
WOODY Johnson, 70, the new US ambassador to London, got to meet the Queen this week to present his credentials and made sure he made a good impression. Wearing morning dress – rather than the lounge suit favoured by predecessors – he also agreed to the traditional carriage procession to the palace, to the disapproval of his security team. He might have curried favour with the equine-inclined monarch further when he was seen feeding the horses.
NOW David Prescott has been suspended by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn over sexual harassment claims, can we expect more tweets from his father, Lord Prescott? Trouble-stirring Tory MP Nadine Dorries claims: ‘John engaged me once on Twitter and we had a volley of amusing tweets. But a few days later, I saw him in the Commons and mentioned them. It was clear he had no idea what I was talking about.’ Do you suppose David also helps with the old brute’s Sunday Mirror column?