Ephraim Hardcastle

GETTING Prince Philip to accept the Royal Victorian Order to mark their platinum wedding anniversary – even though it was the highest rank, Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) – took all of the Queen’s powers of persuasion. He’d previously refused to accept the Order, given for personal service to the Sovereign, believing it was for employees. He had a point. In June’s birthday honours list, HM gave the VOs to her hairdresser in Scotland, her wine merchant, an Ascot trustee, a secretary, a coachman, a farm foreman, a tractor driver, a stud hand, a herdsman and a gardener. Presumably it’s too late for Philip to have the title he is believed to have been denied after they married – Prince Consort, previously held by Prince Albert, the much-cherished husband of Queen Victoria. ACTRESS Annette Bening told a Hollywood dinner that the growing number of sexual harassment allegations are ‘a big wakeup call’ for America. Indeed so, but wasn’t arch-seducer Warren Beatty’s first approach to Ms Bening – they co-starred on the 1991 film Bugsy – rather questionable? Then 54, he told Ms Bening, 32, a relative newcomer, that, although he was not making a pass, if that were to happen, ‘I would try to make you pregnant immediately.’ Instead of complaining, Ms Bening subsequently agreed to marry him and they had four children. FORMER Tory leader Michael Howard, 76, escaped for a time from the party’s current agonising over the EU. ‘Peaceful week with hubby in Mongolia,’ reveals his wife, Sandra, 77, pictured, adding: ‘Michael had a night in a yurt in the Gobi Desert.’ He wasn’t able to cuddle up with ex-model Sandra, however. She preferred to work on her new novel in their hotel room. POSH actor Nigel Havers, 66, has fond memories of his late QC father, Sir Michael Havers, defending the Rolling Stones in their 1967 drugs case. ‘There was a big party after at my parents’ flat in the Temple,’ he tells Saga magazine. ‘Marianne Faithfull came and she was so beautiful.’ He spotted that ‘she had no knickers on’, which was ‘the most wonderful moment for a (16-year-old) boy!’ ACQUITTED after an embarrassing 2014 court case of raping another man, the Tory MP and former Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans, 60, has become a persuasive advocate for his party on TV. Will the Prime Minister show her gratitude by giving him a ministerial job? A political source says: ‘He’s better for the Brexit cause on TV than Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is too easily caricatured. That’s why the anti-Brexit BBC uses Jacob so much.’ FORMER Tory deputy chairman and multimillionaire author Lord Archer, 77, praises Jeremy Corbyn’s recent ‘brilliant’ election campaign, telling LBC: ‘I certainly am preparing for Corbyn being Prime Minister.’ Surely Jeffrey isn’t thinking of abandoning us for a tax haven?!