Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Duchess of Cornwall is with Prince Charles today at Ascot promoting his Countryside Fund. But why not a race in her name? All the races are called after sponsors. The Royal Ascot meeting in June has races named after the Queen, George VI, Queen Anne, Queen Mary, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge and Queen Alexandra. Is it too soon for the Duchess of Cornwall Stakes? APROPOS Camilla, she’ll make a TV appearance – like her mother-in-law – on Christmas Day. The BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing team recorded a tea dance for its contestants at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday with Camilla in attendance. Strictly presenter Tess Daly says Prince Charles and his consort are fans of the show – ‘They watch religiously and actually vote.’
COMEDIAN Sir Billy Connolly, 75 today, is defiant about the passage of time, insisting, despite his battle with Parkinson’s Disease: ‘I think the trick is not to grow up...’ Married to actressturned-sex advice columnist Pamela Stephenson, pictured, he has admitted: ‘Life for me is great. I’m a very f****** wealthy person, I’m married to a very beautiful woman and I get laid with monotonous regularity.’
DAME Jane Campion, 63, Oscar-winning director of The Piano, says the sex harassment crisis in Hollywood is a ‘fairy-tale time’ for women in showbusiness. ‘Women are being believed and the men fired. This is breathtaking. I have never seen anything like this solidarity and call to action in my life,’ she told a conference in her native New Zealand. Will they succeed in turning their vice into virtue at the cheesy Oscars?
LABOUR MP Chris Bryant’s new book, Entitled, about the British aristocracy, is reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by Professor Nicholas Vincent, who wonders if the author’s dislike of the nobs is a case of ‘odi et amo, adoration disguised as loathing’. He suggests Bryant for a life peerage – ‘Arise, perhaps, the 1st Baron Bryant of Grudge.’
IS disgraced former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon about to become a boatrocking Tory rebel over military issues? He told MPs: ‘I hope to find an early opportunity to speak out on the right level of defence spending to meet the threats that our country faces, and to do so more freely than the constraints of government allowed.’ If he felt ‘constraints’ about speaking freely about important defence matters, why didn’t he resign sooner instead of being forced to do so after sexual harassment allegations?
TORY MP Sir Nicholas Soames, 69, comments on shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s inept post-Budget performance: ‘Total fraud, irresponsible Marxist, deeply unreliable, very unpleasant. Not to be allowed near the controls.’ Shouldn’t Soames have his own chat show?