Ephraim Hardcastle

TONY Blair advises the Paris paper Le Figaro that Brexit will be reversed ‘as the cost and difficulty of leaving the European Union become clearer.’ An increasingly reviled figure here, shouldn’t TB consider basing his Remain propaganda campaign in Paris, where the EU is creating a £115 million ‘House of Europe’ project. Meanwhile President Emmanuel Macron is pushing for French to replace English as the world’s first language. Perhaps Frenchspeaking Blair can help. US Vice President Mike Pence had a narrow escape on Tuesday in a New York hotel when Pamela Anderson, 50, tried unsuccessfully to barge past his Secret Service detail to plead for a pardon for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Says the former Baywatch beauty, an Assange disciple (he’s currently avoiding extradition in a cubbyhole at Ecuador’s London Embassy): ‘Julian deserves a pardon, and I thought I might be able to help.’ GEOFFREY Kent, founder of luxury travel company Abercrombie and Kent, talked at a Natural History Museum party this week about his friendship with David Cameron. He said he’d recently had lunch with the former Tory prime minister who’d congratulated him on creating a new verb to describe the firm’s expensive, exotic holidays – ‘to Abercrombie’. Now he doesn’t have to grub for votes, ex man-of-the-people Dave, pictured, seems happy to embrace exclusivity. After becoming PM, he quit White’s, the St James’s gentleman’s club which doesn’t admit women as members. Now he has returned to the fold. DOES the gender-conscious BBC have a problem with its show, MasterChef: The Professionals, which finished putting 48 hopefuls through their paces this week? Just four of them were women. And only one made it through to the final 12 who start their challenges next week. DIVORCED four times, ex-newsreader Jan Leeming, 75, is still looking for love. She appears in BBC1’s The Real Marigold On Tour on December 11 along with three other ‘mature celebrities’ spending a week in Havana, Cuba, looking at retirement options. There she met local lifeguard Ronaldo, 70, and enthuses: ‘Up to his neck he has the body of a 30-year-old!’ Happily Ronaldo spoke little English. So he didn’t understand her somewhat insulting ‘up to his neck’ qualification. Earlier this month frisky Jan took part in Channel 4’s Celebrity First Dates. NEW Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson is being pressed to reconsider proposals drawn up by his predecessor Sir Michael Fallon to axe 14 regimental bands, says a defence source. Why so? ‘Because they’re one of the few parts of the military that generate income. They can be hired in many forms from just half a dozen fanfare trumpeters through to string, woodwind or brass ensembles, chamber groups, jazz bands, full marching units and concert orchestras. They charge a hefty premium but will perform in full uniform or white tie and tails to suit your mood.’