Ephraim Hardcastle
MEGHAN Markle’s halfbrother, fellow divorcee Thomas Markle Jr, 51, shouldn’t hold his breath for a positive reply after inviting Prince Harry to his forthcoming stag party in Las Vegas. Harry’s last trip to Vegas, in 2012, when he was photographed playing strip billiards, was a PR disaster. However burly Thomas is still hoping for a wedding invite despite his pedigree – the thirst of a camel and dropped charges for allegedly threatening his fiancee with a gun. It will be difficult keeping him off next May’s Windsor wedding list after Kate Middleton’s exotic uncle Gary Goldsmith made the cut for her 2011 nuptials. PRINCE Harry, meanwhile, is in a spot of bother with his future in-laws for saying the Windsors were the family Meghan ‘never had’. Quite why he thought it would be transformative bringing her into a broken home headed by an adulterous father and a stepmother he’s not over-fond of, and entertaining her to Christmas lunch with a divorced aunt and uncle at the table, is anyone’s guess. DAME Diana Rigg’s actress daughter Rachael Stirling, 40, pictured, admits to problems breast feeding her baby son Jack, by Elbow star Guy Garvey, and summoning a Ugandan student maternity nurse to help. ‘She came over with two other ladies who were teaching with her. I hadn’t told Guy they were coming, and he came back from the shops to find me sat on the sofa, totally naked from the waist up, massive t**s out, covered in sunflower oil, with three enormous Ugandan women.’ SAYING he ‘abhors political deceit’, Twitter user Terry Smith puts online a general election leaflet distributed by Tony Blair in 1983 in which the ex-PM and nowfervent Remainer pledges: ‘We’ll negotiate a withdrawal from the EEC which has drained our natural resources and destroyed jobs.’ And a month before Labour’s 1997 election victory he said: ‘On the day we remember the legend that St George slayed a dragon to protect England, some will argue there is another dragon to be slayed: Europe.’ ACTOR Trader Faulkner has won a historic victory over Hollywood – and Martin Amis. In his 1997 novel, Night Train, Amis called the chief murder suspect Trader Faulkner. Australian born Faulkner, 90, failed to persuade Amis to change the name but he has had more success with the makers of Out Of Blue, a movie version of the novel. He tells The Oldie: ‘I’ve received a letter from the film’s screenwriter, agreeing to change the character’s name.’ APROPOS Trader, while living on a Thames houseboat in Chelsea, and writing Peter Finch’s biography, he was summoned across the river to a pub in Battersea for a drink with the Network star. Recalls Faulkner: ‘Unfamiliar with the pub, I asked directions to the lavatory. Peter led me to a door and invited me to open it. I did and fell straight into the river at high tide. I had to swim home. I looked back and he was waving a white handkerchief from the window. He didn’t mean any harm.’