Ephraim Hardcastle

PALACE officials have earmarked dates either side of Armistice weekend (November 10/11) for President Donald Trump’s state visit, I am told. ‘It’s thought this might fit in with his expected visit to the First World War centenary events in Paris,’ says my source. Provided he hasn’t started World War Three by then. BROADCASTER Anne Robinson, 73, scornful over talk of American TV star Oprah Winfrey running for the US presidency, tells The Oldie’s readers: ‘Personally, I loathe Oprah.’ Miss Robinson recalls appearing on Oprah’s TV show with her daughter, Emma, alongside a dysfunctional mother and daughter who, she says, were ‘rowing, screaming and spitting at each other’. After Oprah negotiated a dubious reconciliation between the feuding pair – to ‘ecstatic’ studio audience applause – Miss Robinson and Emma were forced to share a taxi home with the still-brawling mother and daughter. SO-CALLED glamour model Jo Marney, pictured, the 25-yearold on-off girlfriend of embattled Ukip leader Henry Bolton, 54, scorns the doubts expressed by party colleagues about the ex-army officer’s qualifications, tweeting: ‘They’re a bunch of s***-stirrers. They know that Henry’s CV outdoes any major political figure in this country.’ How can we have failed to notice this? WINDSOR council leader Simon Dudley has survived a vote of no confidence after his calls to disperse the town’s rough sleepers before Harry and Meghan’s wedding, but is a royal rebuke imminent? Next week Prince William hosts an awards night at Kensington Palace for Centrepoint, the homelessness charity dear to the heart of his late mother Diana. In 2009, the prince spent a night sleeping rough in London and said afterwards: ‘My mother introduced that sort of area to me a long time ago, which was a real eyeopener and I’m very glad she did.’ WHILE few doubt that Prince Charles will succeed the Queen as monarch, who will follow her as head of the Commonwealth? It is not a hereditary role and the Queen, aware that there has been opposition to Charles taking over, has been lobbying Commonwealth leaders on his behalf. The Queen might give up leadership of the Commonwealth soon if it accepts that Charles will be its next leader. That would have the effect of making the role hereditary. Meaning Charles could pass it to William one day. FORMER chancellor George Osborne avoided attacks on the Prime Minister when questioned by Nick Robinson on Radio 4’s Today show yesterday, saying: ‘She’s on a foreign trade mission [in China]... I wish her success in that mission.’ Shouldn’t Robinson have asked if Osborne regretted saying he wouldn’t rest until Theresa May ‘is chopped up in bags in my freezer’? One of his teachers at Colet Court, St Paul’s prep school – the highly regarded Jane Addis, who has died aged 83 – said George was ‘clever but unpopular’.