Ephraim Hardcastle
DESPITE Clarence House’s meticulous preparations for this to be Prince Charles’s spring to counter last year’s Princess Diana summer on the 20th anniversary of her death, a ticking bomb is threatening to derail the best-laid plans. Racy biographer Tom Bower’s Rebel Prince: The Power, Passion and Defiance of Prince Charles is published this month. Bower never pulls his punches, isn’t keen on getting royal approval and knows where to find skeletons. Team Charles is preparing a defence that basically says Bower hasn’t had the level of access he claims and that informants have their own axes to grind. Charles hopes his imminent australia tour, Commonwealth Games profile and – fingers crossed – succeeding the Queen as head of the Commonwealth will deflect attention from Bower’s stone up-turning.
FLUNKIES at Buckingham Palace have long amused themselves with a Friday sweepstake predicting the exact time the Queen decamps to Windsor Castle for the weekend. While staff travelling with HM were given a time to have the luggage ready, it was commonplace for the Queen to either leave earlier or be delayed. Nowadays it’s rare for the Queen, who spends around 80 nights a year at the palace, to be there at all on a Friday. When possible, she heads off on Thursday afternoon. The sweepstake has been abandoned.
MaX Mosley met his match in no-nonsense Channel 4 news presenter Cathy newman, 43, pictured. The Charterhouse and Oxford-educated mother-of two has form. She doorstepped BBC director general Lord Hall when he reneged on a promised interview. Lord Hall changed his mind and saw her. and she’s no autocutie either, declaring: ‘I do my own research for interviews – questions all mine, no autocue.’
RESEARCHING his latest book, spy thriller writer Edward Wilson discovered that Whitehall mandarins had a novel strategy when, as PM, Margaret Thatcher turned up for lunch, often saying she wasn’t hungry. ‘They developed a contingency plan known as the Designated Omelette Eater,’ says Wilson. ‘If the Prime Minister abstained, the Designated Omelette Eater stepped in and wolfed down the PM’s serving to ensure there was no waste.’
ACTOR Stephen Mangan, 49, wants the radio soap opera The archers axed, describing it tonight on the BBC’s Room 101 as ‘very boring’. But he reserves his wrath for the theme tune, adding: ‘If it comes on the radio I have to fly across the room and turn it off. It makes me feel physically sick just listening to that music. It’s the worst thing that humanity has ever produced.’
TACKY ex-royal butler Paul Burrell’s participation in the Australian TV version of I’m A Celebrity... takes a bizarre twist courtesy of US psychic John Edward, who claims he made contact with Burrell’s late boss Princess Diana. He said: ‘Your friend wanted me to tell you the dream when she came to you in the blue dress was real.’ How long before shameless Burrell is earning a crust holding Diana seances?