Ephraim Hardcastle
RADIO 4’s Mishal Husain must have thought that Leftie Andrew O’Hagan, 50, would nail the perceived Grenfell Fire suspects when she interviewed him yesterday about his London Review of Books investigation into the tragedy, asking: ‘Who are you more angry with today, given what you found?’ She sounded disappointed by his reply – the firefighting leaders who failed to evacuate tenants as soon as possible. Confounding Leftie critics who blamed Tory Kensington & Chelsea council, he concluded: ‘Rather than point the finger at people at councils who we find politically not to our liking, let’s not turn this into some sort of opportunistic politics.’
WAS Jeremy Clarkson first choice to be the new host of ITV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? No, according to well-connected showbiz agent Michael Whitehall – father of TV comedian Jack Whitehall. Critical of Clarkson’s performance, Whitehall tweets: ‘Jeremy Paxman turned it down.’
EMINENT theatrical Sir Ian McKellen turned down the chance to play the Thorpe judge Sir Joseph Cantley in the final episode of A Very English Scandal. He feared his performance might be compared unfavourably with Peter Cook’s hilarious 1979 impersonation of Cantley when he addressed the jury: ‘You are now to retire, carefully to consider your verdict of not guilty.’
ACTOR and self- confessed druggie Woody Harrelson, 56, pictured, – a star of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and True Detective – has an unusual background. He studied theology and was at the same university as Donald Trump’s vice president Mike Pence, and tells the Financial Times: ‘My father was a contract killer who spent most of my childhood in prison.’
TURNING 80 today, Lord Prescott can count himself lucky to be celebrating with glamorous wife of 57 years, Pauline, dubbed ‘the Elizabeth Taylor of Chester’ in her youth. She took the old fool back after his sleazy affair with diary secretary Tracey Temple during his time as Deputy PM – but stresses he’s never been allowed to forget it. Asked whether Prezza knows how close he came to losing her for good, Pauline has since insisted: ‘Oh yes. He’ll regret the affair till the day he dies.’
FRIENDS of ex-journalist Katharine Whitehorn, 90, now in a care home with Alzheimer’s, wonder if it was tasteful of former colleague Polly Toynbee, 71, to write, with the blessing of her family, 1,400 words proselytising for assisted dying in The Guardian, headlined ‘Why Do We Keep People Alive Against Their Wishes?’. She says Katharine, ‘in rare flashes of depressed lucidity, asks for it to end, to stop now’.
ALAN Bennett’s latest play, Allelujah!, is about a struggling North of England hospital which has a ‘Dusty Springfield Geriatric Ward’. Isn’t this pointlessly offensive? A singer loved by millions, Ms Springfield died of breast cancer in 1999 aged only 59.