Ephraim Hardcastle
US AmbASSAdor Woody Johnson says President donald Trump won’t visit their new UK embassy while here next month, admitting to me: ‘He preferred our embassy in Grosvenor Square.’ Trump calls the new embassy – in south-of-the-river Nine Elms – ‘a bad deal’ made by predecessor barack obama. but Johnson insists: ‘What is important is that he will be setting foot on british soil.’ Tellingly, the US State department has facilitated a Channel 4 documentary intended to boost the moated billiondollar diplomatic compound. WHILE David Dimbleby, 79, is standing down as host of BBC 1’s Question Time after 25 years, younger brother Jonathan, 73, remains chairman of Radio 4 equivalent, Any Questions?, after more than three decades. As a son of the late BBC star Richard Dimbleby, Jonathan has been offered jobs by both the BBC and ITV, remarking frankly: ‘Because they thought I was good? No. Because my name was Dimbleby.’ The brothers have long been rivals. A family source says: ‘It’s said that while Jonathan, as a baby, was lying on the changing mat – and mother Dilys not looking – David pushed him on to the floor.’ rAdIo 2’s Sounds of The 60s disc jockey Tony blackburn, 75, says of ITV2’s Love Island: ‘I’m so glad my daughter [Victoria, 21, pictured] isn’t on that show!’ However he pitched a version of it for the over-70s to the dave channel, suggesting that ‘men would wear mankinis and women little bikinis and surgical-support stockings’. DURING Meghan’s first big outing with the Queen, she failed only one test. My source says: ‘It’s the rule at walkabouts that you maintain a brisk pace, hold a clutch bag and avoid public handshakes. Meghan forgot this in Liverpool and got involved in a long line of handshakes, albeit at arm’s length, falling well behind the Queen.’ THE antics of seven-year-old Savannah Phillips on the buckingham Palace balcony after Trooping the Colour – covering Prince George’s mouth to shut him up – might once have produced a written rebuke to her parents, Peter Phillips and wife Autumn, in the monarch’s own hand. but at 92, Hm is notably softer now. A source says George and Charlotte might have the balcony to themselves next year, ‘while other children are kept in the wings’. AFTER a 35-show stage tour of Europe, comedian John Cleese, 78, says his ‘best audiences’ included: ‘Helsinki, Reykjavik, Bergen, Copenhagen, Zwolle, Hamburg.’ His worst were ‘lazy, fat, beer-sodden, pseudo-French Belgian b******s in Hasselt. It was like reading Moby Dick to nomads’. A comedian raging over an unappreciative audience is always funny. THE Apprentice presenter Lord Sugar, 71, was mocked on Twitter for attempting to sell ‘Father’s day Personalised Sweets, only £14.99’ – the kind of tacky wheeze his hapless juvenile acolytes might be ordered to perform for our entertainment. one said: ‘He’s starting to come across as desperate.’