Ephraim Hardcastle

BEATRIX von Storch, deputy leader of Germany’s Right-wing AfD party, tells Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis ‘stop shouting when interviewing me’ after their conversation about Germany’s crime figures. Ms Maitlis repeated the claims of Angela Merkel’s government that total crime (including bicycle theft) had fallen since she invited one million migrants to settle there. Ms von Storch said serious crimes of rape and robbery had dramatically increased. Constantly interrupting Ms von Storch, Ms Maitlis kept repeating the official figures. ‘She’s auditioning for Question Time,’ suggests a broadcasting source, referring to the departure of David Dimbleby from this much-prized broadcasting perch. APROPOS Question Time, a bigwig BBC source tells me that finding a replacement for Dimbleby ‘isn’t the immediate question’, adding: ‘First we have to review almost everything, from the programme’s survival to its timing and format. Little has changed since it began in 1979 other than increasing panel members from four to five and inviting on stand-up comics keen on the publicity.’ Panellists who have something intelligent to say instead of zealots pushing political preferences might also prove popular. MEGHAN Markle’s visit to Dublin on July 10 and 11 as Princess Henry of Wales is in sharp contrast to her last jaunt there in 2013. As a star of the TV drama Suits, Miss Markle, 36, pictured that year, addressed Trinity College’s debating society. A committee member recalls: ‘She wasn’t considered top billing and wasn’t important enough to become an honorary patron but the society did give her a Bram Stoker medal, named after the former member who wrote Dracula.’ How appropriate (not!) BORIS Becker’s diplomatic passport from the Central African Republic – used to claim immunity from bankruptcy proceedings – is dismissed as a ‘clumsy fake’ by the nation’s foreign minister. Might this prove awkward for the BBC? It pays the German former tennis champion to comment at Wimbledon, which begins on July 2. RUFUS, 10th Earl of Albemarle, 52, seeking election to the Lords cross benches, says it would be interesting to see the balance between ‘right-brained’ and ‘left-brained’ peers, adding: ‘I can only offer the cross benches my right-side of the brain, with 30 years of experience in the commercial creative arts.’ A functioning brain would help, surely. STEPHEN Mangan, who stars in the BBC’s infidelity drama The Split as Nicola Walker’s wayward husband, says: ‘People come up to me on the street saying, “We believed in you, how could you cheat on Nicola Walker, you’re a b*****d!”, but I’m not as hated as Bertie Carvel from Doctor Foster.’ TV history presenter Dan Snow, 39, muses in an interview: ‘I feel like the most privileged man in the world as I love my job so much that I’d do it even if no one was paying me.’ Perhaps he could afford to do so, as he lives in a £7million New Forest mansion with his wife, heiress Lady Edwina Grosvenor, daughter of the late, multi-billionaire 6th Duke of Westminster.