Ephraim Hardcastle

PROFESSOR Alexis Jay’s inquiry into child abuse hears from Prince Charles on Friday when he gives evidence by letter about his involvement with a former confidant, the paedophile bishop Peter Ball. Charles refuses to hear bad words about people he trusts. This is why he got too close to Jimmy Savile. The then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, could have spared Charles this embarrassment. If he had been more open about the true extent of Ball’s offences it might have prevented Charles from installing Ball in a Duchy of Cornwall property. ONE of the Queen’s favourite clerics, Canon Anthony Caesar, is buried today. Once HM’s personal chaplain at Buckingham Palace, he died aged 94. Unmarried, he had many godchildren – and a ‘godcat’. Prior to the Church of England ordaining women, I learn that he mocked this reform by ordaining a host’s pussy cat at a dinner party but was anxious afterwards that the Queen – who heads the CofE – would hear of his joke. A missive duly arrived in HM’s hand. It contained her illustration of a cat wearing a dog collar and signed, ER. LABOUR luvvie novelist Kathy Lette, 59, has found congenial lodgings during her forthcoming performance at the Edinburgh Festival, confiding: ‘I’ll be bunking down at Gordon and Sarah Brown’s place.’ Chatty Ms Lette promoted the Edinburgh gig on Sarah-Jane Mee’s Sky TV show yesterday, pictured, cheekily jiggling her breasts at the camera. ‘Shaking your maracas,’ observed Ms Mee, 40. Human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson must regret the break-up of his 27-year marriage to firecracker Kathy. CRUISING in the Norwegian Fjords, Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell, 60, tells fans: ‘Anybody who knows me knows I love being on board ships!’ Aged 23, he was involved in a gay sex scandal on the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1981, when a Royal Navy officer (never identified) was dismissed. The Queen advised Burrell to meet one of the ‘lovely girls around the Palace’. He married Prince Philip’s then maid, Maria Cosgrove, in 1983. They were divorced in 2016 and the merry matelot came out last year. CROSS-dressing entertainer and Labour national executive committee member Eddie Izzard, 56, criticises the party’s handling of the anti-Semitism scandal, pointing out: ‘The idea that we know better how to come up with an antiSemitic definition than the people who are Semitic is odd. It’s a bit like Semitic people coming up with a definition of what it is to be a member of the Labour Party.’ Watch your back Eddie! THE Duchess of Cornwall visited Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, yesterday. The Princess Royal is there for Cowes Week next month. On the Queen’s last trip to the island in 2012 she too visited Cowes. A local source says: ‘The Isle of Wight Tourist Board might send Buckingham Palace a map so that they might venture further afield than Cowes.’