Ephraim Hardcastle

WASHINGTON-based British writer Andrew Sullivan says any attempted impeachment of Republican President Donald Trump by Democrats is ‘a formula for a civil conflict in a country already brimming with rage on both sides’. He argues in the Times Literary Supplement: ‘The only period that comes close to this one, in terms of the depth of polarisation, is the late 1850s and early 1860s.’ In other words, the beginning of the US Civil War, which claimed 620,000 lives. Crikey! SHOULDN’T former Scotland Yard commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe, 60, now collecting a £185,000 pension and with a job in PR, give evidence to the Old Bailey inquest into the victims of terrorist Khalid Masood? Although he had retired when PC Keith Palmer was stabbed last March, it was on his watch, in 2015, that a security assessment deemed as vulnerable the Palace of Westminster gate guarded by PC Palmer. Nothing was done about it. MY NOTE yesterday about the Royal National Theatre’s artistic director Rufus Norris considering dropping its ‘Royal’ prefix, prompts a source to report: ‘The theatre’s chairman normally receives a knighthood. But two years after stepping down after his six-year stint, publisher John Makinson remains a mister – and, more woundingly, his lovely wife, Nandana [pictured], is plain missus. Given Norris’s performance, he might be denied the “K” that goes with his post.’ ACTOR Sir Ralph Richardson, who died 35 years ago today, appearing in What The Butler Saw, inquired mid-performance: ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’ When a theatre-goer so identified himself, Sir Ralph said: ‘Terrible play, isn’t it, doctor?’ and carried on with the show. APPEARING with the late Sir Roger Moore in 1973’s James Bond film Live And Let Die – he unzipped her dress with a ‘magnetic’ watch – Madeline Smith, 69, tells The Oldie: ‘There was no intimacy in bed with him, despite our physical entanglement. He sported boxer shorts and my 23-yearold pert posterior was shrouded in a mountainous pile of frilly knickers. In 1973, James Bond was still considered family viewing, so there was no humping or feigned orgasms. Roger’s wife, Luisa, was floating, spectre-like, around our bed for the duration of the scene. There was no possibility of hanky-panky down below.’ WEARING a red jumper, with a portrait of Fidel Castro staring down, shadow chancellor John McDonnell was elected vicepresident of the Marx Memorial Library in London. He told a packed hall: ‘When we take over the Treasury, we want to rewrite the rules. The greater the mess the more radical we have to be.’ Man the lifeboats! TURNING 95 today, Nicholas Parsons, Radio 4’s twice-married Just A Minute presenter, recalls, without deviation or hesitation, his bachelor years in Soho: ‘I was active enough to get what I wanted without having to pay for it. Why would you want to pay for it and get some cheap slag?’ My whistle shrills at the repetition of ‘pay’.