Ephraim Hardcastle

WILLIAM AND Kate’s meeting with Pakistan PM Imran Khan next week has an air of piquancy. In 1997, Imran, then married to Diana’s pal Jemima Goldsmith, was asked by the Princess of Wales on her solo visit to Lahore to be her ‘marriage broker’ with his cousin Dr Hasnat Khan, a noted heart surgeon. In an interview in 2000, Imran said: ‘She had decided he was the man she wanted to live with.’ Three months later she was dead. BoRIS’S pole dancer chum Jennifer Arcuri – reportedly paid up to £20,000 for her ITV interview with Piers Morgan – prompts Channel 4 news editor Ben De Pear to tweet: ‘The offer to come on Channel 4 news still stands – we offer £65 expenses – can be more if genuine longdistance travel involved, up to about £100. You know where we are.’ And Morgan’s response? ‘Give her some of [Left-wing anchor] Jon Snow’s salary. I’m sure as a good socialist boy he won’t mind redistribution...’ SQUATTING ON Westminster Bridge, luvvie Ruby Wax maintains an apt silence about her once-prized possession, a petrolguzzling Jaguar X-type. ‘I was thrilled with it,’ she once enthused. Not a recollection for the ears of her new Extinction Rebellion pals! EMMA Freud, in conversation with Helena Bonham Carter, pictured, declares: ‘I’m a C, what are you?’ ‘I’m an E,’ she replies, adding: ‘Mine are huge eh... no, they’re not that huge.’ Such highbrow conversations at the Cheltenham Literary Festival! REMINDED that negotiations with the EU have not reached the ‘tunnel’ stage, Jacob Rees-Mogg concludes: ‘In tunnel terms I think we’re between Chippenham and Bath Spa waiting to go into the famous Box Tunnel. But there’s a donkey on the line and we’re waiting for the donkey to move off the line.’ Surely Moggy has amused us long enough? THE Brexit rift between Boris and Irish PM Leo Varadkar is underlined by the Dublin regime declining to attend Saturday’s Rome canonisation of Cardinal newman – Britain’s first new saint in centuries and the founder of Ireland’s national University. Sainthood requires at least two verified miracles. Surely another miracle is needed for Boris and Leo to see eye to eye. RACHEL Johnson describes The Little Book of Brexit B******s as ‘weepingly funny’. Yet it defines ‘To Bojo’ as ‘to stutter, bumble, bluster... quote Latin in order to conceal what an inverted pyramid of piffle you really are’. Families! MICK Jagger mourns Ginger Baker, announcing: ‘He was a fiery but extremely talented and innovative drummer.’ And Ginger’s verdict on Jagger? ‘Mick is a musical moron.’ Email: john.mcentee@dailymail.co.uk