Ephraim Hardcastle
NOw writing for old folks’ magazine Saga, former Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman, 70 in May, says he ‘stumbled upon an old box of correspondence’ including ‘several letters sent around the time [1993] I was blackballed by The Garrick Club’. Paxman was admitted to The Garrick, a so-called gentlemen’s club founded in 1831, after a second attempt in 2004. Club types say real gents don’t usually allow themselves to be put up again for membership of clubs which have rejected them.
EARL Snowdon’s marriage has lasted almost ten years more than his parents’ – Princess Margaret and the first Earl of Snowdon. David and Serena Linley’s wedding at St Margaret’s, Westminster, was attended by 650 guests. And the last three royal brides – Lady Ella Windsor, Princess Eugenie and the Duchess of Sussex – all gathered around 800 people at Windsor. Yet Princess Beatrice, pictured, who is set to wed in May, can invite only 150 to cram into the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. The (alleged) sins of her father – the Duke of York – have condemned Beatrice to one of the more inaccessible royal chapels.
HIRED by notorious Harvey weinstein to create the now-defunct glossy magazine Talk, Tina Brown says their civilised talks took place in Manhattan restaurants. But when she got to his Miramax office ‘with its horrible, mangy sofa, with Harvey yelling and screaming, I thought: “Oh my God, this is insane.”’ However, she comments favourably about the ogre’s ‘sixth sense for great material,’ adding about his character – ‘it’s beauty and the beast’. The same was said of her postOxford mentor in London, the late writer Auberon waugh, who died aged 61 in 2001.
ITV presenter Phillip Schofield is ‘UK brand ambassador’ for Princess, the cruise firm involved in the coronavirus scare. He and Steph, his wife of 27 years, might easily have been guests aboard the virusstricken Diamond Princess in Japan. They appear together on the company website, pictured, singing its praises, lauding the beds and duvets, breakfasts, bars, restaurants, massages, food and entertainment. ‘I love the soft movements of the ship, the hum of the engines,’ says Schofield. Bonjour matelot!
THE queen’s first public outing of the year is today at the Royal National ENT and Eastman Dental Hospitals in central London. HM won’t have her usual ‘warmup’ man to break the ice in these fractious royal times. In 2015, at the opening of the Birmingham Dental Hospital, Prince Philip, saying he’d heard there was a shortage of dentists, asked onlookers: ‘Are you all here to get your teeth done? we don’t want to jump the queue!’