Ephraim Hardcastle
WILL Ghislaine Maxwell pay for her multi-million legal defence bill with money originating from the £450million her late father misappropriated from the Daily Mirror’s pension fund 30 years ago? Prior to drowning off his yacht, Lady Ghislaine, near the Canaries in 1991, Maxwell – a ‘bouncing former Czech’ previously known as Jan Ludvik Hyman Binyamin Hoch – was reported to have set up an £80,000-a-year trust fund in her name. Curiously, her late constant companion, Jeffrey Epstein, whom some saw as her father substitute, was also accused of embezzlement. Fashion tycoon Les Wexner, of L Brands, alleges Epstein stole £36million from his company.
AS BBC1 launches its adaptation of Vikram Seth’s award-winning novel A Suitable Boy, on July 26, what has happened to the promised sequel, A Suitable Girl? It was commissioned more than a decade ago, but publisher Penguin cancelled Seth’s £1million-plus contract in 2013 after he failed to deliver. In 2016, Orion offered a new deal and the book was due in 2018. No sign so far. While A Suitable Boy is about 1950s India, Girl is due to be set in the present day. Whenever that might be.
ADELE impersonator Maria Herriott, 43, pictured, who is having gastric bypass surgery costing £11,000 to match her doppelganger’s seven-stone weight loss, is asked (on ITV’s This Morning) how she’ll cope if the singing star returns to her previous weight. ‘I’ll buy myself a fat suit,’ is her cheeky response.
APPEARING from her home on Sky TV’s nightly newspaper review, ex-Fleet Street colossus Eve Pollard’s performance was enlivened, reports a source, ‘by a man in boxer shorts – whom I took to be her distinguished husband, [former Express editor] Sir Nicholas Lloyd – wandering into shot’. Maybe Eve should ask her TV star daughter Claudia Winkleman to oversee her next appearance.
IF DONALD Trump is re-elected in November, an official royal visit to the US is due because of the President tipping up here last year. That might fall to Prince Charles because of HM’s withdrawal from foreign travel. Would that appeal to him? Trump claims falsely not to have met Prince Andrew – although they’ve been photographed together – to avoid giving his opinion about the latter being extradited to the US. More than half of Americans polled think Andrew should be quizzed there about his paedophile pal, Jeffrey Epstein. Many there also think palace pecking-order snobbery forced Harry and Meghan’s move to California. So, better perhaps to send the new royal generation’s William and Kate – and, as a peace gesture, give Harry and Meghan a welcoming role in the visit.
JOHN Cleese appears in the new Crocodile Dundee film, The Very Excellent Mr Dundee, playing a manic Uber driver who sounds like his alter ego Basil Fawlty. Its star, Paul Hogan, says: ‘He’s offensive to everyone, an awful, obnoxious character and very funny and that’s why we love him.’ Cleese coos: ‘I love Paul, it was a very happy experience.’ Might Cleese, Jekyll and Hyde style, turn into Fawlty if the film gets rotten reviews?