Ephraim Hardcastle
WITH invitations dispatched for Duke of Westminster Hugh Grosvenor’s wedding, a society guessing game develops as to whether Harry will show at the event in June. If he does, it would be the first time he and William were under the same roof since their father’s coronation. Sources report that Grosvenor, 33, is staying neutral, maintaining a good relationship with both, leaving it up to them to resolve their family drama. However, the home team could have an advantage. The Duke is godfather to Prince George who could be a page boy on the big day in Chester Cathedral. Perhaps Harry might replicate his attendance at the Diana Legacy Awards last week when he appeared via video.
AFTER watching Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins, Rupert Everett developed a childhood obsession. Dressed in his mother’s clothes, he told other children he was Julie’s daughter. ‘One of the reasons that I’d gone to a child psychiatrist was because my parents had discovered from other children that I told them that I was not my parents’ child,’ Rupert tells podcast Rosebud, adding that he told Julie about his deceit when he starred with her in Hollywood. ‘She used to send me Christmas cards signed “Mummy”.’
CONFIRMED as a new host on Radio 4’s
Today, Emma Barnett, pictured, once took exception to being reminded of the crimes of her father Ian – previously jailed for running brothels in Manchester. ‘I wanted to say what I wanted to say and move on,’ Barnett frostily remarked in a 2019 interview. ‘I am in the public eye now, but I don’t think this is a line of questioning that’s necessary, fair or right.’ Observed interviewer Decca Aitkenhead: ‘I’d love to know what Barnett would say to that, were she not the interviewee but the interviewer.’
KING’S Speech writer David Seidler, who has died, had to wait 25 years to write the script after asking for the Queen Mother’s permission. She replied: ‘Please, not in my lifetime. The memory of these events is still too painful.’ Recalled David: ‘So I waited. But I thought, “How long? A couple of years at most?” She was an elderly lady. But it was 25 years later, just shy of 102, that she left this mortal realm.’
RISHI Sunak’s senior Downing Street adviser Rupert Oldham-Reid announces in The Times he has named his new baby daughter Antigone Elizabeth Anna... ‘sister to Peregrine Yorck von Wulffen and Otto the dog’. Is he having a giraffe?
WEST End star Jodie Prenger repeatedly rehearsed how to address the late Queen before meeting her. ‘I was so bothered about making sure I spoke properly saying, “Hell-aywww your Majesty” and then I ended up saying, “Hiya, your Highness!” I sounded so Northern I might as well have shaken her hand holding a pasty!’