Ephraim Hardcastle
SOME readers of the Financial Times feel the Remain-supporting paper is behaving peevishly since the referendum. A City source wonders if this might be to do with its Japanese owner Nikkei, adding: ‘Does doommongering about our economy make British companies cheaper to take over?’
SEXPOT Britt Ekland, 73, whose former escorts include Rod Stewart (pictured in their prime) and Warren Beatty, says she’s now happy cohabiting with her chihuahua, Tequila, adding on ITV’s Loose Women: ‘I don’t have a man snuffling on top of me every night.’ Snuffling? To whom can she refer?
FOX News boss Roger Ailes, 76, now reportedly negotiating his exit from the goldmine channel he created 20 years ago – after being accused of sexually harassing ex-anchor Gretchen Carlson, 50, a 1989 Miss America – has said of his relationship with boss Rupert Murdoch, 85: ‘Does Rupert like me? I think so, but it doesn’t matter. When I go up to the magic room in the sky every three months, if my numbers are right, I get to live. If not, I’m killed. Our relationship isn’t about love, it’s about arithmetic.’ Quite so. Fox, which denies a deal has been struck for him to leave, made annual profits of £750million under Ailes, but he’s unpopular with Murdoch’s sons, James and Lachlan. Blood is thicker than water. Or, as financial commentator John Gapper puts it, ‘biology ultimately wins out’. Ailes’s lawyers have described Carlson’s claims as baseless.
DECADES after being Jeremy Corbyn’s pillion passenger on a motorbike trip to East Germany, Diane Abbott, 62, remains touchingly loyal. She says of Labour MPs’ failure to support him during PMQs: ‘They refuse to cheer, they sit on their hands, they sulk, they chat away among themselves. When Theresa May came in she got huge cheers. When Jeremy came in there was a silence.’ Heart-breaking, isn’t it?
EX-Telegraph owner Lord Black, 71, salutes Donald Trump, 70, as a ‘great public figure’ and accuses rival presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of ‘carrying more baggage than the Queen Mary’. What, more baggage than the ex-jailbird Conrad himself? Might the old chancer be softening up ‘President Trump’ for a pardon, which, if successful, would mean that, as an ex-felon, he’d be able to enter the US again?
BILLED as a ‘leading lawyer who backed Remain’, Nick Clegg’s attractive wife, Miriam Gonzalez Durantez, appears on the BBC’s News at Ten deploring Brexit. Elsewhere she promotes her new cookbook, Made In Spain. As for Clegg, he has become Lib Dem spokesman (unpaid) for EU affairs. Saucy Miriam’s now the ‘go to’ member of the Clegg tribe.
CROSS-dressing comic Eddie Izzard, 54, informs his fans: ‘Elections for the Labour Party NEC [National Executive Committee] are now on. Please consider voting for me.’ Izzard’s not lacking in guts but his political instincts are unhoned. He has promoted Remain, Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown and the UK joining the euro.