Hardcastle Ephraim
HAVING launched her own clothing label, baronet’s daughter Samantha Cameron, 45, curries favour with fashionista magazine Vogue by giving it a tantalising interview about her rebellious youth, saying: ‘I was a bit of a goth in those days. My hair was hennaed, there was this pair of black velvet leggings I used to wear all the time, covered in skulls and crossbones – God, I absolutely loved them.’ To establish further her ‘street cred’, Samantha adds that she was a great admirer of independent-spirited TV presenter Paula Yates, who dumped Bob Geldof for Aussie pop star Michael Hutchence and died of a heroin overdose aged 41 in 2000. IS Tory minister Priti Patel, 44, pictured, on a collision course with the Queen? As International Development Secretary she is threatening to withdraw the UK’s £15million funding for the Commonwealth (its Secretary-General, Labour peeress Baroness Scotland’s £450,000 refurbishment of her ‘grace and favour’ London home can’t have helped). Stopping the cash might destabilise the 67-year-old organisation at a sensitive time. HM at 90 hopes for a trouble-free transition to the reign of Charles, 68, and has been lobbying in secret for him to become head of the Commonwealth without facing an election. Some countries want to break the old imperial links, however. And one of the Queen’s allies, New Zealand’s PM John Key resigned suddenly on Monday. ITV’s news presenter Tom Bradby, 49, promotes his coming TV interview with Prince Harry by saying he’s ‘a delight to work with’, telling Radio Times that the fifth-in-line to the throne finds it ‘great to be good and boring to be bad’. He adds oleaginously: ‘This Christmas we might all say a loud “amen” to that.’ Might Harry do better with a less gushing TV inquisitor? BOOMTOWN Rat Bob Geldof’s appearance in support of Lib Dem Sarah Olney, who won the Richmond Park seat from Tory multi-millionaire Zac Goldsmith, infuriates the latter’s brother, Ben Goldsmith, who rages on social media: ‘People from all sides coming together on Twitter to affirm that Bob Geldof really is a prime c **** . Perhaps the biggest on the celebrity circuit.’ Goldsmith has an axe to grind. So it might have been wiser to let us come to our own conclusions about Geldof. NOW reliant on begging cash donations from its dwindling tribe of readers, The Guardian was taken in by a known Twitter practical joker, Godfrey Elfwick. He wrote a recent Guardian article purporting to be a Leftie whose mind had been poisoned by far-Right propaganda. A shrewd reader complains that it’s hard to distinguish hoaxes ‘from all the other s***’ The Guardian publishes. LARRY (@Number10Cat) – a spoof Twitter account with an audience of 99,000 – tweets: ‘On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me, a partridge in a pear tree. Ate it.’