Ephraim Hardcastle
ROYAL toady Alan Titchmarsh, 67, has, surprisingly, defied Prince William’s demands for a blanket ban on ivory. The campaign irked the Queen, who doesn’t want the Royal Collection denuded. Now Titchmarsh writes in the Antiques Trade Gazette: ‘There is nothing to be gained by destroying works of art which were created in a less enlightened age.’ Maybe, soon HM will have green fingered Titty, a royal favourite, down on bended knee.
RE Prince William: He’s just been elected to Edinburgh’s Royal Society, which has been greeted calmly, unlike his 2010 election to London’s Royal Society. He upset the academics by delaying his arrival watching an England World Cup match. In 2013 London members campaigned noisily against Prince Andrew’s election. The ballot paper sent out to Fellows contained just one box, for yes. No dissent allowed.
BIANCA Jagger, 71, pictured, is demanding that Theresa May give Parliament the power to block an ‘unpatriotic Brexit’. The former wife of Rolling Stone Sir Mick Jagger, who in 1977 mounted a horse in New York’s Studio 54, is one of 92 signatories of a letter to The Times calling for a veto. And which of the EU’s 27 countries is Bianca from? None. She’s from Nicaragua.
PRINCE Charles’s staff fret that the media spotlight on the forthcoming 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death will unravel their painstaking reinvention of the prince and his former mistress Camilla. US writer Sally Bedell Smith’s biography of Charles appears in April and will repeat the claim that Prince Philip pushed his son into marrying Diana. But with Charles’s closest aides working hard on Project QC – getting Queen Camilla crowned – the Diana retrospective will damage that ambition.
NOW romancing book editor Jillian Taylor, 36, broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, 66, is sensitive about the ageing process. Prickly Paxman complained recently that anyone over 50 was regarded as a ‘virtual corpse... on the verge of incontinence and idiocy’. Thank goodness Jillian is on hand to keep the old fool feeling young!
THE arrival of shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, 56, at Buckingham Palace last week for her Privy Council swearing-in had starchy royal courtiers quivering in their tights. Conventionally, she should have been presented as Lady Nugee, her married name. Ruffled feathers were smoothed when someone pointed out that it wasn’t a problem. The Queen herself refused to adopt her own husband’s surname.
WELL-preserved star Dame Joan Collins, 83, celebrates her 15th wedding anniversary with husband number five Percy Gibson, 51, tweeting: ‘Hard to believe 15 years ago we were here at Claridges hotel getting married, and here we are again still in love.’ Canny Percy has lasted longer than any of her former spouses. Late American businessman Ron Kass previously held the record. He was married to Joanie for 11 years.