Ephraim Hardcastle

NEXT month Prince Harry becomes the first member of our Royal Family to meet America’s First Lady, Melania Trump, 47. She’ll be in Toronto to represent her husband at Harry’s Invictus Games for wounded service personnel. Can the attractive Mrs Trump resist asking about the prince’s American girlfriend, Meghan Markle, who is 36 tomorrow? Californian Ms Markle has professed her dislike of Donald Trump and even threatened to renounce her US citizenship if he became president. She might still decide to do so if, after marrying Harry, she becomes one of our royal duchesses. APROPOS President Trump, 71, he’s taking a cruel battering in America’s snootier newspapers. The New York Times sees him in 16th-century, Italian operatic terms, saying that he’s ‘probably best imagined as the miserly Venetian known as Pantalone wandering around in red breeches with the oversize codpiece of a would-be womaniser’. Meanwhile, Harry Potter’s creator JK Rowling refers to the president derisively as a ‘tiny, tiny man’, which some take to be a slur on his manhood. Even President Richard Nixon, of Watergate infamy – who was forced to resign in 1974 to escape being impeached over the scandal – wasn’t derided so contemptuously by America’s intellectual classes. BOND beauty Halle Berry, 50, pictured, doesn’t want a woman to be cast as 007, saying: ‘I don’t think you can change Bond to a woman.’ Stories about who’ll be cast as Bond keep this tired film franchise in the news, helping it to remain profitable. Ms Berry has not been suggested for the 007 role, so she isn’t damaging her prospects of becoming a female Bond by dismissing the idea. Such a casting would be difficult in her case anyway. She appeared opposite Pierce Brosnan as Bond’s love interest in 2002’s Die Another Day. THE songwriter Bill Martin, MBE, 78, who has composed for, among others, Elvis Presley, Van Morrison and the Bay City Rollers – as well as being author of the Eurovision hits Puppet On A String (Sandie Shaw) and Congratulations (Cliff Richard) – performs a one-man show called Congratulations at the Dome in Edinburgh from tomorrow. Will Govan-born Bill mention his Irish co-writer on that song, Phil Coulter? Perhaps not. He likes to point out: ‘Phil only added the line “and jubilations” to the lyric – it rhymed with “Congratulations”.’ NOW regrettably in ‘frail’ health – and with friends fearing that he will never perform again – Sir Bruce Forsyth thankfully received his belated knighthood in 2011. Admitting that he was in ‘torment’ after being repeatedly overlooked for years, Brucie, now 89, explained at the time: ‘I asked myself whether I had done something wrong. I wondered what the reason might be. Now that it’s actually happened it’s a relief to me.’