Hardcastle Ephraim
EVEN before Donald Trump pulled out of next month’s trip to London – where there was no guarantee he would meet the Queen – he looked set for his first meeting with the Royal Family at this month’s World Economic Forum at Davos, where the Duke of York’s daughter, Princess Beatrice, 29 is also due. Having failed thus far to meet the Queen, surely The Donald won’t pass up an opportunity to schmooze HM’s bonny granddaughter.
APROPOS of Trump, at least one aspect of his character might not appeal to our monarch. He dislikes dogs. Trump biographer David Frum says the president’s tenyear-old son, Barron, was offered a goldendoodle (a cross between a retriever and a poodle) by a supporter, adding: ‘This big smile came over Barron’s face. It just brought tears to his eyes.’ Trump wouldn’t let him accept the dog.
MEGHAN Markle’s estranged half-sister Samantha Grant says Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, may want to move in with her and Prince Harry after the wedding. She tells In Touch magazine that Ragland ‘became very possessive and controlling’ after Meghan and Harry started dating. Does Nottingham Cottage, the happy couple’s new home at Kensington Palace, have an attic?
FRANCESCO Ricceri, whose Italian textile firm made the blue-green tartan for the double-breasted coat worn by the Duchess of Cambridge at Sandringham’s Christmas service, has thanked Kate for helping him land an unusual gig – permission to dress Michelangelo’s nude statue of David in Florence in colourful kimonos. ‘We got so much attention, it was crazy,’ he says.
SIR Paul McCartney’s ex-wife Heather Mills, pictured, who is 50 today, doesn’t shirk from bragging about her sexual attraction. ‘Even now if I see a hot man I know I can have him,’ she has boasted. ‘I might not want him, but I can have him.’ Having lost part of her left leg in a road accident in 1993, she added: ‘I’m not embarrassed about my leg – in fact, a good chat-up line from me is, “How do you fancy massaging my stump?”’ Isn’t life grand?
DAPPER thespian Anthony Andrews, 70 today, remembered for his portrayal of doomed aristocrat Sebastian Flyte in the 1981 TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, insists: ‘I’ve spent 30 years not playing aristocrats, so I’m not sure why that image has stuck.’ He attended the nowclosed Royal Masonic School for Boys in Hertfordshire, recalling: ‘ I was thrashed twice a month.’
FORMER BBC executive Will Wyatt, commenting in a letter to The Times on BBC equal pay protester Carrie Gracie’s resignation from her job, says: ‘I don’t recall a mechanism for a BBC employee to “resign” from a job rather from the Corporation. One colleague believed that he had done the former only to discover that the latter had been accepted. He was last heard of working behind the bar in a pub.’ Good point!