Ephraim Hardcastle
LACK of US TV interest in Princess Eugenie’s October wedding to Jack Brooksbank is blamed for the decision of the BBC and ITV not to broadcast the event from Windsor. But it hasn’t stopped the Duchess of York from making the most of the bridal limelight. Fergie’s One Show appearance on Friday, proclaiming her wish to be granny, kickstarted a series of media appearances between now and October 12. She has already penned an ‘open letter’ to Eugenie and Jack for the ubiquitous Hello!, and she’s also said to be hoping to persuade ex-husband Andrew to do a joint TV interview. But he will need the parameters of the interview to be closely defined. He won’t be prepared to go off piste as readily as his talkative ex-wife. MEGHAN Markle has reportedly declined an invitation to next month’s Emmy Awards in LA, wanting to draw ‘a line in the sand’ between her acting and royal lives. But her current role is surely the biggest acting job she’ll ever have. From the Royal Opera House to the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, Rada to the Royal Variety Charity, thespians and royals are inextricably linked. Charles has visited Coronation Street and the Queen has been behind the bar on the EastEnders set with the other Windsor, Barbara. Two months after she wed William, Kate appeared at a Bafta ceremony in LA. So Megs needn’t feel shy about putting on the glitz and enjoying a bit of West Coast glamour. DAME Joan Collins, 85, blames ex-lover Warren Beatty, 81, (both pictured) for her decision to turn down Sons And Lovers in 1960, recalling: ‘I was living with and engaged to Warren, who said, “This is absolute crap”. So I turned it down, and Mary Ure did it and was nominated for an Oscar.’ Maybe famously frisky Warren simply wanted to keep gorgeous young Joan for himself. She once recalled: ‘He needed to have sex several times a day, which often wore me out.’ LABOUR Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell describes an attack on a socialist bookshop in London as the ‘rise of farRight politics in our society’. Yet when a hard-Left mob attacked Conservative HQ in 2010, he described it as the ‘best of our movement’, and praised rioters for ‘kicking the sh** out of Millbank’. Call me Johnny ‘Double Standards’. FORMER Tory MP Stewart Jackson told Nigel Farage on LBC that Theresa May’s shambolic approach to Brexit reminded him of ‘a woman who has taken home a rather awkward Ikea cabinet and is exasperated she can’t put it together’. Ironically, Chancellor Angela Merkel is praised in Germany as the ‘Ikea politician’ for her capacity to deal in ‘flat-pack centrism’ based on the ‘Ikea principle’. BELFAST comic Frank Carson might have something to say about Boris Johnson’s criticism of the burka. Frank, who died in 2012 aged 85, told an apocryphal tale about answering his front door to a burka-wearing official and immediately stepping back inside, closing the door and opening the letter box flap from the inside to inquire: ‘How do you like it?’