Ephraim Hardcastle
wILLIAM and Harry’s plan to unveil their mother Diana’s statue on what would have been her 60th birthday next July, revealed here first three months ago, fails to enthuse planners at Buckingham Palace. Prince Philip’s 100th birthday in June was to have been the main event of the royal year with a national thanksgiving service, probably at windsor’s St George’s Chapel. Everyone except Philip feels upstaged by the Diana unveiling with one courtier revealing: ‘The duke doesn’t want any fuss and was never keen on his milestone being celebrated.’ No doubt Meghan Markle will feel the same and won’t welcome any royal bugle clarions when she turns 40 next year.
COINCIDING with yesterday’s 23rd anniversary of Princess Diana’s death, a poignant recollection from her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, about her senior staff being tested, before overseas trips, to see who could donate blood if needed. ‘We would carry a little refrigerator full of spare supplies of Diana’s blood,’ he says. ‘That sure took the glamour out of it.’
SALLY Phillips, pictured, claims that able-bodied actors playing disabled characters – like Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking – is as unacceptable as blackface. She makes no mention of Daniel Day-Lewis playing crippled Irish writer Christy Brown, spending eight weeks in a cerebral palsy clinic, confining himself throughout the shoot to a wheelchair and being spoon-fed in the studio canteen. He won an Oscar for what Sally describes as ‘cripping up’.
ANDREW Neil, fed up with what he calls ‘cultural appropriation nonsense’ after Adele was pilloried for wearing her hair in Bantu knots, recalls attending a Lionel Richie concert in Edinburgh. ‘Just after the break, Lionel came back for the second part dressed in full Highland outfit,’ he says. ‘Did anyone shout “cultural appropriation”? Everybody cheered. Everybody thought it was great. He looked magnificent in a kilt, which, I have to tell you, is more than a lot of Scotsmen do.’
MARK Rylance, playing the Magistrate in new film waiting for the Barbarians, pronounces judgment on troubled co-star Johnny Depp, telling Radio Times: ‘I wasn’t sure what it would be like, whether he would be vain, or shattered, or broken by the things that he’s gone through. But it wasn’t like that at all. I’ve never, ever, heard him say a bad word about anyone. All his stories are loving and amusing.’
WHO is the woman French teenage girls most admire? The annual Okapi survey has Greta Thunberg, 17, in the number one slot with President Macron’s wife Brigitte, 67, in third ahead of Lady Gaga. Girl-power meets Gran-power?
LAUGHING all the way to the bank with loot from her Goop candle entitled ‘This Smells Like My Vagina’, Gwyneth Paltrow is set for further lucrative chuckles. She’s launching a ‘vaginascented’ roll-on deodorant, priced at £34. Most of us would work up a sweat just thinking about how to afford it.