Ephraim Hardcastle
EIGHT years before his disgrace Prince Andrew was lobbying David Cameron to persuade the Queen to elevate daughters Beatrice and Eugenie to the top echelon of royal duties, telling Tory minister Hugo Swire: ‘There is a tier of royals currently doing official duties who will soon no longer be there on account of their age and Beatrice and Eugenie are their obvious successors.’ Harry and Meghan’s departure and Andrew’s sacking fulfilled Charles’s wish for a drastically slimmed-down top team. It seems to be going swimmingly without Beatrice and Eugenie.
SASHA Swire, Hugo’s diarist wife, claims that David Cameron had difficulty understanding Camilla because she ‘leaned over and muttered as if she’s always got the end of a fag sticking out of the corner of her mouth and a gin and tonic clinking in her hand’. David will be pleased!
JAnE Fonda tells Australian TV she has no work after the final series of Grace and Frankie. ‘Do I need money? There’s that,’ she says. ‘I have to earn a living. I have a bottom line that I’ve got, that I have to meet, and it’s tough right now.’ Pass the hat (or the onion) Jane.
GERMAINE Greer, pictured in her prime, boasts of the profusion of Old Etonians she bedded, including Jonathan Aitken, Queen Mother biographer William Shawcross and shambolic poet Heathcote Williams. She tells The Oldie their collective appeal was their way with words, adding: ‘They were taught to write the best English: with clarity, without mannerisms or posturing.’ Anything else?
PORTRAYInG Orson Welles in a Sky Arts film, Robbie Coltrane tries to solve the mystery of his disappearance in rural norfolk in 1972. ‘The story goes that he was kidnapped by a German terrorist organisation, something like the BaaderMeinhof,’ he tells Radio Times. ‘The wonderful thing about it is that nobody knows if it’s actually true.’ Welles mentions the incident in his documentary F For Fake. Adds Robbie: ‘It didn’t tell you whether it was real or not and, of course, F For Fake is about the fact that all writers and producers and actors are charlatans who tell lies.’
GERARD Depardieu’s baptism at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Paris went off surprisingly sans snafus. Perennially thirsty Gerard, bestowed with Russian citizenship by Vladimir Putin in 2013, admits: ‘I can’t drink like a normal person. I can absorb up to 14 bottles per day.’ At least Gerard can turn up his toper’s nose at any toxic tea offered by Putin.
MARTIn Amis’s new semi-biographical novel spares us his father Kingsley’s dreams about the Queen (he called her ‘Corky’). Martin once asked him what occurred. ‘Oh nothing much,’ Kingsley replied. ‘I kiss her a bit and say something like, “Come on, let’s go on somewhere”. And she just says things like, “Kingsley, I can’t” or “no Kingsley, we mustn’t”.’ Adds Amis Jnr: ‘Kingsley always got much further with Margaret Thatcher.’