Ephraim Hardcastle
THOSE writing off Prince Andrew don’t understand the Queen, says a royal source. ‘It has always been her way to avoid conflict and work towards reconciliation wherever she can. She found a way to be reconciled with the exiled Duke of Windsor, insisting he was buried at Frogmore and persuading the Queen Mother to be civil, at least, to his widow Wallis Simpson. She endeavoured to keep Princess Margaret in the public eye following her divorce in 1978 and remained close to her former brother-inlaw Lord Snowdon. HM also remained loyal to her art adviser, the former Soviet spy Sir Anthony Blunt, after Margaret Thatcher unmasked him in 1979. Blunt’s post-spying work for her father George VI was not to be ignored. She eventually came round to Charles marrying Camilla, helping to make the latter more acceptable to the public. The trouble is she plays a long game but time is no longer on her side, nor Andrew’s.’
PROMOTING her Princess Diana movie role, Kristen Stewart, 31, enthuses : ‘This is completely cheesy, spooky, embarrassing, but really genuine – she empowered me. When I was playing Diana I took more joy into my body than I ever have in my entire f ****** life.’ Miss Stewart, pictured in Spencer, reportedly ‘showed off her washboard abs in a skimpy crop top and a mesh skirt’ at the LA premiere. Such a sweet old-fashioned thing, isn’t she?
ALREADY a world-famous actor, broadcaster, comedian, director and writer, is there any talent Stephen Fry doesn’t possess? There is. He recalls being rebuked by fellow mourner Sir Paul McCartney for miming hymn singing at a funeral. When he explained that he couldn’t sing, Sir Paul insisted: ‘Everyone can sing! Sing!’ Fry says: ‘So I started singing. And he turned round and said “You’re right – shut up!”’
A SENIOR moment in the House of Lords. Speaker Lord McFall, 77, wrongly addresses a Lib Dem peer as Lord McNulty. ‘It’s McNally,’ grumbles his colleague, adding sarcastically that they’d known each other ‘for only 30 years’. McFall blames it on his eyesight. Shouldn’t he have gone to Specsavers?
SIR Ringo Starr, 81, says he lives by the words of the silent comedian Charlie Chaplin, who claimed: ‘The six biggest doctors in the world are sun, rest, exercise, diet, self-respect and friends.’ Having at one time polished off an impressive 16 bottles of wine a day, Siringo has been a reformed character for over 30 years.
TODAY is the tenth anniversary of the death of Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG – soon to be memorialised by his ex-employer the BBC, with Steve Coogan playing the depraved disc jockey. The film is unlikely to be enjoyed by Prince Charles, who must regret bitterly giving Savile a cloak of respectability. But it could have been worse. As I mentioned here before, Savile was on a 1984 list of potential godparents for Prince Harry. Learning of this, a shocked courtier discussed the matter with a Palace colleague, the Queen Mother’s comptroller, Sir Alastair Aird. He said it would be ‘dealt with.’ And so it was.