Ephraim Hardcastle

SHADOW pensions minister Liam Byrne has written to the Government to demand details of its contact with David Cameron’s former ‘back to work tsar’ Emma Harrison and her employment training agency A4e, which is facing fraud allegations. Byrne was a Treasury and Cabinet Office minister in the Labour government that gave a number of contracts to the firm. He has also kept up good relations with A4e since leaving office. He spoke at a fringe meeting at the 2010 Labour Conference on ‘Public Services in a Cold Climate’ which was ‘hosted’ – i.e paid for – by A4e. Shouldn’t the PM write back and ask for details of all of Byrne’s meetings with A4e? INTERVIEWING intrepid gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell for Attitude magazine, Sir Elton John says: ‘Like you [Peter] I am not afraid of going anywhere. I’m not afraid of going to Iran. I’m not afraid of going to Syria… if they shoot me, they shoot me.’ Good for him. A visit from flamboyant Sir Elt might be just the tonic the troubled region needs right now. CURRENTLY in the UK filming the third series of Downton Abbey, Hollywood star Shirley Maclaine, 77, pictured, tweets: ‘Arrived UK. I have internet but this hotel has no phone service or TV. I feel I am on another planet.’ Where has ITV billeted the poor woman? AS the 30th anniversary of the Falklands War approaches, and the Argentines are all riled up, can we expect support from America? Historian Richard Aldous explodes the myth that Margaret Thatcher was able to depend on President Ronald Reagan. He urged her to seek a settlement. She bit his head off. For public consumption, they were friends. Privately, they fought over a range of issues. Aldous says our envoy to Washington during the Falklands War, Sir Nicholas Henderson, was asked in the 1990s if there was anything he knew that was still secret. He replied: ‘If I reported to you what Thatcher really thought of President Reagan, it would damage Anglo-american relations.’ If we couldn’t depend on Reagan, what chance is there with Obama, who thinks his father was tortured by the British? DAME Vivienne Westwood, who exhibited her latest collection at London Fashion Week at the age of 70, shows no signs of retiring. Her offspring are also active in the arts. Her youngest, Joe Corre, 44, who sold naughty underwear business Agent Provocateur for £60million, runs the equally provocative King’s Road shop World’s End. Meanwhile, her eldest, Ben Westwood, 48, is currently holding auditions for a pornographic film he is about to make in Soho, which he tells me he will be filming entirely on his iphone. Such a creative family. INTERESTING that Meryl Streep didn’t mention Lady Thatcher whilst receiving her Best Actress Oscar. When Julia Roberts forgot to mention Erin Brockovich when she won the gong for her portrayal of the environmental campaigner in 2001, she was distraught and ended up apologising. But Roberts simply forgot. Did Streep?