Ephraim Hardcastle
FRANCE’S President Nicolas Sarkozy – now facing a tight election – is accused of ‘Napoleonic’ spending excesses, frittering away twice as much as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and America’s President Barack Obama. his state roost, the elysee Palace, owns 105 cars, and his travel budget is 12 times that of Frau Merkel. One of his dinners, for 200 guests, cost 1.03million euros – over 5K a head! But Sarkozy’s friend, PR guru Jacques Seguela, insists that the First Lady, Carla, ‘makes the spaghetti herself at dinnertime ... and breastfeeds (their baby) little Guilia, too’. ROLLING Stones leader Sir Mick Jagger, 68, didn’t get where he is today – a personal fortune estimated at £190million in 2010 – by being lax about band discipline. He’s given guitarist Ronnie Wood, 64, pictured, a ticking off for discussing their 50th anniversary plans. A contrite Wood says: ‘He’s going, “What the hell?! We don’t know anything yet!” So I have to make a personal apology to the rest of the band. I didn’t mean to say things out of line.’ POPULAR broadcaster Dara O’briain doesn’t turn the other cheek when insulted by one of his 830,000 Twitter followers, telling one who said he’d ruined the BBC show, Stargazing with Professor Brian Cox: ‘I couldn’t give a ****.’ he explains: ‘It’s the most puzzling thing when someone sends you abuse and then turns Victorian when you reply in character.’ But O’briain surplus-torequirements did ruin this show for many viewers. Admitting it graciously might have been a more civilised response. TORY chairwoman Baroness Warsi, appearing at a spring ball organised by Conservatives in Pendle, Lancashire, was greeted by jeers when she sought to defend Chancellor George Osborne’s recent Budget. My source says: ‘Plenty of us got that sinking feeling listening to her waffle on.’ Understandably perhaps. The ball was ‘Titanic-themed’. AS Sergeant Wilson of Dad’s Army, actor John Le Mesurier, pictured, often looked bored. his widow, Joan, says he didn’t think the series would be popular. ‘he said that it was about a load of old codgers in shabby, old uniforms and there was no glamour in it.’ But colleagues found thrice-married Le Mesurier very amusing, according to It’s All Been Very Lovely, an April 27 TV show about the star. he once approached a police officer asking the location of Alcoholics Anonymous. Did he want to join, inquired the PC. Le Mesurier replied: ‘No, I want to resign.’ SO it’s goodbye to the Titanic for another century ... or is it? Oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck in 1985, says the site is now over-run by ‘grave-robbing plunderers’ and Russians selling diving expeditions. ‘The ship’s crow’s nest is gone,’ he laments. But no sign of Leonardo Dicaprio as yet.