Ephraim Hardcastle

EX-PRESIDENT Bill Clinton got $500,000 (£320,000) for speaking at the 90th birthday party of Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, in June, funnelling it into his Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. He earned $17million (£10.85million) last year from speeches while Hillary charges $200,000 (£127,000) for them. Respected Washington commentator Maureen Dowd says: ‘The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl.’ Remind you of anyone? CLAD in a leather catsuit, socialite Elizabeth Hurley, 48, pictured, has returned to her greatest love, acting. She is appearing in a new insurance advertisement alongside TV’s popular meerkats. Onwards and upwards with the arts! DAVID Cameron’s hopes of fixing a new, post-2015 deal with the Liberal Democrats face a thorny obstacle – the opposition of Graham Brady MP, chairman of the 1922 Committee. He says it’s ‘essential’ Tory MPs are given a vote on any deal. (Has anyone suggested they won’t be?) Relations between Cameron and Brady are cool. Brady resigned as Shadow Europe minister in 2007, publicly criticising Cameron’s failure to support grammar schools. And he’s less than complimentary about the PM in private. Stormy waters ahead? KEN Livingstone praises Ed Miliband after the Labour leader is criticised by ex-deputy leader John Prescott. Calling Prescott ‘an embarrassment’, Red Ken cheekily commends Red Ed as ‘the most impressive leader since the late John Smith’. Does their touching comradeship explain Miliband’s dire personal standing in the polls? A NEW biography of Labour’s bohemian former education secretary Shirley Williams, 83, recalls how she got a royal scoop while a junior reporter on the Daily Mirror in 1951. She discovered the Duke of Edinburgh was playing polo at Cowdray Park, Sussex, on a Sunday after the Church of Scotland had denounced such activities on the Sabbath. Shirley Catlin (as she then was) reported that he lifted a tankard afterwards, inquiring, ‘Am I allowed to drink champagne on Sunday?’ BELFAST’S Lyric Theatre is staging, in New York, Brendan at the Chelsea, a play about the late, thirsty Irish playwright Brendan Behan. They’re publicising the show with discount vouchers for his favourite remaining Manhattan watering holes such as McSorley’s, PJ Clarke’s and the Landmark Tavern. Behan described himself as ‘a drinker with a writing problem’. FORMER Labour Home Secretary Jack Straw’s ambitious son, Will, hopes to become the party’s candidate in the Lancashire constituency of Rossendale and Darwen, taking on sitting Tory MP Jake Berry who has a majority of under 5,000. His father, the long-serving MP for nearby Blackburn, says: ‘The area is in my DNA.’ So is politics. He’s never done anything else. And neither has Will.