Ephraim Hardcastle

THE Prime Minister shook with anger while telling the Commons that Ed Miliband wanted to ‘weaponise the NHS’ – ie, use it to batter the Tories electorally. Where did Cameron get this idea? From the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson. Never one to hide his light under a bushel, Robinson now crows: ‘He quoted me reporting before Xmas that Ed Miliband wanted to “weaponise” the NHS.’ Thirty years on, Robinson’s 1985 presidency of Oxford University Conservative Association is paying off for the party. WAS radio host Jenni Murray right to use her ‘Dame’ title on Christmas University Challenge? I wondered. Readers say No. Fellow broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen says: ‘When a Damed lady appearing in a quiz show gave her name as Dame Thing it sounded pompous…’ ASKED by LBC radio host Nick Ferrari ‘who wears the trousers’ – himself or his forceful wife, Miriam, pictured – Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg replies: ‘We both wear the trousers.’ Not at the same time, surely. As Ferrari put it: ‘An extraordinary thought!’ REFERRING to Liberal Democrat promises to be ‘the heart and spine of any future government’, Shadow Leader of the House Angela Eagle says: ‘While we’re all in favour of organ donation, it’s surely impossible to donate something you don’t actually possess.’ Wouldn’t waspish Ms Eagle be a treat compared with doleful Ed Miliband? SCOTS Labour leader Jim Murphy runs a half-marathon while listening to a Johnny Cash ditty, I Won’t Back Down, saying it’s a suitable riposte to critics of his ‘London mansion taxes to pay for more Scottish nurses’ brainwave. The limelight’s going to new boss Murphy’s head, I fear. He should listen to another Cash song, God’s Gonna Cut You Down. HEIRESS Jemima Goldsmith, 40, thanks admirers in Pakistan for messages of support following the news of her ex-husband Imran Khan’s marriage to former BBC weathergirl Reham Khan, saying: ‘I’ll always love Pakistan.’ Yet she was treated abominably by its officialdom – charged falsely with smuggling antique tiles out of the country and forced to live in exile for a year in London when her sons, Sulaiman and Kasim, were infants. The tiles were Christmas presents for her mother. HAVING adopted presidents John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as native sons, the Irish are now wooing Hollywood star George Clooney, whose surname, they say, means ‘charmer’. Tiny Tullahought, in Co Kilkenny, is gearing up for his first visit. Will they discover that the granny of his Lebanese-born bride, Amal Alamuddin, is a County Cork colleen?