Ephraim Hardcastle

DESPITE his enduring unpopularity among Tory MPs, their once-keen appetite for defenestrating The Speaker, John Bercow, is diminished. Their hope now is that his marital difficulties – gabby wife, Sally, has moved out of Speaker’s House after canoodling with one of his cousins – will persuade the diminutive, much-derided figure to quit being Speaker. Who might succeed him? My source says: ‘Jacob ReesMogg is gaining the interest of a number of MPs. He might attract support of both sides of the House. He’s a great defender of Parliamentary tradition and well-respected on all sides. As Speaker, Rees-Mogg is also likely to bring back tights, full-bottomed wig and buckled shoes.’ Look out! BBC Director-General Lord Hall could assuage accusations of the Corporation’s Left-wing bias by pointing out that his son William, 25, was Tory councillor in South Oxford. Alas William, who describes himself as a ‘postgraduate law student and activist’, polled only 2,050 votes and is an ordinary citizen again. An additional woe faces his father, a Tory government less sentimental about preserving the BBC’s £3billion-plus licence fee funding than Labour. WHY does Lord Sugar abominate Andrew Neil who, for many, was broadcasting’s General Election star? Surely the old goat isn’t upset by a harmless remark Neil made after Sugar’s resignation from Labour was announced, saying: ‘It’s probably the first bit of good news they’ve had since the election.’ Unsweetened Sugar rages: ‘The man is sickening.’ CLASSY actress Francesca Annis, 69, pictured, fondly recalls getting her big movie break, aged 17, opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the diabolically bad 1963 epic Cleopatra. ‘Working with Elizabeth Taylor was a learning curve that cured me of being in any way starstruck. She was an amazingly beautiful, funny, down-to-earth woman, and she took me under her wing, making me see the normality of big stars, who are just like everybody else.’ Yes, but more so, perhaps, considering Miss Taylor’s Cleopatra-style private life extravagance, including eight marriages. BOOKIES’ favourite to be the next leader of the Liberal Democrats, opponents seek out a chink in the armour of popular Tim Farron, 44, a devout Anglican and married father of four. Slim pickings so far, my source reports, adding: ‘However, Tim used to rent a room in the South London home of former MP Lembit Opik, of Cheeky Girls fame, who lost his seat in 2010. But Tim moved out when his career was on an upward curve.’ ON May 18, the National Film Theatre is screening a rarely-seen 1949 classic, The Bad Lord Byron, to celebrate next month’s centenary of its aristocratic star, Dennis Price. Film historian Michael Thornton, who introduces the epic from the stage, says it destroyed the star’s marriage to the actress Joan Schofield, adding: ‘Dennis adored their daughters, Susan and Tessa, but he became obsessed by Byron and over-identified with his bisexuality, which brought his own longrepressed homosexual inclinations to the surface.’ Mrs Price divorced him in 1950, after which he became Britain’s first openlygay movie star.