Ephraim Hardcastle
THEN Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed accepted an invitation in the 1990s to join French actor Gerard Depardieu on a duck-shooting trip to a Cuban estate owned by Fidel Castro, who has died aged 90. He agreed to cook the ducks they’d shot on the basis that Fidel made the salad. While deploring Castro’s communism, the luxury-goods retailer was impressed by Fidel’s set-up, marvelling: ‘He had about 40 bodyguards, all of them attractive young women in designer uniforms with short skirts carrying Heckler and Koch machine guns. He (expletive deleted) them all.’
RE Castro, former business secretary Sir Vince Cable, 73, says he attempted to provide a British armoured car for the protection of the Cuban leader while working for the Foreign Office between 1974 and 1976, recalling: ‘This eventually reached the desk of [then US Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger via the Foreign Secretary and was turned down.’ Small wonder considering America’s desperate, not to say farcical, attempts to kill Castro.
TORY peeress Baroness (Karren) Brady, 47, pictured, tells Woman & Home magazine that men have no problem holding on to plum TV roles, mentioning ‘Jon Snow (69), John Humphrys (73) and David Dimbleby, (78)’. Understandably she omits mention of a closer-to-home TV codger, Alan ‘You’re Fired!’ Sugar (69), with whom she appears on BBC1’s The Apprentice.
HUMAN rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, 64, who tonight is awarded the Albert Medal from the Royal Society of Arts says he has previously been offered three honours: an OBE, a knighthood and a peerage. ‘In all three cases, I declined and have heard nothing since. The honours system is a relic of feudalism. Most of the major gongs are handed out to well-paid time-servers, political cronies and big party donors.’
RECALLING his time at the London Oratory School in Fulham, gay actor Simon Callow CBE, 67, writes: ‘To the perpetual adolescent question, “Who turns you on?” my mates would say, “Diana Dors” or “Ursula Andress”, and I’d say, “Cliff Richard”.’ Sir Cliff, 76, will be pleased.
COMMENTATOR Sir Simon Jenkins wasn’t evident at the memorial service for former society grand dame Raine Spencer. Yet as a local councillor she gave him his greatest scoop – the GLC’s scheme to drive a four-lane highway down Maiden Lane, obliterating Covent Garden, which was dropped after an uproar created by his then paper, the Evening Standard. ‘By rights there should be a statue to Raine,’ says her memorial service eulogist, broadcaster Michael Cole.
RADIO 4’s Saturday Live star, out-ofthe-closet gay vicar Rev Richard Coles, 54, confides: ‘Quite often I’ll catch myself glancing in the full-length mirror of some hotel bathroom and experiencing only mild regret at the decline of such meagre resources as I once had.’ However, he adds, ‘I still find people occasionally flirting with me. They’re called “cassock chasers”.’