Ephraim Hardcastle
ELEVEN months after Sir Terry Wogan’s death, celebrity chef Richard Corrigan tells of a mischievous trick played by the Children In Need host on Roger Moore, 89. Terry asked Corrigan, 52, to prepare a gourmet meal for himself and Roger to be auctioned to the highest bidder in aid of the BBC telethon. Knowing that Roger was a passionate campaigner against foie gras, Terry called Corrigan saying: ‘I want foie gras.’ Recalls Corrigan: ‘I watched as Terry tucked into his foie gras while poor Roger moved his about the plate saying nothing. But it did raise over £80,000 for Children in Need.’
THE death of comedian Peter Cook’s Malaysian-born widow Lin Chong at 71 (Cook himself died at 57 in 1995) prompts speculation about who’ll now benefit from the revenues of cheaply-produced, money-spinning Private Eye, of which she owned 40 per cent of the shares. Lin, Cook’s third wife, fought for and won a regular, substantial income from the mag. PE sells about 230,000 copies fortnightly at £1.80 a copy.
LUDOVIC Kennedy, the author of 10 Rillington Place – the definitive account of serial killer John Christie – should be spinning in his grave over the BBC 1 series starring Samantha Morton, pictured, as Christie’s wife Ethel. Ludo, who died in 2009 at 89, has not been credited by the Beeb for first documenting the case and getting a posthumous pardon for Timothy Evans, the illiterate van driver hanged for the murders. Richard Ingrams, whose biography of Kennedy comes out next year, says: ‘It is disgraceful that Ludo isn’t given a credit. They even use his title for the series without the “10”. This is really bad.’
LABOUR life peeress Shami Chakrabarti, 47, was reminded yesterday by Radio 4 Today’s Nick Robinson of her muchcriticised report into her party’s antiSemitism problem. He asked: ‘Are you ready to say, “I did not get this right”?’ Chakrabarti, whose report was described as ‘compromised’ and a ‘failure’ by an all-party committee, lamely responded she’d been the victim of ‘overly-political party politics’. Wasn’t it overly political of her to produce such an uncritical report for the Labour hierarchy just weeks before being handed a party peerage?
AN unexpected homage to Sir John Major – illustrated with a picture of the former Tory PM sipping tea at Lords – kicks off a profile of French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon in Parisian weekly Nouvel Obs highlighting similarities between Fillon and Major – ‘the impeccable hair, the expressive eyebrows, the classic stylings, the discreet but winning charm’. No mention of Fillon, a la Major, wearing les underpants over le trousers.
KIRSTIE Allsopp’s dad, former Christie’s chairman Lord Hindlip, 76, has a new book out called An Auctioneer’s Lot: Triumphs & Disasters At Christie’s, which was serialised in the Mail. He says he wanted to call it S**t And Twigs. Why? He explains: ‘When I was in the Coldstream Guards, that’s what a sergeant said my head was full of.’