Ephraim Hardcastle
ONE of the key elements of Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall’s 11-day tour of South East Asia is the final stage in India where Theresa May hopes Charles and Camilla can butter up PM Narendra Modi for a vital post-Brexit trade deal. The Royal couple will find it difficult to get PM Modi’s full attention. In an unfortunate clash they arrive slap bang in the middle of a full-scale seven-day state visit by King Philippe and Queen Mathilde of Belgium. Is wily Modi or the Foreign Office to blame for this embarrassing cock-up? PINT-SIZED Speaker John Bercow, 54, about to overhaul the House of Commons’ complaints system in the wake of sex abuse allegations, has not always been politically correct. In his twenties he wrote a ‘comical’ magazine article advising readers on how to charm ‘drunk girls, virgins and refined girls’. On chat-up lines, he recommended the following: ‘If you’re free later, maybe we could go back to your place and name your breasts.’ Bercow’s spokesman stressed the offending article ‘in no way reflects the Speaker’s views today’. What a wag! NIGEL Lawson can’t have relished the self-congratulatory 60th birthday of the BBC Radio 4’s Today show, particularly with the gushing tribute to the late presenter Brian Redhead, who died in 1994. As Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor in the eighties Lord Lawson, 85, accused Redhead on air of being a Labour supporter. Redhead replied: ‘Do you think we should have a one-minute silence now in this interview, one for you to apologise for daring to suggest that you know how I vote and secondly perhaps in memory of monetarism which you have now discarded?’ BILLIONAIRE Tory donor Lord Ashcroft, 71, highlights news of 74-year-old Sir Mick Jagger’s reported romance with producer Noor Alfallah, 22, saucily tweeting: ‘Must review my maths...didn’t know 74 could go into 22.’ DESCRIBING Prince Harry as ‘very gregarious, very down to earth and silly,’ Canadian comic Mike Myers, 54, pictured, says Harry surprised him by quoting directly from his cult classic Austin Powers, which he wrote and starred in, though he doesn’t specify which lines. Very wise, no doubt, given that Myers spouts: ‘I think you’re shagadelic baby’ and ‘Shall we shag now, or shall we shag later?’ Twice-married Myers’ own quip, ‘Marriage can be viewed as the waiting room for death’ wouldn’t have gone down too well with loved-up Harry. THE number of TV viewers watching ginger-maned Sarah-Jane Mee, 39, on Sky’s Sunrise has dropped since she replaced Irishman Eamonn Holmes, 57, last October. It seems it isn’t just the Sky canteen staff that miss the well-nourished Eamonn. LEMBIT Opik’s Bulgarian lawyer partner Sabina Vankova, 33, accuses him of being ‘unfit’ to look after daughter Angelina – born in June – due to ‘having consumed alcohol’. She’s not the first to complain about thirsty Opik, 52. Former squeeze, weathergirl Sian Lloyd, 59, asked: ‘Why did Lembit drink so much? He simply didn’t have the same restraints as others. Lembit was a man of excesses.’