Ephraim Hardcastle
PRINCE Charles, travelling to Cumbria on the Royal Train on Monday, is surely inconsistent with his installation of solar panels at Clarence House and a wine-fuelled Aston Martin. The latest royal accounts show a cost of £46,038 for a solo, two-day trundle around Lancashire and Yorkshire, and £22,060 when he took Camilla, the Queen and Prince Philip on a day trip to Dorchester. And it cost £18,865 for a trip from his beloved Dumfries House in Ayrshire to London for a meeting of his International Sustainability Unit!
UNCEREMONIOUSLY sacked from her longrunning gadget column in Tatler by new editor Richard Dennen, Emma Freud, 56, wails: ‘I was actually sitting down to write my column and then suddenly got this email saying, “You’ve written your last column for us – bye”. I’ve never met this man, I’ve never even come across him and I wrote back saying “Why? My column’s so good”. And I haven’t heard from him since.’ No need for a Red Nose Day whip-round. Emma’s partner is the millionaire scriptwriter and Comic Relief co-founder Richard Curtis.
WHITNEY Houston soundalike Belinda Davids, 41, pictured, is about to embark on a UK tour with her show The Greatest Love Of All, a tribute to the tragic singer who was found drowned in her bath at the Beverly Hilton hotel in 2012 aged 48. Belinda is newly returned from Russia where she performed for Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin, saying: ‘Whitney is Putin’s all-time favourite artist.’ Alas, too late to punish the Russian dictator by silencing Belinda.
NOTING it was the last time he would be appearing with departing Today presenter Sarah Montague yesterday, cheesy sports broadcaster Gary Richardson, 61, tells her: ‘I was thinking Brief Encounter – Celia Johnson on the train, Trevor Howard on the platform and that immortal line, “Will you write?”’ Montague, 52, responds uncharitably: ‘No’.
TOM Hiddleston, 37, tipped as the next James Bond after baring his bottom for a sex scene in the BBC’s 2016 adaptation of John Le Carre’s The Night Manager, is the target of an extraordinary attack in the Corporation’s Room 101 tonight, the show in which so-called celebrities condemn people, or practices, they dislike. Stand-up comedian Phil Wang, 27, says the mere existence of Hiddleston, his pet hate, ‘makes me angrier than any event in history’. Harry Potter lookalike Wang sounds as if he’s jealous of Hiddleston.
AS managing director of BBC TV in 1973, the late Huw Wheldon had a Savile Rowstyle bespoke suit made in anticipation of an invitation to Princess Anne’s wedding. Alas, he didn’t get one and the backside of the trousers in question was ripped when he paid a surprise visit to a recording of Blue Peter and accidentally trod on the tail of the show’s sheepdog. ‘It bit him on the a**e,’ says ex-BBC film editor Mike Crisp in a memoir, Better Than Working.