Ephraim Hardcastle
TWENTY months after Princes William and Harry announced the creation of a statue of their mother, Diana, the boys will today meet friends and financial backers at Kensington Palace to give them a briefing on its progress. They have been discreetly lobbying for funds since sculptor Ian RankBroadley was commissioned to create the statue, due to be installed in Kensington Gardens in 2019. Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish are among the well-heeled friends apparently keen to help. This should ensure that neither William nor Harry will need to dip into the £20million they inherited from their mother to pay for the work. PRINCE Charles isn’t the only one celebrating his 70th birthday this year. So is Sooty. Both are members of the Magic Circle, with the puppet becoming the only non-human elected to the elite group last year. An early Sooty puppet, noted for his magician’s catchphrase ‘Izzy wizzy, let’s get busy’, was presented to the young Charles. Prince Philip doesn’t share his son’s enthusiasm. Meeting HRH in 1955, the bear produced his trademark water pistol and fired it in Philip’s face. The Queen thought it was a hoot. CANADIAN tycoon Conrad Black, 74, describes Melania Trump, pictured, as the most glamorous White House chatelaine since Jackie Kennedy. In his sycophantic book about Trump, A President Like No Other, he writes of the First Lady: ‘Neither cloying nor bossy… confident and relaxed, cool and poised… exudes an exotic and mysterious composure.’ Lord Black, jailed for two years for fraud and deported from the US, was refused a presidential pardon by George W. Bush. Perhaps he should ask Melania to have a word in her husband’s ear... PRE sales of gabby warbler Lily Allen’s memoir have rocketed since the disclosure that she coped with depression by sleeping with female prostitutes. Lily, 33, tells an Australian chat show: ‘Yeah, well, thanks to the person who leaked it, number one bestseller in rock as of today.’ US sportsman Colin Kaepernick, 30, the face of a new Nike ad campaign, enjoys quoting ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith’s ridiculed 2002 soundbite: ‘Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man.’ Mewls IDS: ‘It’s always nice when somebody quotes you.’ Even if it is a daft footballer who is so unpopular that Nike customers are burning their trainers and threatening a boycott. FRUITY Childline founder Esther Rantzen, 78, is so gripped by BBC drama Bodyguard that when Home Secretary Sajid Javid visited the charity this week, she quizzed his protection officer about the raunchy sex scenes between Keeley Hawes and Richard Madden. ‘He declined to comment,’ she says in a letter to The Times. ‘The series was so realistic he thought he was watching a documentary about himself.’