Ephraim Hardcastle
Jeremy Corbyn complains, after a fault on the signalling system affecting Labour delegates returning home from the party conference in Liverpool: ‘Couldn’t make this up. We need public ownership of our railways.’ Our signalling system is already nationalised under state-owned Network rail, set up in 2002 to replace railtrack. GERMANY’S president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, 62, appears here over Remembrance weekend. Will he join the Queen at the major service at Westminster Abbey on Armistice Day and/or at the Cenotaph? Some fear him appearing at the veterans’ parade – particularly if the German national anthem has to be played. Would he lay a wreath, necessitating the Queen joining him? His appearance at the Abbey service only would be an appropriate compromise. TV historian Kate Williams, 43, who specialises in social, constitutional and royal history, tells Twitter followers: ‘Pitch documentary idea to TV company. They love it and want it to be a series. At meeting, they say they don’t want me to present it, but a man.’ Oxford-educated Kate adds: ‘So can I provide (unpaid, uncredited) the access, killer facts, new research for proposal and his scripts?’ Shame on the sexist pigs! RICHARD Gere, 69, plays a US media tycoon in the eightpart, forthcoming BBC2 drama Mother-Father-Son, filming in Barnes, London. I hear he’s being kitted out for the part with Giorgio Armani suits from Harrods and is, apparently, being paid £5million. No doubt his fiery co-star Helen McCrory, pictured, is remunerated accordingly. LISTED in the 1978 cinema tome The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time, the 1975 musical At Long Last Love, starring the late Burt reynolds and Cybill Shepherd, is the subject of a retrospective at the Quad, a trendy manhattan multiplex. This Peter Bogdanovich-directed turkey is now described as ‘an overlooked masterpiece’. yet when it opened, criticism was so fierce that Bogdanovich had to issue a public apology. Time magazine claimed: ‘When dancing, the stars look as if they’re extinguishing a campfire.’ Another advised: ‘See Cybill Shepherd sing! Hear Cybill Shepherd dance!’ CHARLES and Camilla’s private visit to New South Wales in April before the Commonwealth Games cost the Australian taxpayer £10,000 for accommodation and refreshments despite billionaire friend Michael Hintze hosting them at his retreat near Wagga Wagga. Charles can point an accusing royal finger at his entourage. Most of the cost was for scallop dinners, bangers and mash, sauvignon blanc and pints of Victoria Bitter, none of which can be blamed on the Duchess of Cornwall. WILL Jeremy Corbyn, 69, be buried in Highgate Cemetery, which boasts the grave of socialist hero Karl marx and is in the heart of his Islington North constituency? Trustees of the Grade I listed cemetery, created in 1839, say they may halt new burials because extensions ‘destroy what makes it important’. Surely a plot can be found for Jeremy.