Ephraim Hardcastle
RESPONDING to Donald Tusk’s ‘special place in Hell’ gibe about Brexit supporting politicians, lordly Tory MP and devout Christian Jacob Rees-Mogg says: ‘Mr Tusk is hardly in the aquinas class as a theologian and he seems to have forgotten the commandment about not bearing false witness.’ Tsk Tusk!
FRANCE’S First Lady Brigitte Macron, 65, pictured avec Greek guard, was shocked by a (female) member of the gilet jaune protest movement announcing on TV that they wanted to see her ‘naked on a pile of pallets’ – ie, ready for a witchburning. Might this be why, after perky Brigitte appeared in Cairo wearing an €800 pair of Louis Vuitton trainers, her handlers now insist that the footwear was ‘loaned’ by LV. As if!
STaNLEy Johnson, 78, patriarch of the publicity-prone clan, appears next week on TV’s The Real Marigold On Tour. Father by his first wife of MP Boris, journalist Rachel, MP Jo and film-maker Leo, he joins three other OaP celebs – Three Degrees singer Sheila Ferguson, actress Miriam Margolyes and ex-darts champion Bobby George – competing in sports against Russian locals. alas, while Stanley streaks ahead of two rivals, the race trainer calls out: ‘False start!’ a Johnson family trait?
LOVED-UP multi-billionaire Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, 55, still smarting over leaked text messages he sent to his mistress, Lauren Sanchez, 49 – saying inter alia ‘I want to smell you … I want to breathe you in … I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon’ – hasn’t seen her for almost a month, snipe Manhattan gossips. Why? Because (they say) his security chief, Gavin de Becker, is probing who talked out of turn. ‘Things have got rather messy,’ confides a source, adding: ‘There are people in the Amazon camp who would be much happier if Jeff and Lauren weren’t in love.’ Why ever so!?
MORE about the fabulous Egyptian Revival mansion in Sag Harbour, Long Island, which political turncoat Shaun Woodward, 60, shares with his handsome lover, Luke Redgrave, 49. Shaun – a Tory MP who switched to Labour – tells House & Garden magazine that he bought a valuable collection of antique maps which ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev had displayed in his exquisite Paris flat, explaining: ‘We used them almost like a wallpaper.’ Hailing from a modest Bristol background, Shaun was married to the grocery heiress Camilla Sainsbury for 28 years. Becoming, it is said, the only Labour MP with a butler.
LIAM Neeson’s self-inflicted race rumpus while promoting his latest movie, Revenge, comes at an awkward time for his Leftwing mother-in-law, actress Vanessa Redgrave, 82. Her new play with granddaughter Daisy Bevan, 26, ‘Vienna 1934 – Munich 1938’, opens, largely unsung, at Kingston’s Rose Theatre tonight. Neeson says they enjoy a good relationship but I wonder if Ms Redgrave – usually discreet while publicising her own career choices – appreciates his idiosyncratic promotional tactics.