Ephraim Hardcastle
PRIVATE Lives: Princess Margaret, to be screened by Yesterday TV channel on March 11, comments unpleasantly about the six-week, 1960 Caribbean honeymoon of the Queen’s sister and Tony Armstrong-Jones (who later became the Earl of Snowdon) saying: ‘It didn’t look so good because England was still in a state of austerity and there was this glamorous Princess Margaret and her sort of toyboy flying around the world.’ Since both were born in 1930, Snowdon was hardly Margaret’s toyboy. Have they confused him with Roddy Llewellyn, who began canoodling with the princess in 1973 when he was 25?
VISITING Royal Marines 42 Commando in Devon last week, their Captain General, Prince Harry, caused some surprise by closing his own car door, a trick he may have learned from wife Meghan. The matter is raised by the unit’s Twitter account, which says: ‘We can only apologise to the nation for letting you all down. You have a right to expect better royal car door etiquette from your Commandos.’
POP heart-throb Justin Bieber, pictured, who is 25 today, has had his birthday registered as National Hotel Slipper Day ‘to thank him for his passion over the years for rocking (acquiring) hotel slippers’, says Hotels.com. He has also acquired a pair of £1,200 Louis Vuitton slippers – in mink. Is PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) on his case?
OPTIMISTIC about being reinstated to the Labour Party 16 years after his expulsion for calling on Arabs to fight British troops in Iraq, George Galloway focuses his energies on ousting its deputy leader, announcing: ‘Tom Watson must go.’ Galloway’s famous for kissing actress Rula Lenska’s feet while attired in a catsuit on Celebrity Big Brother.
THE appointment of retired Olympics star Mary Peters, 79, to the Order of the Garter is unexpected. Only seven nonroyal women have been appointed to the Order since the Queen decided to include ex-PM Margaret Thatcher in 1995. Ms Peters was made MBE, CBE, Dame and CH before being Gartered. London Olympics boss Sebastian Coe, is MBE, OBE, a peer, KBE and CH. At 62, no doubt his Garter is just a matter of time.
AUTHOR, director and actor Steven Berkoff has luvvies chuckling with his over-thetop tribute to late star Albert Finney in a letter for The Stage: ‘’Twas as a mere youth that I came across the illustrious Albert Finney,’ he trills, marvelling over the latter’s looks, ‘almost archetypically British, with shades of Anglo-Saxon and Celt, and therefore he could play anything of a brazen and heroic nature’. ’Twas nonsense but well-intentioned, surely.
ONCE considered a tour de force, but now forced to tour, Dame Joan Collins says she was left speechless by a cheeky member of a Scottish audience who asks if anything was worn under her husband Percy Gibson’s tartan kilt. Why didn’t she reply: ‘Certainly not, it’s in perfect working order.’
Email: peter.mckay@dailymail.co.uk