Ephraim Hardcastle
Focusing on Princess Anne’s dalliance with protection officer Sgt Peter Cross, the latest series of the Crown passes over her love match with Andrew Parker Bowles before he married Camilla. if Anne had tied the knot with Andrew instead of Mark Phillips, maybe Camilla and Charles could have married earlier. diana wouldn’t have graced the royal stage. Alas, Parker Bowles’s roman Catholicism rendered him unsuitable for marriage to Anne. How different history might have been.
EARL Spencer’s American-born third wife Karen has been watching The Crown despite her husband’s robust criticism of its accuracy. ‘I’ve actually, hilariously, had quite a lot of abuse on social media from Americans who think I’m saying they’re ignorant,’ he tells ITV’s Lorraine Kelly. ‘I’m not saying they’re ignorant... I’m married to an American, so I wouldn’t dare!’ trUMP detractor Stephen King supports the President’s plan to raise money with a book about his White House stint. this despite vehement objections from New York publishers and authors. ‘Let him publish,’ says King. ‘Anything he wrote would be a pack of self-serving lies but i believe in the freedom of people to read what they want.’ Might donald’s opus be categorised under King’s speciality: Horror?
JOSH O’Connor, pictured, changed his mind after initially declining Peter Morgan’s offer of the part of Prince Charles in The Crown, explaining: ‘[Charles] says: “I’m essentially waiting for my mother to die in order for my life to have meaning”. I read that line and I was like: “Well, that’s enough to get your teeth into.”’
Sir Anthony Hopkins, filming the title role in his new movie the Father, about a dementia sufferer, wept on set at the sight of a pair of reading glasses that reminded him of his dad. After his father’s death in 1981, Hopkins found similar spectacles next to a road map of the US. ‘His plans to travel would never come to fruition,’ says Sir Anthony. ‘i’m going to get choked up thinking about it. it’s heart-breaking.’
EX-Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams, insisting that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father wasn’t murdered, offers his own theory: ‘One of the things we know about Maxwell in his later years was that he had a habit of peeing all over the place, wherever he was. So I think he started to pee into the sea off the back of his boat (Lady Ghislaine). And because he was a bit drunk, he fell off and there was no way that he could have been rescued because no one was aware that he was there.’
Accent boffin Professor Jim Johnson analyses Christopher Walken’s muchmocked ‘Oirish’ tones in his new movie Wild Mountain thyme. ‘the irish accent is “rhotic”, meaning the “r” sound is preserved,’ he pontificates. ‘in New York, they drop the “r”. So that’s a big challenge for Christopher.’ Might Houston University’s Prof Jim, founder of AccentHelp.com, ship Walken to texas and ‘Hibernianise’ his vocal cords?