Ephraim Hardcastle
AS Charles and Diana’s marriage floundered in the eighties, The Queen’s Press Secretary Michael Shea asked then BBC Breakfast star Selina Scott to befriend the Princess. Scott, 69, makes the claim in an interview promoting her BBC Winter Walks show, saying: ‘He thought that I might be able to advise her on dealing with the Press’, adding that she did accept the invitation. ‘We always talked about things like hairstyles, clothes and boyfriends. She had a wonderful sense of humour and I thought that would help her overcome it all, but obviously it didn’t.’ Shea, alas, can’t add any detail. He died in 2009.
IS Prince Charles hoping Business Secretary Alok Sharma won’t chair COP26, the UN climate conference being held in Glasgow in November? Third choice behind David Cameron and William Hague, Alok was stung by former minister Tobias Ellwood’s remarks that a ‘grand fromage’ was needed to host the event. Might Charles accept the challenge? Keen to remove politics from the climate change debate, the prince has also been central to the establishing of organisations such as the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability. And he knows David Attenborough quite well.
WHEN Health Secretary Matt Hancock was asked, on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, by St Thomas’s Hospital critical care nurse Dave Carr how he could look health workers in the face over his mishandling of the pandemic, Susanna Reid didn’t mention Dave was a militant member of Unite. And in 2003 he was expelled from Unison for leading a strike against privatisation of the NHS.
PLAYING libidinous Peter in Channel 4’s The Great, former child star Nicholas Hoult remains sanguine about his parents Roger and Glenis seeing him coupling with Elle Fanning, pictured. Have they seen it? ‘More than seen it,’ he says. ‘My mum and dad were extras on the wedding day, sat in the crowd. I try to bring them out if it’s a fun day filming.’ At least they were spared Nicholas’s simulated humping with Elle’s Catherine. It was a closed set.
MICHAEL Sheen’s grand gesture in returning his OBE has echoes of John Lennon handing in his MBE. But like Lennon, his membership hasn’t been cancelled. It needs to be annulled by the Queen. When Lennon’s 1969 draft of his relinquishment letter to HM was found at a car boot sale it was valued at £60k. Unlikely that Sheen’s Welsh manifesto will fetch a fraction of that.
ULRIKA Jonsson feels she’s ‘let the side down’ by not looking as glamorous as contemporaries Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Aniston. ‘Seeing these two megastars does nothing but make me feel utterly dreadful about myself,’ the 53year-old wails. ‘I look nothing like as toned and glistening as they do, it’s like comparing a fresh perky apple and a browning banana. No guesses which one I am.’ Cheer up Ulrika. Think about Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s ripe banana. It was duct-taped to the wall of a Miami art gallery. Asking price? £100,000.