Ephraim Hardcastle
HAS Prince Michael of Kent, 52nd in line to the throne, been sanctioned over his apparent closeness to Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchs? Gossiping Brit Tina Brown, of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, quotes the prince’s business partner, the Marquess of Reading – ‘an upper class bonehead’ – saying of Michael: ‘He is just generally regarded as Her Majesty’s unofficial ambassador to Russia.’ Miss Brown says unkindly that Prince Michael and his forceful wife, Marie-Christine, are ‘a low-boil moneygrubbing embarrassment’. However, their ‘antics milking the royal brand paled when compared with the sordid depredations of Prince Andrew… a coroneted sleaze machine’. A trifle unkind, surely?
WHERE might the Royal Family flee if Vladimir Putin launches nuclear Armageddon? Scotland was designated in the past – not heathery Balmoral, but cruising Caledonia’s lochs in HMS Britannia. This is why HM thought Britannia would be replaced after it was decommissioned in 1997, says my source. But isn’t there a bomb-proof bunker at Windsor? Alas, it was destroyed by the 1992 fire.
CELEBRATING her comedian pal Sir Billy Connolly’s Bafta Fellowship, former co-star Dame Judi Dench (pictured) is reminded that the Scot admitted he initially thought she really ‘fancied him’ during scenes in their 1997 movie Mrs Brown – only to then realise Judi was acting. Oscar-winner Dame Judi, who was married to late actor Michael Williams at the time of filming, now tells Radio 4: ‘No, no, no... I did fancy him.’ Too late for both now, perhaps.
BORIS Johnson has been the Commonwealth’s Chair-in-Office since 2019 although you might not have noticed it. He hands the post to Rwanda’s controversial president next month. The PM is haunted by a careless remark he made about the Commonwealth, jeering: ‘It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of piccaninnies with watermelon smiles.’ Piccaninnies is almost as bad as the ‘N-word’ now.
VANESSA Feltz says she wants to take over from Anne Robinson as presenter of Channel 4’s Countdown. ‘I read English literature at Cambridge University in 1983 so get me in there,’ she says, adding: ‘I think I am a literate person. I am not very numerate but I love the show and I would love to do it.’ That might help her case. The highly numerate Miss Robinson dumped the show when they suggested she was payroll taxed on PAYE.
CLAUDIA Winkleman confesses on a ‘meet the fans’ national tour: ‘My husband loves my mum. When we got back from our honeymoon, she had a key to our flat and we found her in our bed. She said, “There is space”. If (husbands) love your mum then stay with them.’ Miss Winkleman’s mum is the amply proportioned former Fleet Street editor Eve Pollard.