Ephraim Hardcastle

WHEN former Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde, resigned from the Cabinet last year, he placed himself on an immediate four gym sessions a week fitness regime to shift his noticeable avoirdupois. I trust his willpower is cast iron. Portly Tom Galbraith, 54, has just been appointed an adviser to Ferrero UK, purveyor of Ferrero Rocher choccies and Kinder Easter eggs. THE so-called Kate effect has struck again. The Diane von Furstenberg ‘wrap dress’ worn by the Duchess of Cambridge in Sydney this week, pictured, sold out within minutes as she t oured t he Blue Mountains. Demure by today’s standards, the sexy, zipless design – it fastens like a dressing gown – was considered risque when first released in 1972. Saucy Ms DV-F claimed to have invented it as a means for ladies to make a swift and silent post-coital exit. WHY is refined tippler Sir Alex Ferguson selling his precious wine collection? Free from the rigours of football management, surely he should be enjoying his well-stocked cellar. Perhaps it’s to plug losses he recently sustained in a complicated, Jimmy Carr-style tax avoidance scheme that backfired, said to be around £1m. The wine is expected to fetch around three times that amount. A far cry from Sir Alex’s formative years working the Govan shipyards, where a glass of vino meant a mug of Buckfast Wine, aka ‘Wreck the Hoose Juice’. TS ELIOT’S widow Valerie, who died 18 months ago, has decreed the £2million apartment in Kensington she shared with the poet be turned into a workshop for students of her husband’s work. Valerie married Eliot when she was 30 and he was 68. She spent the rest of her life protecting his literary legacy, telling a US movie man who wanted to adapt Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats for the screen: ‘I am sorry, Mr Spielberg,’ while showing him the door. LEGENDARY crooner Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday next December is being commemorated with the launch of a new Jack Daniel’s whiskey called Sinatra Select. Sinatra, pictured, was buried with a bottle of the famous Tennessee sourmash bourbon following his death in 1998 at 82. His former music companies, Universal and Capitol Records are also expected to cash in on the anniversary with re-mastered albums. Seventeen years since his passing, his estate still rakes in over £1million a year. PARIS Match magazine devotes four pages to a retelling of the whole Tony Blair/ Wendi Deng rumours, during which the former PM is described as ‘having a reputation as an inveterate playboy’. Does le tout Paris know something that le tout Grande-Bretagne doesn’t?