Hardcastle Ephraim

FORMER Mi6 boss Sir John Scarlett apologised for becoming tearful while speaking on Wednesday at the Bletchley Park event attended by the Duchess of Cambridge to honour wartime codebreakers. as chairman of the Bletchley Park Trust, was he thinking of the young men and women, the survivors now in their nineties, who helped win the Second World War by decoding german signals? Or, regretting his own role providing ‘intelligence’ justifying our invasion of iraq? Her Kateness maintained an expression of serene neutrality. BY the way, an old flame of the Duke of Edinburgh – society beauty Osla Benning, in later life Lady Henniker, pictured, who died in 1974 - worked at Bletchley. She was known f or her hearty appetite. A veteran recalls: ‘One night a fellow debutante found a huge caterpillar in her rhubarb surprise and screamed. Osla reached over and calmly wolfed the lot down.’ LORD Mandelson was happy to be one of Jeremy Paxman’s final guests on newsnight, despite an old controversy. it was on newsnight in 1998 – a year after Labour came to power – that Mandelson was outed as a homosexual by gay journalist Matthew Parris, at which point Paxman interjected: ‘ah, i think we’ll just move on from there. i’m not quite sure where he (Mandelson) is on that.’ The BBC then issued a snivelling memo saying: ‘Under no circumstances whatsoever should allegations about the private life of Peter Mandelson be repeated or referred to on any broadcast.’ BOLSHIE former ministerial special adviser Dominic Cummings, 40, who describes David Cameron as ‘a sphinx without a riddle’, is, as they say in his native Northumberland, ‘a bit ’ighly strung’. He retreated for two and a half years to rethink his approach to life in a special ‘bunker’ his father built for him at their Durham farm. A former (lady) admirer says, ‘Dom? He’s a total sex god’. Gadzooks! UnLiKE Demi Moore – who, movie cynics claim, will keep her clothes on in films ‘only if the part demands it’ – Juliette Binoche, pictured, agonised about disrobing in her latest film, Camille Claudel 1915, all about an insane sculptress, remarking :‘i felt an acceptance, in myself, a joy to go on set and plunge into her, then come out the other side.’ Très profonde! APROPOS Paxman’s retirement, Chloe Smith, Tory MP for Norwich North – humbled by Newsnight’s guard dog in 2012, as a wet-behind-the-earsTreasury minister, says: ‘I wish him a happy retirement, even though I fear for the poor souls in any retirement home he goes to.’