Hardcastle Ephraim

AMONG those collecting their gongs at Buckingham Place tomorrow is wealthy PR man Alan Parker, 57, who was suggested for a knighthood by the Prime Minister – himself an ex-PR man for gone-but-not-missed Carlton TV. Parker has requested a ‘no filming’ ceremony – usually the preserve of soldiers, policemen and intelligence officers who can’t have their identity revealed for security reasons. Perhaps in his case it’s embarrassment. REBEKAH Brooks said George Osborne was responsible for recommending the services of Andy Coulson to the Prime Minister. She said in 2011: ‘I think it is a matter of public knowledge that it was George Osborne the Chancellor’s idea that when Andy Coulson left the News of the World they should start discussions with him on whether he [should] be the appropriate person to go into Tory HQ.’ Oddly enough, Coulson was News of the World editor in 2005 when it splashed on its front page an old picture of 22-yearold Osborne with his arm around prostitute Natalie Rowe. But the paper then commended him as ‘a young man in a murky world’. Which endeared Osborne to Coulson. No doubt David Cameron has reminded George of these facts. AFTER the death of sex, drugs and rockand-roll publisher Felix Dennis, will they release Hippie Hippie Shake, the movie about his 1960s magazine Oz? Starring Sienna Miller, pictured, and Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey fame, it wasn’t released due to production rows. Such a pity. Perky Ms Miller is obliged to disrobe completely. Some of her parts had to be ‘digitally enhanced’ to reflect the more hirsute tastes of that time. I’ll say no more. DEBATING freedom of speech at Ireland’s Dalkey Book Festival, the unloved author Salman Rushdie was asked by veteran TV journalist Olivia O’Leary if the 1989 fatwa issued over his bestselling novel The Satanic Verses helped him sell more copies of his earlier work Midnight’s Children. Rushdie replied, sarcastically: ‘I always sell 10million copies of my books.’ Irish O’Leary, 64, was once a presenter of BBC2’s Newsnight. She raised eyebrows during the Falklands war by praising the ‘slim-hipped’ Argentine pilots bombing our task force. GUITARIST Eric Clapton, 69, rules out another reunion with his 1960s Cream bandmates Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. They broke up in 1968, but briefly reformed in 2005. Clapton says now: ‘I was pretty convinced that we had gone as far as we could without someone getting killed.’ Days ago, he stormed off the stage over technical problems at Glasgow’s SSE Hydro. Pop stars are so babyish, aren’t they? RADIO Scotland’s new Sunday morning show Crossfire has had its relentlessly even- handed approach to t he independence question lampooned as ‘the political Chuckle Brothers – to me, to you, to me’. Also sniping is Lesley Riddoch, whose voice on the radio is much missed by many. She says: ‘Crossfire is trying to breathe life into old, hackneyed areas of debate upon which no new light can be shed.’ Crossfire? Misfire!