Ephraim Hardcastle

DEBORAH, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire, who has died aged 94, was not only a congenial hostess, she was also a masterful diplomat. While giving lunch to Prince Charles at Chatsworth shortly after his uncle Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA in 1979, she received an impromptu visit from the terrorists’ American tin rattler-in-chief, Teddy Kennedy. The senator and his entourage were quietly ushered by Debo to another part of the house. Although the kitchen provided them with a hearty lunch, a well-nourished Kennedy subsequently rang the Chatsworth butler asking for the number of a local takeaway. THEATRE director Michael Rudman’s forthcoming memoirs contain scant detail about his marriage to delectable actress Felicity Kendal . Bor-ring! There is one minor nugget, however. Rudman reveals their affair began in 1981 prior to him directing her in Pinero’s The Second Mrs Tanqueray. Deeming Kendal’s performance in rehearsals too flat, he unchivalrously castigated her in front of the cast: ‘I don’t understand why you won’t play the part after all you did to get it!’ Kendal, 68, pictured, still agreed to marriage and, despite her seven-year dalliance with Sir Tom Stoppard, the pair remain happily ensconced. CHANNEL 4’s Jon Snow often tests broadcasting regulator Ofcom’s patience with his left-wing sensitivities. But he pulled no punches interviewing Ed Miliband this week, patronisingly arranged in an NHS hospital. After attacking the Labour leader for forgetting to mention the deficit in his widely-derided conference speech, Snow mocked his supposedly chance encounters with ‘normal’ people. Is this to try to normalise yourself? Do you see yourself as in some way not normal?’ he asked. Perched awkwardly in front of a hospital bed, Ed looked ready to crawl under the sheets with a wet flannel over his forehead. APROPOS the Labour conference, was it wholly necessary for the party’s parliamentary candidate for Erewash, Catherine Atkinson, to take her baby on stage, using him as an excuse to grandstand about the NHS? Says a conference source: ‘She’d been waving the poor tot around the conference hall all afternoon – it’s a mercy he didn’t projectile vomit over the audience.’ STEPHEN Fry recalls meeting legendary screenwriter William Goldman, who penned Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, asking him: ‘What’s Robert Redford really like?’ Goldman’s response: ‘Well, tell me what you would be like if for twenty five years you had never heard the word “no”?’ JOHN Prescott dismissively refers to Labour’s ambitious business spokesman Chuka Umunna as ‘Chumbawamba’. When Tony Blair sent his protege David Miliband in 2005 to work under Prezza – ie, keep an eye on him – the Deputy PM mockingly referred to him as ‘The Mekon’, after the brainy alien villain in The Eagle comics. Name - calling bright young whippersnappers is bullyboy Prescott’s standard modus operandi.