Ephraim HardcastleEphraim
THE Duchess of Cambridge visited the Anna Freud Centre yesterday, which focuses on the mental health of children. Normally we’d have expected her to be presented to Camila Batmanghelidjh, of Kids Company, who has collaborated on multi-million-pound projects with the centre in Hampstead. Since Kids Company is now the subject of police and parliamentary inquiries following its collapse, a Camila/Kate meeting would have been difficult. An Anna Freud Centre spokeswoman says Batmanghelidjh wasn’t invited to yesterday’s event, explaining: ‘All our work with Kids Company is finished.’
WILTSHIRE Tory MP James Gray is looking for a diary secretary. His ex-wife, Sarah, who performed this role, was succeeded by his mistress, now wife, Philippa. Understandably, Gray’s ad emphasises that the successful candidate must possess ‘experience of handling confidential information with tact and sensitivity’.
JK ROWLING, 50, pictured, whose Leftist political beliefs and financial backing for the No campaign in last year’s referendum prompted unpleasant backlashes on social media, says: ‘God knows how Harry Potter got so big! I could go weeks at a time without being called a quisling whore in the 90s.’ She adds sarcastically on Twitter: ‘Just heard from Warner Bros. “Cancel the trailers, somebody’s called her a c*** on Twitter again!” ’ Surely responding to such abuse encourages her pond life tormentors.
WHILE migrants screamed insults and threw stones and bottles at police at the Hungarian frontier, the BBC’s Fergal Keane interviewed a young girl in a wheelchair. In a previous report he paraphrased the American poet Robert Frost: ‘They have borders to cross and miles to go…’ Unkindly referred to by colleagues as ‘the McGonagall of grief’ and ‘the BBC’s emoter in chief,’ Keane won’t be ignored by those who dish out awards.
BARGAIN Hunt’s Tim Wonnacott, always dapper in tweed jacket, bow tie, fob watch and brightly coloured spectacles, is suspended by the BBC and ‘highly unlikely’ to return after a row with a producer. A regular since 2003, Wonnacott must regret taking time off last year to flounce on Strictly Come Dancing. It was thought that Bargain Hunt wouldn’t be popular without him, but using guest experts in his absence proved successful. And that’s what they are going to do now.
WILL the Garrick Club’s new chairman, Peter Riddell, a former journalist and now chief executive of The Institute For Government, revive attempts to have women accepted as members? It was mocked this week on Radio 4’s The Archers, of all places. Jill Archer was proclaiming that the Women’s Institute believed that ‘women’s rights are equal to those of men’ when she was heckled by Lilian (who enjoys a drink) crying: ‘But they’re still not allowed to join the Garrick Club!’ Riddell, a Rt Hon, by the way, is a member of the Privy Council that’s headed by a woman – HM. Can he chair a body which discriminates against women?