Ephraim Hardcastle
WILL the BBC approach Westminster Abbey requesting a service of thanksgiving there for the popular Irish-born broadcaster Sir Terry Wogan, who died recently aged 77? When Sir David Frost died in 2013, aged 74, the Abbey agreed to the BBC’s request. My broadcasting source says: ‘Terry was as big a star as Frostie. Also he was still working for the BBC. Sir David was with the Arab station Al Jazeera.’
BILLY Connolly, 73, in his two-hour show at the Apollo, Hammersmith, tells his audience: ‘I was invited to the births, marriages and deaths office in Edinburgh. They were doing an exhibition and invited ten famous Scots. So there was Sean Connery and me and eight other guys. I say that just to irritate Ewan McGregor.’
JESSICA Raine, 33, the comely former star of Call The Midwife, has a quotation on her dressing room mirror, saying: ‘None of us know the steps, and there’s no music playing.’ She explains: ‘Life is a crazy dance, and I like that image of chaos and confusion.’ A philosopher and a beauty – our answer to Jean-Paul Sartre’s squeeze, Simone de Beauvoir?
SOON to be married to media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, 84, the celebrated Texan beauty Jerry Hall, 59, pictured, occupies a 26-room, £13 million property in leafy Richmond, Surrey, owned by her ex-partner Sir Mick Jagger. Reportedly she can remain there until she is 65 – or marries. So friends now suggest (tongue in cheek) that this is an opportunity for Sir Mick to contradict the public perception that he’s stingy by donating the property to Rupert and Jerry as a wedding present.
STILL the only living Beatle denied a knighthood, Ringo Starr, 75, isn’t expected to bid when his childhood home in Liverpool – 10 Admiral Grove in Toxteth – is auctioned off, at an expected price of £55,000, at the Cavern Club in March. He says a Californian therapist – after listening to memories of his ‘happy’ childhood – told him: ‘Actually, it sounds like you were abandoned and lived in a slum.’ Too tragic, isn’t it?
SINCE football is all about teamwork, the latest news from Stark’s Park may not have them ‘dancing in the streets of Raith’. Former Prime Minister and Raith Rovers fan Gordon Brown has cemented informal links between his beloved Kirkcaldy side and Norwich City FC, where his erstwhile colleague Ed Balls is chairman. Given that former chancellor Balls said working with Brown in the Labour Cabinet was ‘debilitating’ and that Brown was not a great PM, a boardroom stramash seems likely.
ACCORDING to a fine Spectator piece about HMS Bulwark, which has been rescuing migrants off Libya, the first question asked by some of those hauled on board is: ‘Where can I charge my iPhone?’ Incidentally, Royal Navy officers on board say they no longer use the toast to ‘our wives and sweethearts – may they never meet’. Now it’s ‘to our families’. In our mixed-sex navy, some sweethearts might now be present.