Hardcastle Ephraim
DAVID Cameron schmoozed sly-looking Indian PM Narendra Modi, 65, last autumn, receiving him on a special official visit. He even fixed for him to have lunch with the Queen. Our PM – formerly in public relations – also encouraged the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to India next month. So why hasn’t Modi helped preserve Tata Steel’s plants in Britain? My source says: ‘Evidently he’s more interested in trade with the US. He’s meeting President Obama in Washington this weekend.’ Isn’t it sad? Britain used to know how to play this game.
EX-cabinet secretary Gus O’Donnell – ennobled as Baron O’Donnell – warns Radio 4 listeners that a Brexit deal could prove ‘a bit scary’. He’s Project Fear personified. Malleable Gus, 63, is able always to align himself with whoever’s in power, Labour or Tory. So powerful was his influence in politics, Right and Left, that he was nicknamed (after his initials) God. But Labour prime minister Gordon Brown’s wife, Sarah, remarked presciently: ‘You have to have confidence in everyone working in No 10. I wasn’t sure I felt that with him.’
CULTURED folk in Hull are invited to appear in a ‘mass naked art event’ arranged by celebrated US ‘nude shoot’ photographer Spencer Tunick to mark the city’s forthcoming ‘UK City of Culture’ status in 2017. It’s hoped Pauline, Lady Prescott, 77 – wife of ex-Labour deputy PM John, also 77 – answers the call on behalf of her family. Popular Pauline (pictured in her late teens) was hailed in her salad days as ‘Chester’s answer to Elizabeth Taylor’. My local source says: ‘Surely not even the avant-garde Tate Modern is ready for a naked John Prescott.’
DO the Queen’s beloved horses – some of them seen in ITV’s documentary Our Queen at 90 – have a future under her likely successor, King Charles? He has little interest in equine affairs. Neither does his heir, William, and daughter-inlaw, Kate. A court source: ‘Unless the Queen can get young George interested – or horsey Camilla takes the reins – the Royal Stud might end up being converted into tennis courts for the Cambridges.’
ROD Stewart says – to his credit, you may think – that he’s keeping an open mind about his five-year-old son, Aiden, wearing ladies’ clothes… ‘as long as he’s happy’. Stewart, 71, did the same himself. Former girlfriend (19751977) Britt Ekland, 73, likes to recall how he enjoyed wearing her knickers, explaining: ‘He wore them on stage to keep the package (!) in place.’
DAME Helen Mirren, striking a faux modest tone, confides to a ladies’ magazine: ‘It’s not true that everyone wants to look like me… I think the odd 45-year-old might think, “Hmm, I hope I look like her when I’m 70.”’ Or, hope they’re rich enough to live like Dame Helen at 70. The dame can do no wrong with showbiz scribes, otherwise known as ‘fans with keyboards’.