Ephraim Hardcastle
DIANE Abbott, 63, appears to find her new job as her ex-boyfriend Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow home secretary all-absorbing. Certainly that was the impression she gave as PM Theresa May presented a Woman of the Year Award at London’s Intercontinental Hotel yesterday. While of course we don’t know what she was discussing, my source says: ‘Diane was on her phone during a very moving documentary about the Hillsborough tragedy highlighting the work of award-winner Margaret Aspinall, who lost her son and was honoured for her work with the families. It was so moving it made many people cry.’
HILLARY Clinton’s claim that Donald Trump must never be president is supported by former missile launch officer and Princeton academic Bruce Blair, 69. He served at a Great Plains missile site ordered to get ready for an attack on the Soviet Union in 1973. In an essay, Trump And The Nuclear Keys, he says: ‘If I were back in the launch chair, I would have little faith in his judgment.’ In 1973, he adds, the Nixon administration’s emergency message to prepare for nuclear war was rescinded by then-national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Under stress during the Watergate scandal, president Richard Nixon ‘had retired for the evening, drunk’.
JANE Fonda, 78, plays 80-year-old Robert Redford’s lover in an upcoming movie, Our Souls At Night, enthusing: ‘Love that man. He’s about as perfect as they come, inside and out.’ They’ve (see picture) made four previous movies – Tall Story, 1960; The Chase, 1966; Barefoot In The Park, 1967; and The electric Horseman, 1979 but couldn’t have married, says thrice divorced Jane: ‘We’re too much alike – loners essentially – and kinda moody.’
INTRODUCING himself as ‘that awful man’ – Prince Charles’s description – the BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell asked a Cheltenham Literature Festival audience if they’d accept ‘Queen Camilla’. Almost half said no. Isn’t this an improvement? Surely a great majority would have said no just after Diana died. Charles, 68 on November 14, will become the oldest monarch to begin a reign and Camilla, 69, the most elderly consort.
THE Queen isn’t interested in the controversies over cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins’ officially permitted drugs or knighthoods, but a royal source says: ‘She wasn’t amused by him larking about and sticking his tongue out during the National Anthem at the Rio games.’
SANDI Toksvig, 58, the new host of BBC series QI, recalls working on the comedy circuit: ‘In the early days I’d be stood on stage and immediately some bloke would shout, “Show us your t**s!”’ Small wonder she married Debbie, a psychotherapist.
THE Government is reluctant to invest in a new royal yacht because of the cost. In 1997, chancellor Norman Lamont refused to find an estimated £60million to replace Britannia. (It’s now £120million.) The Duke of edinburgh said that replacing Britannia’s steam turbines with diesel engines, at a cost of around £100,000, would solve the cost problem, adding: ‘She was as sound as a bell and could have gone on for another 50 years.’