Ephraim Hardcastle

WITH ITV news veteran Mark Austin, 57, quitting after reportedly falling out with fellow anchor Tom Bradby, is there another feud on the horizon? Prima donna Bradby, 49, still has to contend with the self-obsessed Robert Peston, 56, hogging the airwaves since the latter became political editor at the beginning of the year. Observers suggest Bradby and Peston are ‘oil and water’. Watch this space! FOOTBALL manager Jose Mourinho dramatically claims his life has been a ‘disaster’ after being forced to live alone in Manchester’s Lowry Hotel while his family remain in London. The volatile Portuguese may not be aware that the five-star hotel, a favourite with Manchester United, was where his erstwhile captain Wayne Rooney, 31, reportedly indulged in a threesome with two local ladies in 2010. No plans to mount a blue heritage plaque on the building to mark the occasion! A NEW biography of the late British screen actor Anthony Steel recounts a racy tale involving his exwife – Swedish sexpot Anita Ekberg, pictured in her prime – and thirsty thespian Peter O’Toole. According to author Michael Hodgson, O’Toole claimed he wanted Ekberg – by then divorced from Steel –to star in his next film, 1965’s What’s New Pussycat? O’Toole, who died in 2013, was duly invited to Ekberg’s apartment to discuss the part. After enjoying a night of passion with the actress, O’Toole was asked if he planned to recommend Ekberg, who died last year aged 83, for the role. ‘Hell no!’ he replied. ‘That was just a tool of my seductive technique!’ The bounder! ALAN Bennett’s new volume of diaries includes a bleak tale of how a fellow passenger on a Leeds-bound train told him his name featured in an office sweepstake betting on which well-known personality would die next. ‘They haven’t had a win for some time,’ writes Bennett, 82. ‘Their last bonanza coming with the death of Spike Milligan. I laugh about this when he tells me, but I find it depressing to think that even in a light-hearted way there is at least one family in the kingdom waiting (if not longing) for my death.’ PRICKLY buffoon Lord Prescott, 78, will be displeased by a report placing his beloved home of Hull at the bottom of the UK Prosperity Index. He once took ungentlemanly aim at fruity broadcaster Kirstie Allsopp, 45, when her TV property programme ranked Hull the ‘worst place to live in the UK’. Allsopp reflected: ‘You know you’ve made it when John Prescott calls you a “stupid cow”.’ THE Catholic Herald is supporting the objections of seven of Pope Francis’s cardinals to siting a McDonald’s near St Peter’s Square. In a bizarre train of thought, the Herald wonders if the popular burger the Big Mac is actually Protestant, stating: ‘Massimo Salani, a Catholic theologian, said in 2000, the Big Mac reflects the “individualistic relationship between man and God established by Luther”.’