Ephraim Hardcastle
THE Prince of Wales had a meeting this week with representatives of the Duchy of Lancaster which, when he is king, will produce revenue in excess of £16million. His Duchy of Cornwall income is greater, at £19million, but that will pass to William as the next Prince of Wales. My source says: ‘The Queen uses the bulk of her Lancaster income to fund Princes Andrew and Edward, Princess Anne, and the various cousins. Will Charles be so generous?’ NOW perched in the Lords, Labour’s former firebrand Peter Hain, 66, declares his opposition to Article 50, which formally starts the Brexit process, saying: ‘On principle and on conscience, I cannot support something I think will damage the country.’ Principled Hain accepted a peerage from Ed Miliband despite having insisted that the House of Lords ‘should be at the very least majority elected’. WHILE Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe is considering a number of job opportunities – no big offers have materialised, it seems – his likely successor is ex-assistant commissioner Cressida Dick, 56. She led the team that shot dead innocent 27year-old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on the London Underground in 2005, believing he was a terrorist. His hard-up family received a settlement believed to be about £100,000, the kind of sum the Yard would dish out to an employment tribunal. BROADCASTER Gyles Brandeth, 68, says he mistakenly sent a ‘slightly intimate’ text message intended for his wife, Michele, to brassiere magnate Michelle Mone, 45, pictured, recently ennobled by David Cameron. He admits telling Lady Mone that – ‘in a different life’ – he would have sent her the same endearments. TARA Palmer-Tomkinson, who has died aged 45, wrote in 1996: ‘I did not go to university, agreeing with Rupert Murdoch that it’s “a place for people who can’t get jobs”.’ Instead, she took a job at bankers Rothschilds but quit after feeling ‘un-stretched’, writing a poem to them saying: ‘It’s like a war, it’s like a race; To expand the Rothschild client base; And now it’s time to make the tea; How stimulating a job can be. At the end of the day I’m in a mood; I’ve been so polite when I should have been rude…’ RODNEY Bewes, 79, who played optimistic Bob to James Bolam’s pessimistic Terry in the Sixties TV series The Likely Lads and its Seventies sequel, remains in character. He confided at a Simpson’s-in-the-Strand lunch this week that, as a result of throat surgery: ‘I haven’t had a meal since September. But it’s great. I can drink lots of wine without the hassle of eating.’ ARETHA Franklin, 74, announces that she’s retiring from soul singing to spend more time with her grandchildren. Shouldn’t Sir Paul McCartney, also 74, and Sir Mick Jagger, 73, consider doing the same instead of dying their hair and crooning 50-year-old hits for fans on tour?