Hardcastle Ephraim
PrINCeSS eugenie, 27, and her fiance, Jack Brooksbank, 30, reportedly hope to live in Ivy Cottage at Kensington Palace. Is that appropriate? It’s bigger than Nottingham Cottage, where Prince harry and his fiancee Meghan live. What’s to be done? The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester (aged 73 and 71 respectively) might move out of their 21-room apartment next to William and Kate to make way for harry and Meghan, it’s suggested. Princess Michael (of Kent), 73, told Tatler magazine: ‘They’re rattling around this huge space and I think Prince harry might go there… very good move.’ My source says: ‘Princess Michael may have been trying to deflect attention from her own very nice ten-bedroom place to avoid it being commandeered. It now falls to Prince Charles as de facto head of the family to sort it out and check who is going to fund it.’
APROPOS Eugenie, her mother Sarah Ferguson’s decision to write an open letter in Hello! magazine to the couple might give the celebrity publication some hope of an exclusive deal for the wedding. But in 2008, when Princess Anne’s son, Peter Phillips, wed Autumn Kelly at Windsor, the access sold to Hello! for £500,000 was considered intrusive and is said to have upset the Queen. However, ‘HM is more easy-going these days,’ says my source, adding: ‘A request from Prince Andrew to do a Hello! deal – if he is so minded – could swing it for the magazine.’
reFLeCTING on the BBC pay row, their political seer andrew Neil, 68, points out: ‘Why should we give any credence to this “you shouldn’t be paid more than the Prime Minister” b ***** ks?’ For all PMs, being a (£150,000) PM is a low point financially, he says. ‘Post-PM they make much, much more. Who else can say that when they hit career peak?’ Tony Blair being an egregious example.
SHOULD Prince William, 35, wear a hat? He looked distinctly chilly in Sweden greeting crowds alongside Kate in her cosy bonnet. He wears a topper for Ascot and a bowler, pictured, on Household Division duties. Why not a dashing trilby? So long as it isn’t a Peaky Blinders cap of the type which made David Cameron a national laughing stock the other day.
LaBoUr MP Chris Bryant, 56, is pressing the Government to reverse Bermuda’s decision to outlaw same-sex marriages of the kind he enjoys himself. he points out that this will affect Britons due to marry on Bermuda-registered cruise ships. Bryant adds menacingly that as a junior Foreign office minister in 2009, he suspended the constitution of the Turks and Caicos Islands over its ‘corruption’.
TOO modest star Colin Firth CBE, 57, says that being a sex symbol – mostly for taking his shirt off as Darcy in the 1995 TV production of Pride and Prejudice – isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: ‘I don’t get chased down the street – nor has anyone thrown their underwear at me.’ He should be thankful for small mercies.