Ephraim Hardcastle

WHILE Meghan Markle celebrates International Women’s Day with Prince Harry in Birmingham tomorrow, veteran royal courtiers have taken to calling the future princess Meghan the Menace because of her strong will. She has declared she will become a member of the Church of England and a British citizen, but any protocol she doesn’t like she ditches. Touchy-feely equally with Harry and admiring crowds, she wears trousers frequently on public engagements and even, to the alarm of officials, granted a gushing interview to Vanity Fair. Says one courtier: ‘Meghan seems inspired by Princess Diana. She started as the demure fairytale princess, but soon found her own voice and style. She’s the same age, 36, as Diana when she died and if she does take on her mantle she’ll get every encouragement from Harry.’ HAVING taken over from Prince Philip in December as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, Prince Andrew, who has never shown any enthusiasm for horses, has been having riding lessons to take his place on horseback alongside the other royal colonels behind the Queen at June’s Trooping the Colour. He will also have to master the art of wearing a bearskin – not quite as easy as it seems. George VI used to do gardening in his as a rehearsal. FORMER US first lady Michelle Obama, pictured, says of sleeping over at Buckingham Palace as she and Barack Obama did on their 2011 state visit: ‘By the time we had the sleepover we had enough interacting with them. The surprising thing is folks wanted to be treated normally. Everybody is happy when all the people are gone. They want to be hugged. They want to be touched. They gossip.’ Hug the Queen? Not if you’re British. FRIENDS of former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman are lobbying for her to take over from John Bercow as Commons Speaker. Bercow said he would serve nine years and that expires this summer. Westminster whispers suggest he would like to be succeeded by Harman, 67, because he is much gripped by feminism. It would mean that Bercow, 55, would be making way for an older woman. URGENT alert to snowflake students at Northumbria University. Why isn’t anyone waving placards in protest at Max Mosley receiving an honorary doctorate in 2005? Announcing Mosley’s doctorate of civil law, the then vice chancellor Professor Kel Fidler said: ‘We strive to provide our graduates with outstanding role models whom they can look up to as they progress their careers.’ BBC Radio 4 newsreader David Miles, 62, might like to forget Monday’s midnight bulletin when, reporting on Donald Trump’s trade war, he quoted World Trade Organisation director-general Roberto Azevedo saying, ‘An eye for an eye will leave us all blind and the world in deep recession’, adding: ‘Here is our Washington Correspondent Gary O’Donoghue.’ Highly-regarded Gary, 49, was born partially sighted and went blind at eight.