Ephraim Hardcastle'
PRINCE Charles’s engraved and embossed invitations to Harry and Meghan’s wedding have the guests’ names added by machine, which once might have sent a shudder down his royal spine. In the computer age, those skilled at writing legibly with a fountain pen are few in number, but couldn’t the prince have consulted a new member of his family? Before finding fame in the TV series Suits, Meghan Markle taught calligraphy in Beverly Hills. My source says: ‘Her handwriting technique would impress older generations of letter-writing royals. Why, her flourishes and curlicues bring Elizabeth I’s hand to mind!’ Fancy!
APROPOS Meghan, her royal monogram, for letterheads, is an M surmounted by a crown. One of the drafts for the joint Harry / Meghan monogram was H&M, but there is a High Street store of that name so it was changed to HM. Incidentally, the monogram for Prince William and his wife, Catherine, is CW – giving the Duchess of Cambridge precedence. Why? Because WC has lavatorial associations.
FIRST Lady Melania Trump, 47, asked Donald Trump, 71, to invite French president Emmanuel Macron, 40, to be the first, state-visit guest to Washington later this month. ‘Melania and [Macron’s wife] Brigitte, who is 64, hit it off when they met in Paris,’ says a French source. The fact that the pair, pictured during the Trumps’ state visit to France in July, are married to men of a different generation, might have provided a talking point.
RONALD Reagan and First Lady Nancy watched 363 movies at Camp David during his eight-year presidency. They were joined by their staff in Aspen Lodge for film sessions, says former adviser Mark Weinberg, author of Movie Nights With The Reagans. He recalls one very awkward moment. Eccentric scientist Doc, in 1985’s Back To The Future, referring to Reagan becoming president: ‘I suppose Jane Wyman [Reagan’s first wife] is First Lady now,’ Weinberg adds: ‘It felt as if the air had gone out of Aspen Lodge’
PROMOTING his stage tour on US radio, John Cleese, 78, is reminded by an interviewer: ‘You haven’t been knighted yet.’ Cleese responds: ‘I don’t want a silly gong from the Government.’ He’s changed his tune since 2016. He confessed then: ‘I only want to say that I find it very, very humbling to have missed out on a knighthood again.’ He claims he was offered a life peerage by the Liberal Democrats but turned them down. He also says he refused a CBE. This kind of hoity-toity carry-on never goes down well with the gongs’ bigwigs.
SIR Ringo Starr, 77, who has landed a multi-million-pound music-publishing deal with industry giant Bertelsmann covering 150 of his compositions, once complained that his song-writing efforts were often disparaged by fellow Beatles. This persuaded him that they weren’t up to much. Happily he – and they – were wrong. Isn’t the old paradiddler having a last laugh now?