Ephraim Hardcastle
THE new Duchess of Sussex, surely the first member of the Royal Family to take an interest in royal website biographies, has been tweaking Harry’s bio. Meghan is a whole new world for courtiers to handle. No one would ever have imagined the words ‘menstrual health management’, about one of her pet campaigns, appearing. With the prewedding closure of her social media accounts, it’s now the only online outlet she’s got to get her message across. HIGHLIGHTING the presence of all races to cheer on Meghan and Harry, BBC producer Linden Kemkaran says she was annoyed when asked to find black and brown people in Windsor to comment. She tells The Spectator: ‘I rolled my eyes and cracked on with it to the best of my ability.’ DESPERATE to fill seats for his show in Belgium, John Cleese, 78, tweets a video message begging fans to see him ‘before I die’. The old twerp has form. When Monty Python’s Life Of Brian opened in 1979 his late mother Muriel appeared in radio commercials jokingly pleading with listeners to see her son’s film or he’d stop paying her old folks’ home bills. ASKED to confirm whether it’s true he once asked the Dalai Lama about sex, booming thespian Brian Blessed, 81, pictured, said: ‘We were both the same age, 55, when we met. I said, “I’m still as randy as ever, but how do you manage without sex?” His translator said, “Nobody asks his holiness questions like that!” But the Dalai Lama replied, “I do sometimes think of a beautiful woman and then I chant my mantras and take a cold shower”.’ DESIGN guru Stephen Bayley, creative director for the disastrous Millennium Dome project, recalls being undermined by slippery New Labour grandee Lord Mandelson. Having accused Mandy of behaving like a ‘dictator’ at the time, Bayley, 66, is asked on the Media Masters podcast whether they are ‘now on good terms’. ‘No, not at all,’ responds Bayley, who quit the post in 1998. ‘I was never on good terms.’ Old wounds run deep! TAKING aim at the royal wedding, Leftwing commentator Yasmin AlibhaiBrown, 68, tweets: ‘Proof again that GB is an infantilised, escapist nation.’ Born in Uganda, she moved to the UK in the 1970s, where she enjoyed an Oxbridge education. Feisty Tory MP Nadine Dorries fires back on Twitter: ‘Yasmin, why don’t you just try to be nice? Maybe appreciate just a little the country and the people you have chosen [to] live, work and benefit from all of your life.’ DUE to play in Berlin on the same night as Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones next month, brother Chris, 70, says: ‘It’s not a competition... he doesn’t have to do washing-up and clean out the drains or stuff. I’m an ordinary bloke.’ Chris, four years younger than his sibling, sports grey hair, unlike Sir Mick’s carefully preserved dyed chestnut locks.