Ephraim Hardcastle

INTRODUCING her recent guest on Desert Island Discs, radio critic Gillian Reynolds, 83, Kirsty Young remarked: ‘It hurts when she puts the boot in...’ When Ms Young took over the show in 2006 Ms Reynolds wrote: ‘It pains me to say this, not least because I forecast the opposite, but she isn’t very good at this programme. She asks questions with the answers already built in, cuts across what the interviewees are saying, doesn’t pick up what’s being said and seems to attach no significance at all to the choice of records.’ Yet Ms Young thrives at the women-friendly BBC. She’s hyped as a successor to David Dimbleby on Question Time. POLDARK star Eleanor Tomlinson, 26, who plays red-haired love interest Demelza, pictured, says she’s a natural blonde now firmly identifying as a redhead, confiding: ‘I feel more empowered, more confident. I feel that people don’t take me as seriously as a blonde. It’s terrible that it’s like that, but I’ve got that vibe from people.’ Pass the henna, Demelza! THE hospitalisation of Field Marshal Lord Guthrie calls into question the wisdom of having 79-year-olds, in full uniform, riding at the Trooping the Colour. As Gold Stick-in-Waiting, he fell off his horse after spending the best part of two hours in the sun. My source says: ‘Trooping the Colour is immune from health and safety rules.’ PROMOTING a film about his hero Oscar Wilde, Rupert Everett, 59, is asked by Radio 4’s John Humphrys if he regrets coming out as gay ‘30 years ago’. He says: ‘It wasn’t a possibility for me to live a double life.’ No easier for Oscar, surely. EX-Liberal leader David Steel is quizzed over what he knew about the ‘hitman’ scandal involving his predecessor, Jeremy Thorpe, and about Liberal MP Cyril Smith and small boys. Critics forget Steel stood down as Liberal leader in 1988 after the party amalgamated with the Social Democrats. In 2004, as Baron Steel of Aikwood, the Queen made him a member of the Thistle, an ancient chivalric Order from which those tainted by scandal are excluded. A member of the great and the good, stainless Steel is now president of the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs and the proud owner of a 1964 Wolseley 1500. APROPOS the Thistle, the Queen has appointed Sir Ian Wood, the Aberdonian billionaire who made his money primarily in the oil industry, to fill a vacancy. Limited to 16 members, there has only been one woman since the Order was established in 1687 – Christian Aid chairman Lady Marion Fraser, appointed in 1996, who died in 2016. Will feminists demonstrate their disapproval outside the biennial gathering of the Thistle at St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, in the first week of July? ITV presenter Eamonn Holmes says his wife, Ruth Langsford, snores ‘like a horse or a warthog’. The comic pair, both 58, are hosting a show about sleep for far-from-cerebral Channel 5.