Hardcastle Ephraim
THE Queen finally moved into Balmoral yesterday after spending the first weeks of her annual vacation in nearby Craigowan Lodge. Her Majesty doesn’t close Balmoral to tourists until August because she needs all those £11.50 entry fees to help keep the rickety heating system running. She has been amusing herself peering at visitors with her binoculars and walking her dogs in the grounds – prompting double takes from gawpers. One member of her security detail deflected attention by claiming HM was royal impersonator Jeannette Charles doing some filming. Unlike the monarch, Jeannette, 90, retired from playing her in 2014.
THOMAS Markle claims Diana, Princess of Wales would be unhappy at his silent treatment by her daughter-in-law Meghan, the new Duchess of Sussex. Would she? Diana did not speak to her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, for several months before she died in Paris in 1997. Mrs Shand Kydd was an unhappy soul who may have empathised with lonely Thomas.
WHILE ex-husband Imran Khan prepares to be sworn in as Pakistan’s new prime minister, heiress Jemima Goldsmith, 44, is incensed by bogus claims of her holidaying in Israel with their two sons. Pakistani politician Ghinwa Bhutto, an opponent of Khan’s, tweets: ‘Imran Khan’s family on a visit to the apartheid state of Israel. What does this mean to Pakistan?’ Jemima fires back: ‘This tweet is staggeringly ignorant and would be funny if it weren’t dangerous. The photo is taken on a family holiday in Mexico (not Israel) and we are wearing ponchos (not Jewish religious dress). Ghinwa Bhutto, shame on you.’ Bhutto apologises but cuttingly adds: ‘But, please, please do not lecture me about shame.’
SWEDISH actress and mother-of-two Rebecca Ferguson, 34, pictured, Tom Cruise’s co-star in Mission: Impossible-Fallout, is asked by Empire magazine where she was when Cruise injured himself when a stunt went wrong. ‘I don’t know where I was. Drinking a coffee? Making a baby? No – I know what I was doing. I was training for a stunt I had to do. Then Tom breaks his bloody foot – so the scene got postponed until after my pregnancy. So I very much remember.’
FORMER Tory Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, recently ordained as a prison deacon, tells the Radio Times of an intimidating encounter at Belmarsh prison with bank robber Noel ‘Razor’ Smith who asked if he was a friend of former home secretary Michael Howard, adding: ‘Cos you tell him I’ll kill him.’ Aitken replied: ‘Look, I’m very sorry you feel this way. I’ve known him all my life and do believe Michael is a straight guy.’ Razor breathed heavily, looked down at the steel gangway, then said: ‘Well, at least you’re loyal.’ Aitken: ‘We’ve been friends ever since.’
CHRISTOPHER Lee’s biography of Lord Carrington reveals his ‘enormous affection’ for driver Henry Hall who would only polish the side of the car used by Carrington, explaining: ‘We only rubs down the side of the ’orse what the officer mounts.’