Ephraim Hardcastle
OUT next month, Inside Story is described as an ‘autobiographical novel’ by Martin Amis, 70. Who is the pseudonymous siren who, say his publishers, ‘captivated his twenties – the alluringly amoral Phoebe Phelps?’ A female acquaintance of Amis at the time tells me: ‘He offered myself and a friend what he described as a “car wash” – him plus two girls. Which we of course declined.’ Ballet critic Julie Kavanagh, 68, wrote of Amis in his 20s: ‘The feelings of profound unattractiveness from which he claims to have suffered a couple of years before we met – feelings of short-arsed, physical inadequacy which he novelises time and again – had given way to Byronic magnetism.’
BROADCASTING vicar The Reverend Richard Coles, 58, says he was jealous of Jimmy Somerville, pictured, when they were in the 1980s pop duo The Communards. Classically-trained musician Coles, now 58, was a multi-instrumentalist alongside falsettosinging Somerville, 59. Their chart topper Don’t Leave Me This Way was the UK’s bestselling single of 1986. Coles says: ‘I found managing my relationship with Jimmy very difficult – the fact that he was rightly, dazzlingly, a hugely gifted performer who everybody wanted to see...I didn’t like somebody getting more attention than me. I do have an ego.’ No doubt he chooses his professional colleagues much more carefully now.
DEFENDING employees’ rights to have workplace romances, happily-married broadcaster Nick Ferrari, 61, confesses on ITV’s This Morning: ‘If I hadn’t been allowed to have them in the office, I don’t think I’d have had any sex in my life to be absolutely honest with you.’
NEWSNIGHT’S Kirsty Wark, 65, says the show’s executives were offered behindthe-scenes access to Barack Obama, then a US state senator making the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, ‘but the powersthat-be didn’t want it. Now I think, “Good God! We’d have been so far ahead of the curve” What a piece of history that would’ve been.’ The then Newsnight editor Peter Barron (now Google’s head of communications) will no doubt be tickled by Kirsty’s indiscretion.
BELLOWING actor Brian Blessed, 83, who says his 1980 film, Flash Gordon, is a favourite of the Queen, enjoys a flirtatious rapport with HM’s daughterin-law, the Duchess of Cornwall, 73. During a 2017 meeting – at a Clarence House reception – BB boomed approvingly: ‘How are you, young lady? You’re looking absolutely marvellous!’ Claiming Camilla ‘sat on my knee,’ he told her: ‘I said to your husband, “Can I buy you?”’ Camilla’s coy reply to him: ‘He said you can have me free!’
MEGHAN Markle’s friendly biographer Omid Scobie – discussing how he hugged the discontented duchess before she left Britain – muses on Radio 4: ‘That was a powerful moment within the Harry and Meghan journey.’ Pass the royal-size sickbag please!