Ephraim Hardcastle
NOT all of sophie Wessex’s memories of her pre-Royal career are pleasant. as sophie Rhys-Jones, a PR for London’s Capital Radio, she had to pose for photographs when greeting Jimmy savile at the Euston Road office. But a sudden gust of wind uplifted her short skirt, prompting an amorous yodel from savile who proceeded to rain unsolicited kisses on her hand and arm. appalled sophie flounced off and said: ‘i refuse to have any more pictures with that awful man.’ if only someone had taken heed of sophie at the time, savile might have been stopped before Operation yewtree.
HARRY Potter creator JK Rowling is defended by Ian McEwan and Sir Tom Stoppard over the hate campaign launched against her from transgender rights activists. But there is silence from the so-called defenders of free expression PEN International. This is despite Rowling giving the organisation a first edition Harry Potter which raised £150,000 at auction. Who said no good deed goes unpunished? aFTER accidentally driving over her new pet cockapoo Ziggy, Rachel Johnson, pictured, incurred vet bills of £800. and she was hit with a further £2,500 when Ziggy swallowed a peach stone which blocked her intestine. Rachel paid £1,250 for her new pooch. My abacus calculates that the pet’s purchase price is less than half the moolah Rachel has forked out to keep Ziggy alive. isn’t life grand?
IS Maureen Lipman’s expected damehood a first for TV soap operas? She currently earns a thespian crust as comedy battleaxe granny Evelyn Plummer in ITV’s Coronation Street. At least the Rovers Return was the late Sir Kingsley Amis’s favourite fictional watering hole. He regularly asked bemused literary chums at the Garrick: ‘What news of Deirdre Barlow?’
DaRREN O’Grady, the Queen’s former chef, debunks the myth that HM enjoys Fray Bentos tinned pies, tweeting: ‘i don’t remember the Queen being served steak and kidney pie and certainly not a Fray Bentos one. Chicken and leek with puff pastry. But never out of a tin.’
EX-TORY minister David Mellor regrets that his original Spitting Image model had bad breath with ‘horrible fumes coming out’. He recalled that partner Penny Cobham bought the dummy, saying: ‘He was put on a sort of witch’s broomstick in my office but unfortunately the quality of the execution was not great and in no time at all it fell apart.’ Why did she purchase? ‘She didn’t want anyone else buying it,’ adds Mellor.
FiLMMaKER Mike Leigh can’t bear to watch his abigail’s Party, voted 11th in a list of the 100 Greatest British TV Programmes, saying: ‘it’s a technical, visual mess but nobody is concerned about that, what they are concerned about is the resonance of the performances.’ What’s alison steadman’s view? she starred in the 1977 show and was married to grumpy Leigh at the time.