Why Melania will have to mind her peas and Q’s with the King: EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE
One conversation visiting Donald Trump won't be having with the King is his claim that Charles and his then-wife Diana were thinking of buying a 21-room apartment in his under-construction Trump Tower in New York. As he explains in The Art of the Deal: 'Our policy was not to comment about sales, and that's what I told this reporter. In other words, I refused to confirm or deny the rumour. In the absence of a denial, the story that the royal couple was considering buying an apartment in Trump Tower became front-page news all over the world. It certainly didn't hurt us, but I had to laugh to myself.' What are the odds that Charles didn't find it funny?
The King is apparently very fussy about his bed linen – the finest Egyptian cotton, according to a source – but it seems this doesn't cut it for Mr Trump. The President's aides, inspecting his suite in Windsor Castle before his arrival, provided housekeepers with bedding. A courtier muses that it may just be the President not wanting to stain the royal pillows with whatever tanning chemicals he uses to keep his orange hue. Below-stairs wags, noting that Melania has a separate suite, joke that if she'd asked for a water bed she could effortlessly drift apart from Donald.
First Lady Melania Trump will sit next to the King at the State banquet this week
Melania, sitting next to the King at the State banquet, should be warned about his accident-prone eating style – as confessed to Mariella Frostrup at a Highgrove dinner. 'I pinged my peas and one of them landed on his plate,' recalls Mariella. 'And I said, "Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed – I'm so sorry". And he went "Don't worry about it at all, it's normally me that does it – I'm the clumsiest eater that you will ever come across".'
Enraged by Oldie editor Harry Mount sacking him after 18 years as the magazine's Memorial Service correspondent, James Hughes-Onslow, 80, mischievously claims that Harry's father Sir Ferdinand Mount despairs of his 47-year-old bachelor son failing to produce an heir to the baronetcy. 'Sir Ferdinand thinks his son, who trained as a barrister, should stop working for an old people's mag and find a good woman.' Claims James, a former lover of Germaine Greer: 'Harry has had three fine candidates but has failed to do the right thing.' Does Hell have any more fury than fired memorialist Hughes-Onslow?
Brewing millionaire Maureen Guinness, who died aged 91 in 1998, embarrassed dinner guests with her farting machine, according to her granddaughter Ivana Lowell, who tells Radio Times: 'She also had a fake penis and would bring it out now and then. Sometimes she would put it on her nose.' Fingers crossed that Maureen didn't whip out her party pieces during her annual birthday shindig for her best friend, the Queen Mother.
Young co-pilot and new father is identified as final victim of private jet crash that killed six on its way to Paris