Gore Vidal leaves estate to Harvard University

By EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE FOR THE DAILY MAIL

Published: 20:58 EST, 12 November 2013 | Updated: 06:30 EST, 13 November 2013

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Acid-tongued writer Gore Vidal left his £20million estate to Harvard University, including paintings by 18th century Italian artist Paolo de Matteis.

One depicts ‘a barely clothed maiden with arms wantonly outstretched’. Vidal liked to inform visitors that the painting was a likeness of ‘my friend, Princess Margaret, asking for a gin and tonic’.

His own lifelong taste was for adolescent boys. Or pre-adolescent ones, according to enemies.

Emily Maitlis is to become acting political editor of BBC2’s Newsnight during Allegra Stratton’s maternity leave.

Ed Miliband will be pleased. My source says: ‘His staff say he goes weak at the knees at the sight of Maitlis.

At his annual drinks do he latches on to her like a dog with a bone, gawping longingly at her doe eyes.’ Down boy!

Andrew Marr’s decision to re-occupy his Radio 4 Start The Week slot this week while still recovering from a near-fatal stroke is admired. But a source on the show says: ‘There’s support in the Radio 4 hierarchy for having a revolving panel of presenters, two men and a woman.’ Support from likely members of this trio, certainly!

Dame Judi Dench, 78, pictured circa 1981, announces in an interview: ‘I have a completely new knee and it’s brilliant. I’m not feeling my age at all. I feel about 43 – a willowy blonde 43-year-old with long legs!’ Might she be brought back from the dead as James Bond’s boss, M, to enjoy a fling with 007?

Stricty Come Dancing judge Craig Revel Horwood has no sympathy with the show’s professional hoofers, paid about £30,000 for the series compared with his own £110,000 fee, pointing out: ‘When I was in Cats, I danced my socks off for eight shows a week for just £200. If these guys weren’t on Strictly they’d be teaching for tuppence! They’re very lucky.’

Veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby, 75, who has a new scorpion tattoo, is ‘a cheap media tart who will literally do anything to promote his new TV series’, blogs social irritant Toby Young. Takes a cheap media tart to know one? Young would crawl through an open sewer for a mention. Incidentally, scorpion tattoos are a ‘bio-hazard’ warning of HIV in the gay community.

Always keen to give offence, food critic Giles Coren informs readers of Lonely Planet Traveller that food in Italy is poor. And that Italian men live at home until they’re 50, wear string vests and eat spaghetti with meatballs on their laps in front of TV. Scandaloso!