EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Gordon Brown remembers Silvio Berlusconi's request

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: When Silvio Berlusconi wanted to make-up with Gordon Brown

Ex-PM and chancellor Gordon Brown recalls travelling to Paris after the Lehman Brothers collapse led to the 2007-2008 global financial crisis to meet French president Nicolas Sarkozy, German chancellor Angela Merkel, head of the European Union Jose Manuel Barroso and Italy’s leader Silvio Berlusconi. Hearing the latter grumble about ‘amateurs,’ says Brown, ‘we thought “Berlusconi, businessman and politician, he’s got the answer to the crisis.” And then he said “Don’t you realise we have a press conference in one hour and none of them have brought a make-up artist with them?” And that was his contribution.’ Are our current leaders any wiser?

Ex-PM and chancellor Gordon Brown recalled former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi’s bizarre response to the 2007-2008 global financial crisis

Dame Vanessa Redgrave, citing exhaustion from Covid, exits from the last three weeks of the London Coliseum’s My Fair Lady, in which she had a small part. ‘Vanilla Rednose’, as the late Eric Morecambe called her, remains a grand figure despite her revolutionary socialist views. My source says: ‘On the nights she did turn up at the Coliseum, her curtain call was impressive, milking the applause as if she was the lead star.’ In her goodbye note to fellow cast members, she modestly signs herself ‘Vanessa Redgrave (Dame)’.

Olivia Newton-John, 73, was exasperated by ‘woke’ criticism of Grease

Grease star Olivia Newton-John, who has died aged 73, was exasperated by modern day ‘woke’ criticism of the 1978 film. Responding to complaints that it ‘wrongly celebrates a shy girl becoming sexy because she wants to be popular’, she snapped in 2019: ‘Oh, for goodness sake! It’s just a movie.’ Noting the film’s tongue-in-cheek finale, pictured, she added: ‘I mean – the car takes off at the end!’

Recalling Boris Johnson struggling under the pressure during his first London mayoral election campaign, his former spokesman Will Walden tells Radio 4: ‘We had a storage room which had lots of film props. When things got a bit too much for Boris he’d slip out. Eventually someone found him hiding in a prop coffin.’

Paying tribute to Peggy Woolley actress June Spencer, 103 – retiring from Radio 4’s The Archers after 72 years – wholesome TV property presenter Kirstie Allsopp enthuses: ‘For Archers fans, Peggy is the Queen. I suspect HM may even feel the same.’ Steady on, Kirstie!

Win Butler, of the award-winning band Arcade Fire, says they’ll never play ‘rich, white’ Switzerland again after finding the Montreux Jazz Festival audiences in July so dead ‘we couldn’t even antagonise them into booing us’. Music legend Quincy Jones told him: ‘Miles Davis played with his back to the audience…’

Matt Smith, who played Prince Philip in The Crown, is delighted to have landed a leading role in Game Of Thrones prequel House Of The Dragon. He muses: ‘I think as an actor you are always trying to stretch yourself and play parts that are outside of your wheelhouse.’ Aye, aye, Captain!

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