EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Kate waits for Privy Council appointment

Taking William’s role as Colonel of the Irish Guards, Kate now awaits her appointment to the Privy Council, where, as future Queen, she will attend the accession council when William takes the throne, as Camilla did in September. 

Also, should a Putin-like despot launch a nuclear conflict and King Charles fail to make it to his bunker, Kate and Rishi Sunak could hold an impromptu accession council for William in the secret HQ where they will be holed up together. 

My mole says various emergency documents are in place to formalise William’s monarchy. 

Perhaps Kate’s flute will be on hand as a substitute for the fanfare trumpeters. She and sister Pippa used to play in a group called the Tootie Fluties at school. After all, the show must go on even post Armageddon.

Harry has been able to wail about his treatment at the 2020 Sandringham summit because there are no records of the event. The Queen, on advice, was taking no chances on the day, sanctioning a security sweep of the library where the meeting took place to ensure there were no bugs. Meghan was not allowed to join via video link. That late decision was apparently made because no one could be sure who would be in the room with her in the US or that proceedings wouldn’t be taped for posterity. A source said that Harry, deprived of Meghan’s support, was as useful as a ‘ventriloquist’s dummy without an arm up its back’.

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Romping naked with Jack O’Connell in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Emma Corrin, pictured, corrects Sean Bean, a previous priapic TV Mellors, who complained that newfangled intimacy co-ordinators spoil the spontaneity of sex scenes. 

‘They’re crucial because of safety, because of those two people’s feelings of being comfortable,’ she argues. 

‘Once those boundaries are established, then there can be spontaneity,’ adding: ‘It’s the equivalent of having a stunt co-ordinator.’

The death of Get Carter director Mike Hodges prompts Britt Ekland to explain her naked telephone sex scene with Michael Caine. ‘My accountant had wrongly invested all my money. I had nowhere to live and no income – so I told my agent to get me anything he could,’ she says, adding: ‘I hated the idea of having to take my clothes off, but I was completely broke.’

David Baddiel tells Waitrose magazine he craves festive sausages, adding: ‘It is complicated for a Jewish bloke, living with Mummy Pig…’ – a reference to wife Morwenna Banks, who voices Peppa Pig – ‘…and she is a vegetarian.’

Warbler Alfie Boe evokes Dickensian Christmases recalling his childhood: ‘I grew up in a big, Irish Catholic family – there was five sisters, three brothers… we couldn’t afford the fancy stockings. Do you know what we had? A leg of my mum’s tights. You shove a tangerine in the bottom and spin it around a bit and it stretches and you can get like a ton of Quality Street in there.’ Referring to the festive present he never got, he adds forlornly: ‘You could get, like, a bicycle in there.’ Happy Christmas Alfie!