EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Arts benefactor Dame Vivien Duffield issues stern warning to Labour over hints they could cut culture funding
How does deep-pocketed arts benefactor Dame Vivien Duffield feel about Sir Keir Starmer's acolytes hinting that private funding might compensate for a shortfall in government handouts?
Vivien, who has donated more than £500million to the arts since inheriting her father's fortune in 1979, thunders: 'The politicians have started to take philanthropy for granted. Once we were the icing on the cake.
'Then we became the filling holding the cake together. Now we seem to be the whole bloody cake.'
Starmer and his potential culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire have been warned.
Pictured: Dame Vivien Duffield at the JW3 Gala Dinner in London last year
Pictured: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during his visit to Burton and South Derbyshire College in Burton-on-Trent on June 27
Sir Keir Starmer's self-confessed atheism was queried by Piers Morgan in an edited-out interview clip where Starmer recalled being in a small plane in danger of crashing. 'It was really scary,' he said.
'The plane looked like it would barely hold itself together. Then I saw a sign on the cockpit door that said 'In God we trust' and I thought, phew!'
Asked Morgan: 'Didn't this experience lead you to the believers' side?' 'Thank you, God,' replied Starmer, 'but sorry, no. I'm afraid what it led to was going straight to the nearest bar.'
In his memoir Amnesiac, filmmaker Neil Jordan reveals the demented perfectionism of his friend Stanley Kubrick asking Ryan O'Neal to have his leg amputated for his film Barry Lyndon.
Kubrick told O'Neal he had booked a very good Swiss clinic for the operation, to which the actor replied: 'What operation?' 'To remove your leg,' said Kubrick.
O'Neal retorted incredulously: 'You're asking me to get my leg cut off for this film?' 'Well I don't know what else to do,' Kubrick sighed. 'Maybe you have another solution?'
Hugh Bonneville, playing a Huw Edwards-type figure destroyed by a sexist joke in ITV's Douglas Is Cancelled, is unlikely to be brought down by any improper behaviour as Downton Abbey's Earl of Grantham.
Douglas is Cancelled stars Hugh Bonneville as Douglas Bellowe while Karen Gillan appears as Madeline Crow, his co-anchor
He tells media commentator Mark Lawson: 'I have to go on a respect in the workplace training video module for a show I've been doing for 14 years.' Not now, Carson!
With preachy luvvie David Tennant branded a 'bigot' after announcing he wished equalities minister Kemi Badenoch 'didn't exist', political interrogator Andrew Neil concludes: 'These actors should stick to memorising lines others write for them. Using their own is too often too embarrassing.'
About to accept a Boisdale Life Award at Ranald Macdonald's Boisdale restaurant in Canary Wharf on Wednesday, former head of the British Army General Sir Peter Wall could have barked 'enemy incoming' as he approached the stage.
Waiting to present his gong was Big Narstie, an extremely well nourished rapper in vest and shorts dancing with former Atomic Kitten Natasha Hamilton and rapping about 'da military'. Isn't life grand!