EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: King Charles asked Jimmy Savile to provide the Royal Family with a manual on how to publicly react to disasters like the Lockerbie bombing

The BBC’s Jimmy Savile series The Reckoning doesn’t refer to King Charles’s request to the child molester to provide the Royal Family with a manual on how to publicly react to disasters like the Lockerbie bombing. 

It followed Prince Andrew’s cack-handed appearance at the sight of the 1988 PanAm tragedy, saying: ‘I suppose statistically something like this has got to happen at some stage. Of course, it only affects the community in a very small way.’ 

Prince Charles asked Savile for help and, in a handwritten note thanking him for a five-page briefing, wrote: ‘I attach a copy of my memo on disasters, which incorporates your points and which I showed to my father. He showed it to [the Queen].’ Parts of the Savile guidance still remain in royal briefing documents.

The BBC’s Jimmy Savile series The Reckoning doesn’t refer to King Charles’s request to the child molester to provide the Royal Family with a manual on how to publicly react to disasters like the Lockerbie bombing 

Apropos Diana’s ghost haunting The Crown, might it have tickled her? She and Princess Margaret once witnessed Elizabeth I’s spectre at Windsor and the late Queen also ‘felt’ the presence of John Brown, Queen Victoria’s favourite servant, who is said to haunt Balmoral. 

King Charles reportedly had encounters with the poltergeist said to inhabit Sandringham. Neither he nor his mother resorted to seances to contact the deceased, something Queen Victoria did to keep in touch with Prince Albert.

Before Native American actress Lily Gladstone, pictured, was cast by Martin Scorsese in his new epic Killers of the Flower Moon, she was about to abandon her acting career to devote her time to protecting indigenous bumblebees from giant Asian hornets. ‘I got a fire in my belly to go after these invasive killers,’ she recalls. ‘I even adopted a pet bee. His name was Bubb.’ But then Scorsese gave her a buzz and the rest is history.

Sacked This Morning presenter Eamonn Holmes has made himself and wife Ruth Langsford available to replace departing Holly Willoughby on the ITV couch. 

‘The two best presenters they could have are sitting in the wings,’ spouts the doughnut aficionado. ‘And we haven’t chosen to leave – we were chosen to leave.’ 

Sufficiently profound, Eamonn, for the peeling of an onion!

Sacked This Morning presenter Eamonn Holmes has made himself and wife Ruth Langsford available to replace departing Holly Willoughby on the ITV couch

Emma Freud and romcom writer Richard Curtis have secretly tied the knot after more than three decades together – and 14 years after the death of Emma’s father, broadcaster and former Liberal MP Sir Clement Freud. 

With Clement infamously at the centre of a paedophile scandal – revelations emerged after his death in 2009 – it was just as well he didn’t feature in the wedding photos…

The Queen Mother has been posthumously outed as a fan of Irish country warbler Daniel O’Donnell. Her friend, painter Derek Hill, a neighbour in Donegal, brought his CDs to her in London. ‘He was friendly with the Royal Family,’ says O’Donnell. 

‘I would sign the CDs and he would take them to Charles, and Charles would bring them to his grandmother.’ Did the late Queen Mum ever enjoy a twosome with Backstairs Billy at Clarence House waltzing to O’Donnell’s Don’t Forget to Remember?