EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: King Charles should be feeling flush now…

EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: King Charles should be feeling flush now that he funds just seven working royals from his £24 million Duchy of Lancaster income

King Charles should be feeling quite flush. He now funds just seven working royals from his Duchy of Lancaster income (William and Kate self-fund from the Duchy of Cornwall). 

When his mother’s reign commenced in 1952 that income was £100,000. Ten years ago it was £12.9million and now it exceeds £24million. 

But despite the reduction in working royals, Charles seems reluctant to scale down his extensive property portfolio of castles, palaces and cottages.

King Charles (pictured) should be feeling quite flush. He now funds just seven working royals from his Duchy of Lancaster income (William and Kate self-fund from the Duchy of Cornwall)

Campaign group Fathers 4 Justice, which fights for dads’ access to their children, calls on the Duchess of Sussex to let her children spend time with their grandfathers. 

‘Don’t be a crummy mummy Meghan,’ declares a poster, adding: ‘End the heartbreak of grandparents like King Charles and Thomas Markle.’ 

Isn’t it time for a parallel charity devoted to henpecked ginger princes?

Meghan and Harry’s ‘near catastrophic’ New York tour prompts recollections of Pippa Middleton’s 2012 Paris adventure. 

Kate’s sister, travelling in a convertible with three male friends, was snapped laughing as one of her chums pointed a gun at a photographer giving chase. 

The gun was a fake but the paparazzi’s squeaky bum terror was real.

Tina Turner’s insistence that she never slept with David Bowie has been debunked by her former assistant Eddy Armani who claims they enjoyed a one night stand before a 1980s concert at the NEC in Birmingham. 

‘Tina always denied that she slept with David,’ recalls Eddy. ‘But she did tell me, ‘David is more man than a lot of people think’.’

Killing Eve’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge, recruited to jazz up the screenplay for No Time To Die, recalls her initial fury at learning that Daniel Craig’s James Bond was to be killed off. 

‘I was like, “What is this?” I went angry,’ says Phoebe, pictured, adding: ‘But also it is confronting what is uncomfortable and difficult. 

‘It really came from Daniel… so I was like, “Yeah, OK. This is good”.’ Make your mind up Phoebe!

Killing Eve’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge (pictured), recruited to jazz up the screenplay for No Time To Die, recalls her initial fury at learning that Daniel Craig’s James Bond was to be killed off

Brian Cox, reflecting on the demise of his alter ego Logan Roy in Succession, pointedly remarks on Radio 4: ‘Ultimately, I think, too early. I’ve heard a lot of people have stopped watching the series.’ 

Reflecting on Roy’s enigmatically portrayed death on the company jet, he adds: ‘I looked on it, wrongly, as a form of rejection… I felt a little bit: “Oh, all the work I’ve done, I’m finally going to end up as an ear on a carpet of a plane.”‘

King Charles, soon to commune with his flowers in Romania, still has a pile of signed copies of his specially commissioned The Transylvania Florilegium, selling for £12,950 at the Highgrove shop. 

There’s time for William to buy one for son George, who was given a christening present of a field of wild flowers in the Transylvanian hills from Charles’s mate Count Tibor Kalnoky.

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