EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: BBC Royal Correspondent Nicholas Witchell will hope the new series of The Crown doesn’t highlight King Charles calling him that ‘awful’ man

BBC Royal Correspondent Nicholas Witchell will be keeping his fingers crossed that a forthcoming instalment of The Crown doesn’t highlight King Charles calling him that ‘awful’ man. 

The as yet unreleased segment features skiing scenes – and may cover an infamous gaffe during Charles’s 2005 Klosters ski trip with William and Harry, when Witchell asked about the then Prince of Wales’s upcoming nuptials to Camilla Parker Bowles. 

Unaware that a microphone could pick up his whisper to his sons, he said: ‘Bloody people. I can’t bear that man. I mean, he is so awful, he really is.’ 

It later emerged that Nicholas had infuriated Charles five years earlier with a BBC report comparing his and Camilla’s visit to Greece with Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson’s trip there in the Thirties. 

Nicholas, now a trustee of the Normandy Memorial Trust, is about to retire from the BBC.

Former BBC Royal Correspondent Nicholas Witchell will hope to avoid being mentioned in the new series of The Crown

The then-Prince of Wales was caught on microphone calling Witchell ‘so awful’ while with his sons in Klosters, Switzerland

The new series of The Crown might recreate the visit of Prince Charles and his sons to Klosters 

Has King Charles, a fan of Barbra Streisand since he visited her on the Hollywood set of Funny Lady in 1974, received a 75th birthday present of the audio version of her jumbo memoir My Name is Barbra? 

If so, he might have to cancel all engagements to listen to it. 

At 48 hours, it is the longest author-read memoir in Random House history.

Before I’m A Celebrity escapee Grace Dent packed her nightie for the jungle, she told the Where There’s A Will There’s A Wake podcast: ‘I’m scared that I’m buried alive. 

‘So I’ve literally said to family members: “Will you do me a favour and just double check that I’m dead?”‘ 

Did Grace quit because of the imminent Bushtucker trial where she’d be buried in pits full of creatures? 

‘I want this really beautiful gravestone,’ she adds. ‘But it says “Let me out of here you c***s!”‘

Having played Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown and Queen Anne in The Favourite (she got an Oscar) Olivia Colman now wants to tackle Judi Dench’s old Bond role M. 

‘The amount of time I have wanted to be M,’ she gushes to Vogue. 

‘I’m not sure who I need to call… [Bond producer] Barbara Broccoli? I know I met her once. I wanted to go “Can I be M?” I must try to be cooler about it.’ 

Incumbent Ralph Fiennes might have something to say about that, Olivia!

Olivia Colman, pictured at the photocall for Wonka on Wednesday, says she wants to play M in James Bond

The BBC continues its worldwide search for 97 missing episodes of Doctor Who wiped in the Seventies and Eighties to reuse film stock. 

Top of the wish list is episode four of The Tenth Planet from 1966 featuring first Doctor William Hartnell – the Cyberman’s debut.

Jilly Cooper’s description of heaven as a place where she will be reunited with all her favourite dogs would not meet with the approval of the late Cardinal Hume’s adviser on ecumenism Fr Michael Seed. 

Fr Michael, who converted Ann Widdecombe and John Gummer to Catholicism, was about to do the same at the deathbed of Alan Clark when the Tory diarist asked if he would meet his dogs in paradise. 

Seed replied in the negative, explaining: ‘Dog’s don’t have souls and don’t go to heaven.’ Clark died an Anglican.

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