SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: Red-faced Ellie in a flap over 'Harry's baby' rumour: Singer left embarrassed by questions during Australian TV interview 

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Ellie Goulding was left red-faced after an awkward grilling about her relationship with Harry (pictured in 2014) on Australian TV

What is it about the mention of Prince Harry's name that causes famous women such acute embarrassment?

Singer Ellie Goulding, who performed at the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's wedding reception, has been left red-faced after an awkward grilling about her relationship with Harry on Australian TV.

The interview follows a similarly excruciating encounter on British television when another of the Prince's pals, actress Jenna Coleman, was asked about her friendship with him.

Goulding, 29, whose hits include Your Song and Love Me Like You Do, was asked if she was pregnant with Harry's child, in an apparent dig at outlandish speculation in foreign gossip magazines.

Rather than laugh off the question, Ellie squirmed in embarrassment. 'Please don't let me go red,' she replied to the interviewer, looking away from the camera.

'I'm bright red,' she continued, dramatically fanning her face. 'Why did I have a feeling that was going to come up?'

Ellie, a supermarket worker's daughter from Herefordshire, reportedly began swapping text messages with the Prince earlier this year after she split up with fellow pop star Dougie Poynter, from the boy band McFly.

She and Harry, 32, were said to have been flirting and kissing at a post-polo party in June, with a source claiming at the time: 'Harry and Ellie only had eyes for each other all night. They spent a lot of time sitting together under blankets.

'They were seen having a kiss before Harry had to go because he was playing polo the next day. Ellie left about five minutes later.'

Goulding, 29, whose hits include Your Song and Love Me Like You Do, was asked if she was pregnant with Harry's child, in an apparent dig at outlandish speculation in foreign gossip magazines. Rather than laugh off the question, Ellie squirmed in embarrassment (pictured)

Goulding has known Harry for years and sang at his 30th birthday party, as well as at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Invictus Games for injured servicemen as a favour to the Prince, left.

When Jenna Coleman, who plays the monarch in ITV drama Victoria, was asked on Good Morning Britain about her relationship with Harry, she looked daggers at presenter Kate Garraway before replying: 'He's a friend of mine.'

Goldie's bathroom surprise 

It's not called La La Land for nothing. Ditzy Hollywood blonde Goldie Hawn reveals that her three grandchildren — Wilder, 9, Bodhi, 6, and Rio, 3 — have taken up meditation and practise mindfulness at her Los Angeles home when they visit.

'Just perchance my daughter-in-law found them all meditating in my bathroom,' says Hawn. 'My granddaughter was breathing the best she could.'

Goldie, 70, started transcendental meditation in the 1970s, and she believes in steering her grandchildren onto a Zen path as early as possible.

'You can start training them in meditation very young and they really love it,' she says. 'Kids take to it like a duck to water.'

Dame Joan Collins's declaration that anyone over 40 shouldn't take part in Strictly doesn't make sense to 92-year-old Nicholas Parsons. The host of Just A Minute — who still enjoys a waltz with his wife Ann, twirling without repetition, hesitation or deviation — tells me: 'I would have loved to have taken part. But the series started too late for me. If I had still been in my 70s I think I would have been quite good.'

Kids make you stronger, says Felicity  

Oscar-nominated Felicity Jones

Oscar-nominated Felicity Jones who played Stephen Hawking’s wife Jane in The Theory Of Everything, believes having children can help, rather than hinder, a woman’s career because it makes them more efficient with their time.

‘I feel like we’re in a new era, where it is empowering rather than limiting to have children,’ says Jones, 32. ‘From what I can see from friends and relatives, women get stronger and more decisive from having children, they don’t waste their time doing things they don’t want to.’

In 2013, Jones split from her boyfriend of ten years, artist Ed Fornieles, whom she met while studying English at Oxford.

Ken gets a little help with his memories 

Behind every great statesman, there is a great ghostwriter. So it proves in the case of Tory dinosaur Kenneth Clarke, whose memoir, Kind Of Blue, was published yesterday.

Parliamentary filings show that in an unusual arrangement Clarke, 76, paid £16,000 of his £430,000 advance to his editor Deborah Crewe at Pan Macmillan, who provided her ‘editing services’ for the much-hyped Westminster chronicles.

With typical hyperbole publishers claim Clarke’s writing compares to that of F. Scott Fitzgerald, but at least the former chancellor gives Crewe credit.

‘Deborah drove me on to improve the language and clarify the meaning I intended as I did so,’ he confesses.

He is renowned for his terrifying, Oscar-winning portrayal of fictional cannibal Hannibal Lecter in Silence Of The Lambs.

And now three-times married Sir Anthony Hopkins, 78, admits that even in his private life he can be brutal.

‘If you’re unkind to people and cruel — we’ve all done that, I’m no saint — it comes back to you in the end,’ he says.

‘You can change that pattern by wising up.

‘The older you get, the more you think, “Come on, it’s not that important — just lighten up!”'