EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Duchess of Cambridge 'more relaxed' over public role

By Ephraim Hardcastle for the Daily Mail

Published: 19:34 EST, 11 October 2016 | Updated: 06:54 EST, 12 October 2016

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Royal courtiers hope the Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to the Netherlands is the first of many solo engagements.

No royal can match her media coverage now. ‘If you can’t get the Queen to visit then everyone wants William and Kate – and if they can only have one of them they want Kate,’ says a source.

Always fiercely determined to protect her private life and family, the duchess is now more relaxed about accepting a public royal role.

Previously attempts to involve her – even when initiated by the Queen – were resisted.

The Duchess of Cambridge, pictured, is increasingly relaxed about her royal duties

The first series of Victoria having ended, how will Jenna Coleman, pictured, alter her coquettish portrayal of the monarch?

Baby number one appeared in series one but there are eight more pregnancies.

Yet the monarch disliked babies.

Victoria wrote: ‘I positively think those ladies who are always enceinte (pregnant) quite disgusting … An ugly baby is a very nasty object – and the prettiest is frightful when undressed.’

Jenna Coleman, pictured with co-star Tom Hughes plays Queen Victoria in the ITV 1 series

Tory veteran Kenneth Clarke reveals that ex-Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg sought to become a Tory MP, remarking on BBC2’s Daily Politics: ‘I always used to say to Nick, “You only joined the Liberal Democrats because we were so fanatically anti-European.”

More from Ephraim Hardcastle for the Daily Mail...

When I first met him he was an assistant to [former Tory Cabinet minister] Leon Brittan, waiting to get a Conservative constituency.’ Fancy!

Is the late, first Lord Beaverbrook, Max Aitken, who died aged 85 in 1964, spinning in his grave?

The former Express owner’s Surrey estate, 400-acre Cherkley Court, is to become a £90million country house hotel and golf resort named after himself.

The Beaver’s grand-nephew, ex-Tory MP Jonathan Aitken, says: ‘He detested golf, saying it was a boring game for boring people.’

Ever popular diva Petula Clark, 83, currently on a UK tour, says she has gloomy memories when performing her worldwide 1964 hit, Downtown: ‘People generally think of it as a jolly song, but it isn’t.

'When I sing it, I picture this person who’s alone in their room, lonely, feeling a bit worthless, close to a depression – then getting up and going out on the street to be among other people who are perhaps feeling the same way.

'I have had those moments myself.’

Ms Clark said in a recent interview that she and her husband of over 50 years, Frenchman Claude Wolff, 85, lead separate lives, adding: ‘We’re not in a romantic relationship any more, but we’re not divorced.

'For the past 15 years I’ve more or less handled everything on my own.’

How sad a star who has given pleasure to millions seems to have so little joy in her own life.

Why is the Queen’s private secretary, former Scots guardsman Sir Christopher Geidt, 55, known as ‘Le Touquet’ by staff?

Because he has two Ks, knighthoods (Touquet – geddit?)

Sir Christopher, likened to fictional civil service mandarin Sir Humphrey Appleby and horror film actor Boris Karloff, received the KCVO in 2011 followed by the KCB in 2014.