EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Will Princess Kate accompany Prince William to the Earthshot Prize in Singapore? The school run may now be more important

Why didn’t the Princess of Wales accompany William on his trip to New York? A reluctant foreign traveler, Kate has been out of the country only twice this year on official business: a quick trip to watch England play Argentina in Marseille and to attend the wedding of the Crown Prince of Jordan.

Expectations were high at the FCO that Kate would not only make more visits abroad, but also take the children with her. George has been to Australia and New Zealand and was joined by Charlotte in Canada, Poland and Germany, but it seems school and routine are now more important than helping the FCO with some sort of ‘panda diplomacy’.

William will travel to another Earthshot Prize outing in Singapore in November. Will Kate accompany him?

Today’s BBC Radio 4 Justin Webb remembers being mesmerized as a 16-year-old watching Angela Rippon dance on The Morecambe and Wise Show and then tuning in a year later to see the dad he’d never met doing exactly the same.

“The BBC newsreaders were dressed as sailors and sang There Is Nothing Like A Dame,” Justin tells Radio Times. ‘

And then a moment was forever etched in my consciousness. From the back of the stage, singing in a deep basso profondo, was the last of them and the most serious, somber TV presence: Peter Woods.”

How did his mother react? She muttered, “He had shoes the size of the Queen Mary.”

Cringe alert for Good Morning Britain presenter Susanna Reid when soap star Debbie Arnold, debating whether 90-year-old Joan Collins is a sex symbol, yesterday blurted: ‘If you had sex with Joan she would fall to pieces.’

“This conversation has gone off the rails,” Susanna protested, before adding awkwardly, “I hear Joan Collins is on the show tomorrow!”

With the BBC rumored to be planning major cuts to Alan Yentob’s arts program Imagine, could the Armani-clad polymath fancy taking over Melvyn Bragg’s recently axed Sky Arts’ The South Bank Show? “I don’t know what Alan’s future will be,” says Bragg, who spoke to Yentob at the recent launch of his David Hockney documentary. Would Alan like the gig? “Yes,” Melv grins. “Well, he lives in hope.”

Timothy Spall recalls the worst role he ever played: a “dodgy” character who gave sweets to children in a school film called Say No To Strangers. “Shortly after I filmed it, I went to pick up my eldest daughter from school and they had just shown it that afternoon,” says the actor. ‘It didn’t do my reputation much good; It was clear that all the children were quite young and quite affected by it. Everyone was terrified of me.’

When his parents told him that as a non-Catholic he could not be elected pope, Gyles Brandreth chose as a boy to become Archbishop of Canterbury. “I used my mother’s duvet as a cloak, and a tea cozy as a mitre,” he remembers. ‘I conducted weddings. I married my Sooty and my Sweep – the first gay marriage in the Church of England.’