Ashton Kutcher's Two and a Half Men co-star Sophie Winkleman tells of tears on set of her new comedy The sketch show, Harry and Paul, is due to be broadcast on the BBC in the autumn. "I'm playing lots of different characters," says the daughter-in-law of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, "a couple of posh bimbos, a couple of obedient housewives in their forties, and a grizzly, medieval version of Karren Brady on The Apprentice." The Libor Party As a former non-executive director of Lehman Brothers, Sir Christopher Gent knows a financial catastrophe when he sees one. The City grandee appears to share George Osborne's suspicions about Labour ministers" involvement in the Libor-fixing scandal at Barclays. "One doesn't know to what extent the [Labour] government was involved or understood what was going on," the chairman of GlaxoSmithKline tells Mandrake. I would be very surprised if there were not other people involved. Papal blessing Lord Patten's appointment of the little-known George Entwistle as the next director-general of the BBC left many media commentators bemused. It may, however, have caused less surprise at the Vatican. The Conservative peer, who is Catholic, was brought in by David Cameron to supervise the arrangements for Pope Benedict's visit to this country in 2010 after the Labour government had damaged relations with the Holy See by a Foreign Office memo mocking the pontiff. Entwistle was in charge of the BBC's coverage of the historic trip. "He would have got to know Chris Patten through the visit," claims the Catholic weekly The Tablet. A strong early link would have been made. Second helpings Eric Lanlard baked wedding cakes for such doomed couples as Madonna and Guy Ritchie, and Elizabeth Hurley and Arun Nayar. "It is not the curse of Hello!, it is the curse of Eric Lanlard, I fear," he tells Mandrake at a reception to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in Knightsbridge. Quite a lot of the weddings I have made cakes for have ended in divorce, unfortunately. I am going to start putting a clause in my contract so they have to give me the second wedding, too. Happily, the author of Tart It Up still has at least one prominent customer who has not parted ways with her other half. "I made Claudia Schiffer's cake and she is still married," Lanlard says.