Furious row erupts over TV ageism 'apology' claims There has never been any love lost between the former controller of BBC1, Jay Hunt, and Miriam O'Reilly, the presenter she unceremoniously sacked from Countryfile because at 51 she was considered too old. A new row has erupted after Ms Hunt once again gave evidence to an employment tribunal, this time the one hearing the case of colourful racing pundit John McCririck, 73. Hunt, now of Channel 4, insisted she had "learned lessons," having lost the previous high-profile ageism case against O'Reilly and had "apologised personally" to the broadcaster. No love lost: TV presenter Miriam O'Reilly, left, has denied claims by former BBC controller Jay Hunt, right, that she 'personally apologised' to her having lost an ageism case to O'Reilly There is only one problem with that: Miriam states precisely the opposite. She took to Twitter to declare: "Channel 4 boss Jay Hunt destroyed my career. Now she tells McCririck tribunal she learned from my case & "personally" apologised - not true." Farmer's daughter Miriam tells me she was astonished when she learned that Hunt, Channel 4"s Chief Creative Officer, was claiming to have said sorry. I can assure you she didn't apologise to me - not in person, not by letter, not by email, not by text, not even by carrier pigeon. She has never personally said sorry to me. I did get a personal apology from the former director general Mark Thompson. He rang me on the day of the tribunal result and said he wanted to apologise personally for what had happened to me. There was also a general public apology made on behalf of the BBC by Alan Yentob. Hitting out: Miriam O'Reilly took to Twitter to attack Jay Hunt's claims But from Jay Hunt there was nothing. And I find it incredible she is saying this under oath and in the context of John McCririck's age discrimination case. O'Reilly, who was awarded six-figure compensation from the BBC and who now works as an ageism campaigner, tells me she has seen her nemesis only once since then. Funnily enough, I literally bumped into her one afternoon in Oxford Street. It was very crowded. She was coming towards me in the opposite direction and we bumped shoulders. Even then, she certainly didn't say sorry. In fact, she didn't even say hello. She saw it was me and just scowled - and then walked off. Katherine's got back on song 'Topsy turvy': Katherine Jenkins When Katherine Jenkins pens her next volume of memoirs, she will doubtless file the last couple of years under the chapter: "Topsy Turvy." The Welsh songbird, 33, (left) suffered personal upheaval when she split from her fiancé Gethin Jones at Christmas 2011. But on a business level, life was a soaraway success. She appeared on Dancing With The Stars, the U.S. version of Strictly, where she came runner-up to American football star Donald Driver. On top of that, accounts just filed at Companies House show that her artistic and literary creation company Jekinsongs Ltd has produced a stellar set of results for 2012. Cash the company holds at the bank is up 33 per cent from £241,980 to £1,043,562, and liabilities (the money the company owes) is down 53 per cent from £198,056 to just £82,117. Katherine is the sole director and shareholder of the company, so is the only beneficiary of the company's current £1,405,926 shareholder fund. How the company fares in 2013 remains to be seen. Having parted company with her record company Warner in May, she was recently said to have signed a "cut-price" deal to return to her former label Universal and, according to reports, she is due to perform on a cruise ship this autumn. Balfour declaration of intent Kinvara: Will have them in stitches... The Duke of Norfolk's budding film-maker niece, Lady Kinvara Balfour, wants to make a fly-on-the-wall documentary behind the scenes of haute couture. I'm not glorifying them because really it's the designers and supermodels that count. I just want to show what those out of the limelight do," says Kinvara. I think viewers like to see life below stairs, too. Fashionista Kinvara, 38, daughter of the Earl of Balfour, has written about style for years but this, she says, will be her first documentary. "We are going to shoot it for U.S. TV to test the market as they are obsessed with class, and then we hope to bring it to Britain," she tells me at a party for Vertu mobile phones at One Mayfair. I love fashion, but I want to make it in films. Kinvara, who had a two-year marriage to Italian smoothie Count Riccardo Lanza, used to be able to ask aunt Carina's husband, the late Sir David Frost, for advice. "Sadly I can't do that any more," she says. Her fabulous hair has long been the envy of women of her age and considerably younger. Now sultry sexpot-turned-soap-star Joan Collins is sharing the secrets of her coiffure. At the age of 80, five-times married Joan is bringing out her own range of Dynasty wigs, which are available on-line and range in price from a bargain £95 to a hair-raising £995 for a Gibson Girl mop named in honour of husband number five, Percy Gibson, and made from human hair. Naturally, given her screen siren image, Joan models most of the wigs herself and they all have names associated with her and her career. There is the Alexis from her most famous character in Dynasty; Elsa, named after her mother; and Katyana, her daughter. I love wearing wigs. I know what cuts and colours are most flattering," says Joan. As a result, I've designed an array of original styles in head-turning hues. Screen siren: Joan Collins is sharing the secrets of her enviable coiffure One of the TV documentary maker Michael Cockerell's abiding regrets is his fail-ure to persuade Gordon Brown to be filmed. Now he has discovered why not. "In the end I asked his former spin doctor Damian McBride," says Cockerell, whose subjects have included Thatcher, Blair, Boris and Cameron. "He said: "We had all your letters and we always thought about it, but in the end decided that we wouldn't say no, we wouldn't say yes. '"We didn't want to p*** you off, but we thought if we let you into No 10 to film, the danger was you might find Gordon having one of his tantrums and we knew that was something we couldn't control." " BBC Trust chairman Lord Patten spent the weekend hob-nobbing in Italy, where he was co-chairing a conference with Italian PM Enrico Letta. The Siena-based event's theme was the somewhat dry subject of "European Welfare Democracy." Patten, 69, was also in Italy last month, delivering a speech in Turin about the BBC, in which he said it must "embrace the need for openness and honesty when things go wrong." We'll see how open when Patten appears before the Commons Media Select Committee on October 22. When the Governor of the Bank of England talks about haircuts, small businesses usually run for cover. But when Mark Carney popped in to Mill Lane Barbers, near his home in West Hampstead on Saturday, there was excitement among the proprietors. As well as Carney, they were also visited by Ryman's chief Kypros Kyprianou. The firm took to Twitter to declare: "Two very, very important business men in today!" Asked by BBC's Economics Editor Hugh Pym whether there was talk about interest rates, the crimpers replied: "A barber's greatest quality is discretion!"