King Charles marks a very important milestone on Monday

King Charles celebrates his 76th birthday on November 14 but our Shakespeare-loving sovereign marks another milestone on Monday. 

Having already reigned longer than Edwards V and VIII, he is about to overtake arch-villain, Richard III, whose famous opening line in the Shakespeare play is ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’. 

He’ll hope his feuding Dukes of Cornwall and Sussex spare him such a winter.

Dame Judi Dench, 89, says TV commercials played an important role during her early acting career and that of her late husband, Michael Williams, confiding in Yours magazine: ‘Our house was paid for by Clover butter TV ads.’ 

Clover – like acting – isn’t the real thing but described as ‘an easier-to-spread mixture of vegetable oil and buttermilk’.

From X, formerly known as Twitter, a strange message from journalist Suzanne Moore: ‘For tomorrow’s Telegraph column I have written about Clare Balding’s idiotic musings. Am sick of these posh bints. They do not speak for me. Never have and never will.’

Rula Lenska, 77, the actress daughter of Polish aristocracy, says: ‘I still look presentable in some lights – with the help of Botox and filler! I had a very volatile relationship with my ex-husband Dennis Waterman. We were together for 17 years, and ten were magnificent. 

'But it descended into anger. When he died [in 2022], it was a huge shock. He wasn’t a bad person. People are far more complicated than that. I wish we’d made peace.’

Vanessa Feltz says her late father Norman – known as ‘the Knicker King’ due to his successful lingerie business – was concerned that her fame as an ITV talk show host would ‘drag the entire family into disrepute’. She comments: ‘This from the man who imported the first edible panties into the UK.’

Facing a backlash since dismissing late One Direction star Liam Payne on Radio 4’s Today show as a ‘drugged up, faded boy band singer falling off a balcony’, BBC veteran Michael Buerk has form. 

He described TV host Tess Daly unkindly as ‘the pneumatic bird-brain from Strictly’.

Comic Frank Skinner, 67, says his Freedom Pass for public transport ‘is one of the best things, if not the best thing, that’s ever happened to me.’

He’s sad he can’t use it before 9.30am, explaining: ‘They don’t want pensioners cluttering up [the trains and buses] with their cats and home-made jam.’

When Paddington In Peru is released, look out for his passport. The Home Office issued a special one, listing him as ‘Bear’. Does it refer to ‘Her Britannic Majesty?’ Or ‘His Britannic Majesty?’ 

Hopefully the former. Paddington was the late Queen’s co-star in her last TV appearance.