Man the guns! Ramsay ready to board 'Mary Rose'

If you think Gordon Ramsay looks like a prat when he's flouncing about the kitchen shouting at people in The F-Word, imagine what he would look like going red and sweary while wearing Tudor tights and a lace ruff around his neck. Yes: funny.

Henry VIII's 500-year-old warship the Mary Rose may soon be echoing to the crash of pewter and copper saucepans - not to mention the occasional cuss word. I hear that the latrine-mouthed chef (that's Gordon, not Henry) has been approached by the vessel's curators in Portsmouth to film a one-off episode inside the ship's galley.

The wheeze - the brainchild of Rear Admiral John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose - is part of the proposed celebrations to mark the 25th anniversary of the Mary Rose being raised from the bed of Portsmouth Harbour. That rescue produced a hoard of Tudor artefacts, among them several hundred 16th-century kitchen utensils which may soon learn to fly. The galley is reconstructed to its exact original specfications so cooking a Michelin-standard meal will be tricky. Mary Rose chiefs play down the likelihood of fireworks but it will be interesting to see Ramsay's reaction when he sees the state of the ovens.

If they want it to happen, they need to get their skates on. The production team behind The F-Word will soon disband and won't be back until the new series in 2008.

"The next series isn't due until June and we tend to film close to transmission," says a spokesman. Just don't let Gordon near the guns.

* Daniel Radcliffe has hung up his broomstick for the summer and gone to Ireland, where is shooting an ITV drama, My Boy Jack. Based on David Haig's play, it follows Rudyard Kipling's search for his son, who went missing in action during the First World War. Radcliffe plays Jack Kipling. Sex in the City's Kim Cattrall is his mother.

Our Dan finds himself not only having to wear a hairy suit and stick-on moustache, but in the unfamiliar position of being asked to ride a motorbike (rather than a household cleaning utensil). Problematically, the 18-year-old has not yet found time away from earning his £23m Harry Potter fortune to pass a driving test.

"Daniel can't ride the bike on set but we have stuntmen and doubles who can do that for him," says a studio source. "We do use Daniel for all the close-ups because all he has to do is sit on the bike whilst it's not moving."

Watch the film closely!

* Next month, the "Welsh Beckhams", Charlotte Church and Gavin Henson, will have their first baby. The singer-turned-chat show host, 21, has opted for a water birth, according to her mother, and spent a little of the couple's £10m fortune on a luxury birthing pool.

"Charl's friend had a water birth recently and told her how fab it was," her mum Maria tells Closer magazine, "so she's decided to go for it. Birthing pools are all the rage at the moment." Hope everything goes swimmingly, Charl, and that it is indeed a "fab" experience.

Church's rugby-playing boyfriend Gavin, 25, who failed a fitness test for the World Cup and so will be at home to greet the new arrival, has even been told he can "jump in with her and help during the birth". Fun for all the family!

* Both gentlemen and players lined up at Chelsea's Burton Court at the weekend for the annual game of cricket between The Spectator and The Economist. The staff of The Speccie were confident, having recruited a "ringer" - Archie Standing, 20, son of the veteran actor John and of Sarah, who edits the mag's lifestyle pages. Archie had previously been on the books with Middlesex.

Alas, the tactic backfired. "Archie was given out leg before wicket even though he'd clearly hit the ball first," moans a teammate. "What's more, he was given out by someone on our side. It's come to something when The Economist start bribing our players."

In response to The Economist XI's competitive total of 188, the Speccie gents were skittled for a paltry 99 runs.

* Special relationship? The relationship between President Bill Clinton and John Major was especially awful. Major's former press secretary, Sir Christopher Meyer, tells Gavin Esler in this Thursday's instalment of The Clinton Years: "Clinton and Major were not a marriage made in heaven." Something of an understatement.

"It was very, very obvious when John Major paid a visit to Washington," explains Meyer. "We had dinner in Washington DC and we were told that Clinton would drop by for coffee and desert, which he duly did, and Major and Clinton sat next to each other on a sort of banquette at our table and we were surrounded by secret servicemen pretending to be ordinary diners.

"They [Clinton and Major] talked to us but they didn't talk to each other." Had they done, the old shaggers might have found out how much they had in common.

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