William Hickey

Bringing the gossip since 1933

- By Robert Meakin

AT pains to clarify this week that she and Sir Stephen Fry were never the chums people imagined — despite him narrating the Harry Potter audiobooks - JK Rowling's irritation with the preachy luvvie goes back many years.

Now publicly accused by Fry of being "radicalised" due to her ongoing battle with the trans lobby, I'm reminded Rowling was already long irked by Stephen dining out on a bogus tale at her expense.

While show pony Fry, pictured, would regularly maintain to the media that she deliberately inserted the tongue-twister "Harry Potter pocketed it" in all subsequent books after he'd protested that the phrase was difficult to pronounce during recordings, Rowling, pictured inset, eventually snapped: "Literally everything about this story is false...he never asked for it to be changed and the line's only in one book."