Alas, it seems that Charlie Chaplin, 77, has not kept up with modern times. After A Countess from Hong Kong, his first film since 1957's A King in New York, had its world premiere in London, the critics emerged in a rattle of pans. "The heart of the film lies pickled in the formaldehyde of the Thirties," wrote the Sun, and the Daily Sketch mourned: "It croaks and creaks like an aged mechanical toy." Director Chaplin, who played only a cameo role in Countess and left the acting to Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando, said that he couldn't care less about the reviews: "I still think it's a great film, and I think the audiences will agree with me rather than with the critics."

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A couple of reporters at city hall asked New York's observant Mayor John V. Lindsay, 45, for his opinion on the fact that the miniskirt is flourishing in his fair city. "It's a functional thing," replied Hizzoner. "It enables young ladies to run faster--and because of it they may have to."

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The courtship began in 1895, but it was an unhurried affair, and the two weren't wed until 1901. Still, that left plenty of time for togetherness. Last week David Oman McKay, 93, President, Prophet and Seer of 2,555,000 Mormons, celebrated his 66th wedding anniversary with his wife, Emma Ray Riggs McKay, 89. Rising as usual at 5 a.m. in his Salt Lake City apartment, McKay dictated letters and held his daily conference with the Mormon Counsellors, later joined his wife for a quiet party with their four sons and two daughters and a ride to the old stone house four blocks away, where the wedding reception had been held. "They're devoted to each other," said their son, Dr. Llewelyn McKay, "and it just seems to grow as the years pass by."

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This time he wasn't climbing simply because it was there. Mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary, 47, thought the kids might like a breath of thin air over the holidays. In Nepal to work on a hospital for his old climbing companions, the Sherpas, Sir Edmund packed his ice ax and took his wife, Louise, and their three children, aged seven to eleven, on a trek to the 18,000-ft. base camp from which, in 1953, he became the first man to climb Mount Everest.

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No name adorned the lady's place card at the Governor's inaugural dinner. The seating chart showed only an X to identify the stunning, green-eyed blonde at the side of Florida's newly installed Republican Governor, Claude Kirk, 41. Next day the two disappeared mysteriously, but the ex-husband of Madame X helpfully tried to clear up the puzzle by announcing at his home in Rio de Janeiro that the lady, German-born Erika Mittfeld, 28, would soon marry the Governor, who was divorced last March. Reporters caught up with the couple at the Ocean Reef Club on Key Largo, where they were spending a few days, but the Governor blandly came out with the classic "We're just friends--that's all."

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In his autobiography, Football and the Single Man, the Green Bay Packers' sometime Golden Boy, Halfback Paul Hornung, 31, sounded as brave, clean and reverent as a Boy Scout. Said he: "I would still rather score a touchdown than make love to the prettiest girl in the United States." Hampered this season by a pinched nerve in his neck, Paul scored only five touchdowns. But at least he's got one of the prettier girls in the U.S. And in a few weeks, Paul, the swinger emeritus of the National Football League, will marry Dallas Model Pat Roeder, 29, and settle down.

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Deliberately building a slum for hillbillies might seem an odd way to fight poverty. Except in this case the squalid hollow will be called "Dogpatch," and the developers stand to make a pile. Cartoonist Al Capp, 57, agreed to let a group of Little Rock entrepreneurs use his Yokum hokum in the construction of a sort of yokel Disneyland on 800 acres in the Arkansas Ozarks around Marble Falls. "It will have log cabins and Sadie Hawkins Day races," Capp explained, "and things like family trout fishing, which is a hell of a lot of fun if you aren't a trout." The developers will also set up a gristmill to make Mammy Yokum cornmeal and hire a justice of the peace to perform as "Marryin' Sam."

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How nice of the Queen to include Scottish Novelist (The Mandelbaum Gate) Muriel Spark, 45, on the New Year Honors List, naming her to the Order of the British Empire. Nice, but not nearly nice enough, complained the ladies of British letters, who regarded the O.B.E., one step from the bottom of the honors, as a damn with faint praise. Sniped Rebecca West, herself a more lofty Dame Commander of the Order: "I cannot help but think that the persons responsible for recommending the award to Muriel Spark of an O.B.E. must have been actuated by a desire to make me feel embarrassed; and indeed I do." All of which was a bit embarrassing to Muriel. "The O.B.E. is all right for a start, don't you think?" she said. "After all, I've never thought of myself as anything."

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