In an interview some months ago, pretty Peggy Fleming, queen of the figure skaters, was deploring the low caliber of today's folk heroes. "Look at Joe Namath," said the Olympic champion turned Ice Follies star. "He's a mess." Last week Peggy made a guest appearance on Namath's syndicated TV show--and melted like an icicle in April. "Gee, I think he's great," Peggy gushed afterward. "He seems to have so much fun." Joe, by all appearances, was equally impressed. "Say, Peggy," he ventured, with a confident grin beneath his latest Fu Manchu, "by the way, what are you doing tonight?"

Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs is one of Washington's trickier jobs--explaining Foggy Bottom to the press and country at large. It is an office that has been vacant since the Johnson Administration left town. Now President Nixon has found a man with a delicate touch to take on the assignment: Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins, who minded the command module while Comrades Armstrong and Aldrin descended for the moon landing. Though the post usually goes to a newsman, Collins believes he has some unique qualifications for the task. "We can talk very clearly from a quarter of a million miles out in space," said he at his first press conference. "And I don't see why I can't carry over some of these techniques into the job."

Malta was to have been a peaceful sojourn for the prince after the excitement of his 21st birthday celebration. A little water skiing, relaxed ceremonies marking the bicentenary of the island's university, a quiet stroll through the National Museum, where cameras caught him, rapt, reaching out to touch a gracefully attenuated nude by a local sculptor. But in church--of all places --Prince Charles ran into a barrage of stink bombs. Nothing personal against the Prince, explained some fun-loving students from the Royal University of Malta. They were just miffed because they'd been left out of the royal social schedule. To mollify them, Charles dropped in on a student dance at their club in Valletta. Someone pulled the main fuse, all the lights went out and the Prince's security agents burst into the hall in a panic. No need to worry. The lights went back on to show a grinning Charles being carried about on the shoulders of his cheering hosts.

Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito was never farther from the Moscow line than when he told a group of film makers: "The world might be far better off if it were left to the artists instead of to the politicians." Those film makers had been making The Battle of Neretva, all about one of Tito's greatest triumphs in his guerrilla war with the Nazis. Produced with the President's personal advice and encouragement, the spectacle cost millions and runs for more than four hours. Last week Tito threw a party to celebrate the premiere, and his guest list included many of the international "cast of thousands"--Orson Welles, Yul Brynner, Franco Nero, Curt Jurgens, Hardy Kruger. Who plays Tito? No one. The biggest hero of the piece makes his presence felt without ever confronting the camera.

London newsmen were reeling after U.S. Ambassador Walter Annenberg gave them a personally conducted tour of Winfield House, the embassy residence that cost him an estimated $1,000,000 to refurbish. "The most glittering movie set outside of California," said one reporter. An exaggeration, perhaps, but the old Barbara Hutton home definitely has a new look. It is crammed with French Impressionist art, exquisite porcelain and Adams-period furniture. At Annenberg's side throughout the tour, Hollywood Decorator William Haines reported that the old wallpaper was "deplorable" and the curtains beyond hope. "We had everything, including the tassels, fabricated in Beverly Hills and flown to London." Annenberg told the press that "my wife and I worked ceaselessly on the details with our decorators." To which Haines responded: "Mr. Ambassador, I want to say you pay your bills on time."

Prison gates had scarcely swung open for the duchess when she was off on another crusade. Sallow and gaunt after eight months in a women's jail near Madrid, Spain's fiery Luisa Isabel Alvarez de Toledo Maura, 33, Duchess of Medina-Sidonia, first hugged friends and then rushed up to some reporters. "Put it in your papers," the tiny activist demanded. "Make a campaign! People can't take a proper shower in there." The duchess, whose militant socialist writings (The Strike) have been a continual irritation to the Franco regime, was convicted for leading a march on the U.S. embassy protesting the "inadequate" damages paid to the peasants of Palomares after a U.S. nuclear bomber crashed near their village in 1966. Now she plans "to write a book about prison and help those left inside." But first she wants a bath and an easy chair. "I've been sitting on nothing but unupholstered bones and benches for eight months."

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