Playing the sophisticated lady in Noel Coward's 1932 commune comedy Design for Living, Vanessa Redgrave, 37, lights up London's West End every evening with brittle charm. Come morning, however, she is out on the hustings.

As the Workers Revolutionary Party (a minuscule Trotskyite group) candidate for Newham Northeast, a London working-class constituency, Comrade Vanessa faces a stiff four-way fight in the upcoming British general election against the incumbent Labor candidate and Tory and Marxist contenders. Although her victory chances are small, Vanessa is emphasizing what she calls "the real issue" of the campaign--"the oppression of workers by the ruling classes." As yet, however, she has not officially agreed with her party leader Gerry Healy's claim that British airfields are now being converted into concentration camps.

Out on parole in Manhattan last week after serving nearly 18 months for the Great Howard Hughes Hoax, an apparently reformed Clifford Irving said he might write a book about the need for prison reform. "Prison is a farce and a disaster," he declared sententiously. "If you are treated as an untrustworthy person, you become one." He added that "I felt my decision-making abilities had become affected." Then he hurried off to meet Sons Nedsky, 5, and Barney, 4, who were being flown from London to live with him in the U.S. Acknowledging that his wife Edith may divorce him when she is released in May from a Swiss jail, and that he has debts of nearly $1 million, Irving is, however, back at work, lining up interviews with "people high in government" for publication in New Times.

On location in Japan to play a detective in Sydney Pollack's Japanese mobster movie The Yakuza, Old Pro Robert Mitchum, 56, himself was mobbed. Strolling through the Gion, Kyoto's geisha district, the star found himself surrounded by geisha pleading, "Please, Kirk Douglas-san, your autograph." Regretfully rubbing his chin, which is as deeply dimpled as Kirk's, Mitchum resolved that future excursions would have to be incognito. Next day on the set, he inspected a possible disguise: the beehive headgear originally worn by jobless, mendicant samurai trying to hide their shame.

A mere four weeks after the New York Times announced that Sally Quinn would join its Washington bureau, the Quinn byline turned up on a Washington Post interview of Nonagenarian Alice Roosevelt Longworth. It seems that Sally is returning to her old beat, the Post's style section, after all. "One day," she said dramatically, "you'll know why I made the decision not to join the Times and why I couldn't tell you." Veteran reporters thought they already knew. Sally was persona non grata among Times staffers because of the allegedly inflated salary of $35,000 she was said to be getting. She would be a double risk if she becomes the wife of the rival Post's Executive Editor Ben Bradlee--another current story about Sally.

On his uppers in the '20s, young Antony Tudor worked at London's Smithfield meat market. Passing the Royal Opera House one day, he saw that Diaghilev's Ballets Russes was appearing; he bought a ticket and found his vocation. Last week Tudor, now 64 and a founder member of the American Ballet Theater, was given one of Dance magazine's prestigious annual awards in recognition of his contributions to modern ballet. On hand at the Manhattan ceremony to present Tudor with his laurels was Colleague Agnes de Mille, 64, with whom he has had a close but not always cordial relationship for 40 years.

Unequivocal on this occasion: "He made us see dancers as people, not just Swan Queens and mythical dolls." Turning to Tudor, she demanded: "Why the bloody hell weren't you given this award sooner?" Noting that he had not done a new ballet for seven years, Tudor replied: "I think I am being given this award for not doing ballets."

Like Queen Victoria's descendants, the spoor of American Presidents can be tracked the world over. This is a preliminary conclusion reached by researchers now compiling in London Burke's Presidential Families of the United States of America. To be published early in 1975, Burke's Presidents is intended to be a transatlantic version, more or less, of Burke's 150-year-old standard reference works on the British peerage and landed gentry. So far, Genealogist David Williamson has found one family close to extinction: Abe Lincoln's. And among those of royal lineage: Through his mother, Teddy Roosevelt was seventeenth in descent from Robert III, King of the Scots.

Two of the Senate's crustiest, most idiosyncratic voices will retire at the close of the 93rd Congress. Republican dean of the Senate, George Aiken, 81, of Vermont, announced that he would drop out at the end of his fifth term.

Patent holder of an everbearing strawberry plant, as well as the 1966 Aiken formula, in which he suggested that the U.S. simply pronounce a Viet Nam victory and pull out, the blunt-speaking former fruit farmer has influenced a couple of generations of farm legislation.

Characteristically terse about future plans, Aiken said, "I haven't had a chance to go fishing in several years."

Meanwhile, his more voluble colleague, North Carolina's Democratic Senator Sam Ervin, 77, who is also retiring, was enjoying a three-day dialogue with Yale undergraduates in his role as a visiting Chubb fellow. However, in a speech at the Yale Law School, Ervin was hissed twice: once when he mentioned his own alma mater, Harvard Law School, and again when he opposed the proposed equal rights amendment.

Having reaped a huge financial success with The Exorcist, Director William Friedkin and Warner Bros, hope to gather a few Oscars in April as well, notably for Linda Blair's performance as the demonically possessed heroine.

But it seems that the Devil may be claiming his due. Doubts are being raised as to how much of the role was performed by 15-year-old Linda. First, there was Mercedes McCambridge, whose bloodcurdling Devil-in-Linda voice would have gone unrecognized if she had not fought for screen billing.

Now comes Eileen Dietz Elber, who was Linda's double. Eileen, who describes herself as "over 21," charges that Friedkin tried to prevent her from taking credit even on job resumes for her role as Linda's body in the movie's major dramatic moments. In the face of Warner's denial, she insists: "I shot several exorcism scenes and played nearly all the vomit scenes." Added Eileen: "If Linda wins an Oscar, I'll be the first to cheer."

The sheep were in amateur hands, but the tall, sunburned man in khaki trousers and work boots wielded with alarming efficiency the forked pole that ducked the woolly heads in insecticide.

In fact, the professionals on New Zealand's 119-year-old Brancepeth sheep station were impressed with Prince Charles' ability to fit in wherever he was during an official visit to meet the Kiwis. Although one dissent was recorded -- a cry of "Go home, Pom" directed at his mother Queen Elizabeth after the whole family had got together to open the Commonwealth Games -- the wel come accorded Charles by local teeny-boppers was more typical of the royals' reception. "Oh, you gorgeous thing!" cried one of the girls, who were out in force wherever he went.

It is, agrees Soprano Kiri Te Kanawa, an unusual name. At Covent Gar den last year, Basso Cesare Siepi kept asking, "Where is Kanawa?" as he looked around for a Japanese singer. In fact, the elegant Kiri is a New Zealander, the descendant on her father's side of a Maori chieftain. She now lives in England, where for the past three years her star has been steadily rising. Last week Kiri began to shine in New York too. In the grandest of operatic traditions, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut on a mere three hours' notice. Substituting for an ill Teresa Stratas, she sang Desdemona in Verdi's Otello, with Tenor Jon Vickers. Said the New York Times: "Her voice had a lovely fresh sound. She won the audience from the very beginning." Kiri herself credited Vickers. "He made me feel," she explained, "like a wee baby being taken care of."

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