As the inquiry into the murders of three young girls in the Southport attack continues, the parents of victims Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, Bebe King, six and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, have been asking the questions on everyone’s lips.

How much did the parents of killer Axel Rudakubana really know about the monster they harboured? Did they turn a blind eye to their son’s obsession with violence, even after he was expelled from school having taken in a knife?

And more hauntingly, when does a parent become complicit in a child’s crime?’ To which I’d answer Rudakubana’s mother and father have been complicit since long before the crime.

And if they had acted on that knowledge, God knows, the three little girls could have been alive today. 

The police, mental health services and social services failed lamentably to stop Axel. But the blame for those girls’ murders should also be placed squarely on his parents’ shoulders. All they had to do was look in his bedroom. 

Who can forget the chilling pictures released by the police? There were knives, a Samurai sword, arrows and a ricin-making kit, a toxin 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide.

Nicholas Bowen KC, for the bereaved families, told the inquiry this week the state should not shoulder the blame alone: ‘It is a visceral conviction that the safeguarding apparatus of the state has failed them and that it was not only public bodies.’

He said Rudakubana’s family ‘knew and ignored the risk he posed to the public’.

Axel’s mother and father had every chance to turn in their boy. As devout Christians, surely even they can’t imagine any God who would or should forgive them.

Please can we issue a decree banning the wives of famous men from wearing 6in stilettoes on grass unless it’s to aerate the soil. If it was good enough for the late Queen to wear sensible 3in heels, the Slovenian First Lady should have done so too. 

At 67, Madonna's no Material Girl

Madonna’s still the world’s biggest selling female artist ever – despite Taylor Swift getting close.

Now she is about to release an album, posing for pictures reminiscent of her 1984 Like A Virgin cover when she was 26 and showing off her magnificent breasts.

She is a legend – no one does smutty sensuality like Madonna. But at 67 and with a string of younger lovers behind her, she’s no longer like a virgin.

Friends of Prince William say he was ‘furious’ after his disgraced uncle Prince Andrew who turned up at the funeral of the Duchess of Kent and then started laughing and joking. Due to the kindness of King Charles, Andrew and Fergie are still allowed to attend ‘family’ events. Which leaves one wondering who will be first on Prince William’s hit-list when he’s King? The disgraced Yorks or the estranged Sussexes? 

Labour Wars

As Keir Starmer basked in his obsequious Trump ‘triumph’, here’s what his comrades really thought.

The Labour supporting Mirror: ‘State fawning for a nasty US bully was stomach-churning. Prostituting the Royal Family backfired.’

The Guardian: ‘Keir Starmer’s Labour is in a mess.’ Their leader column concluded: ‘Trump likes association with winners: Keir Starmer no longer looks like one.’

Finally and most devastatingly the Guardian asks, after the PM’s systematic and repeated failures: ‘Is Keir Starmer anything now but a warm-up act for Farage?’

Women deserve roles like Leo’s 

Such are the plaudits for Leonardo DiCaprio, 50, as a booze-sodden loser in his new movie One Battle After Another, that he is tipped as a certainty for an Oscar.

Which makes me wonder when we last saw a female star well past her sell-by date playing a drunken loser. The closest would be back in 1966 when Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Although she was 33. The times they are not a changing.

Trailers for Victoria Beckham’s Netflix series reveal hubby David was ‘in a panic’ to find her VB fashion empire was millions in debt. Vic’s signature frock is a spaghetti strap, cross grained silk slip dress. The winner of The Great British Sewing Bee this week – mum-of-three Caz, 60, from Staffordshire – made one in an hour.

Margot Robbie turns out in five eye-wateringly brief outfits in one day to promote her movie A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. Perhaps she was trying to drown out the noise of critics, one of whom described it as a ‘big, baffling, blundering disaster’ worthy of one star.

Lessons from Borg's battle 

In his autobiography Heartbeats, Bjorn Borg says that after quitting tennis at 26 he was dogged by drugs, alcohol, depression and infidelity. But what hit me harder was discovering he has advanced prostate cancer. It made me sad – but also glad I’ve become a ‘prostate pest’, asking every man I know when he had his last check. Tragically, few remember. 

Trump Watch 

The most celebrated pictures of the Trump visit were of Kate and Melania with scouts in Frogmore Gardens, Windsor. The gardens were the Sussexes’ backyard before they quit the UK. A coincidence – or one in the eye for Meghan?

While we are expected to fawn over First Lady Melania, she was disrespectful to the royals wearing a hat so large you couldn’t see her face. Maybe she didn’t want us to see her glacial stare. Tacky too. Her acrylic nails were worthy of Love Island.

 The way we were

Sad news that Robert Redford has died though I have yet to forgive him for The Way We Were, a romantic drama starring him and Barbra Streisand, a doomed couple.

After a shift together cleaning his dad’s factory before going to see the film, my boyfriend Derek said it was a metaphor for us. Him, the handsome blond heir to his Dad’s business and me the working-class girl with the big nose and frizzy hair.

It wouldn’t work, he said, adding cruelly, that I couldn’t even sing.

Am I the only one both cheering on MAGA-supporting American Deborah Anderson and feeling sorry for the hapless Thames Valley Police officer sent to ask her to apologise for an ‘upsetting’ online post? The video of her telling him to ‘catch real criminals’ has been watched by millions.

I’m guessing the entire conversation was filmed by Anderson. A cautionary tale for the police and a reminder to keep your phone close to hand when the cops next come calling.