It was wonderful to "come home" to Hartford, Katharine Hepburn told the audience at Horace Bushnell Memorial Hall when she opened her musical, Coco, there last week. "It's very emotional being here," she added, her voice trembling. Then Kate went home to another emotional encounter. A female chauffeur whom she had fired for rudeness was discovered hiding in a closet with a hammer, and it took the 61-year-old actress, her stepmother, 70, her secretary and another chauffeur ten minutes to subdue her. Kate emerged from the fray with a new memento of Hartford--a finger that was fractured and bitten to the bone.

London traffic seems to be where it's at these days. A bang and a tinkle in front of Harrods last week brought Salesman Patrick Ling charging out of his little Zephyr, "my mind full of evil thought," to deal with the blighter who'd bumped his bumper and smashed his tail light. The girl behind the wheel of the spiffy Reliant Scimitar just sat there, but her male companion suggested that Ling send the bill to Buckingham Palace, where the insurance would take care of it. The bird was Princess Anne, her companion a detective guardian. "What are you doing--teaching her to drive?" demanded Ling. "No," said the detective. "Well, you ought to," said Ling.

The suit to dissolve the Apple Corps is carrying the Beatles' breakup to new levels of dissonance. In his deposition, Ringo Starr called Paul McCartney, who brought the suit, "a spoiled child" and described a row about the release date of the Beatles album Let It Be and that of the solo album, McCartney. "To my dismay, he went completely out of control," said Ringo, "shouting at me, pointing his finger toward my face, shouting 'I'll finish you now!' and 'You'll pay!' " Said John Lennon: "From our earliest days in Liverpool, George [Harrison] and I, on the one hand, and Paul, on the other, had different musical tastes. Paul preferred pop-type music, and we preferred what is now called underground." Harrison testified that Paul constantly showed a superior attitude to him and his music: "I was fed up with him telling me how to play my own instruments."

A British play called AC/DC lured loyally British Lord Snowdon all the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn last week. He squired his sometime editor, Vogue's Diana Vreeland, but if he thought he could sidestep the innuendo factory, he underestimated the specialized talents of Women's Wear Daily. The New York Daily News ran a straight news picture of the two of them, but that was enough for Women's Wear to do some kidding around about "what the newspapers were saying about Tony Snowdon and Diana Vreeland."

"I, who had been a bird in a cage, first experienced freedom," said Japan's Emperor Hirohito about his one trip abroad 50 years ago, when he was crown prince. Those six months in Europe influenced him profoundly; since then he has lived at home in Occidental style, sleeping in a bed instead of on a floor mat and wearing Western clothes. Last week his chamberlain brought news that Premier Eisaku Sato's Cabinet had approved Hirohito's plans for an 18-day European trip beginning next September--the first time a reigning Emperor will have left the country in the 2,631-year history of Japan's imperial household. Empress Nagako will go along on the visit to Copenhagen. Brussels, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Geneva and Bonn; it will be her first venture out of Japan. "I shall do my best to obtain a harvest of international friendship," said Hirohito.

When Astronaut Alan B. Shepard carried the game of golf to new heights last month, he claimed one of his private moon shots--unhindered by any air or much gravity--went "miles and miles." Ha! says Dr. Gordon Swann of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has studied the photographs and sees a ball about 20 yards from the tee-off point. "Around the moon--plus 20 yards," cracks Shepard. But the ball in the photo was not the "miles-and-miles" shot anyway, he adds; that one, he re-estimates, went about 400 yards--"not bad for a six-iron."

Shepard's reputation as the world's most famous golfer was short-lived. That spotlight has been pre-empted by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, whose recent bopping of three onlookers in a single day's club swinging loosed a flood of wit and wisecracking on a global scale. Comedian Bob Hope made his contribution at a White House dinner last week. "Some people," he said, "think President Nixon should send Agnew to Laos with a three-wood." Noting that the Vice President has earned a "black belt in golf," Hope said that he did not mind golfing with Agnew, even though "it's hard to concentrate on a play when the entire gallery is reciting the Lord's Prayer."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.