EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Is loved-up Beatrice altar bound?

Bea, 30, has been going out with Italian businessman Edoardo Mapelli since they met at Eugenie’s nuptials, and friends tell me their relationship has become increasingly serious

How long before the Queen has to order a new hat for another royal wedding?

Nine months after her granddaughter Princess Eugenie married tequila salesman Jack Brooksbank at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Eugenie’s elder sister, Princess Beatrice, also seems to be heading towards the altar.

Bea, 30, has been going out with Italian businessman Edoardo Mapelli since they met at Eugenie’s nuptials, and friends tell me their relationship has become increasingly serious. 

The couple attended their first wedding together last weekend when they witnessed art consultant Ed Tang and auctioneer John Auerbach tie the knot in Tuscany.

‘People were saying that it won’t be long before Bea does the same,’ a source tells me.

After Prince Harry and Lady Gabriella Windsor’s ceremonies, it would be the Queen’s fourth wedding in the space of a few months.

The Queen with Beatrice

Bea with Mapelli

How long before the Queen has to order a new hat for another royal wedding? Princess Beatrice is pictured with Her Majesty the Queen at Royal Ascot, right, while the couple are pictured together right

The smart set’s talking about:

John Thaw’s talented granddaughter Lola 

The 21-year-old Londoner, whose parents are West End impresario Matthew Byam Shaw and actress Melanie Thaw, is to star in her first play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month

The 21-year-old Londoner, whose parents are West End impresario Matthew Byam Shaw and actress Melanie Thaw, is to star in her first play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month

Inspector Morse star John Thaw’s granddaughter Lola Byam Shaw graduated from Manchester University on Thursday and she’s already plotting her professional stage debut.

The 21-year-old Londoner, whose parents are West End impresario Matthew Byam Shaw and actress Melanie Thaw, is to star in her first play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month.

‘It’s about the animosity between two couples — and it gets very tense, but in a ridiculous way,’ Lola says of the show, called Mallets. ‘It takes the mick out of posh people who play croquet.’

Thaw’s widow, the actress Sheila Hancock, will be in the audience. ‘My grandma is coming with my parents,’ Lola tells me. ‘She’s really supportive.’

Despite Lola’s showbusiness background, she wasn’t pressured into acting. 

‘My parents never threw me into anything, and I was never sent to stage coaching as a kid. They were quite happy that I went to uni.’

She’s also tempted to follow in the footsteps of her father, who produces hit Netflix drama The Crown.

‘Production seems a bit less risky. You do get the same amount of criticism — but they’re not savage directly to you.’

For unbeknown to his fans, Hendrix, 34, has quietly married, I can reveal

For unbeknown to his fans, Hendrix, 34, has quietly married, I can reveal

TV cop Hendrix puts the cuffs on Ms Ellerby

As dashing DS Jamie Winter in much-loved ITV drama Midsomer Murders, Nick Hendrix has a knack for solving even the deepest of mysteries. 

In reality, however, he prefers to be an enigma.

For unbeknown to his fans, Hendrix, 34, has quietly married, I can reveal.

His bride is Jessica Ellerby, a 32-year-old actress who plays the Queen in a forthcoming television series, Pennyworth.

‘She’s my wife,’ a beaming Nick proudly tells me at the Warner Music summer party at London’s Shoreditch House, which he attended with Jessica.

Of her role as Her Majesty, he says: ‘She practised the accent around the house, but I didn’t try it because she’s much better at accents than me.’

Here’s some news that would delight Hyacinth Bucket — pronounced ‘Bouquet’, if you please.

Clive Swift, who played Richard Bucket, long-suffering husband of snobbish, social-climbing Hyacinth in sitcom classic Keeping Up Appearances, left more than £1.6 million in his will. 

Probate documents reveal the Royal Shakespeare Company actor, who died in February aged 82, asked that his estate be shared between his surviving children, Gardeners’ World presenter Joe Swift and philosopher and author Adam Swift. His daughter, Rebecca, died from cancer in 2017.

Liverpudlian Swift was married to novelist Dame Margaret Drabble for 15 years and was in films including A Passage To India, but was best known for the show in which Patricia Routledge was Hyacinth.

Never let it be said that the Duke of Beaufort fails to consider life beyond his 52,000-acre Badminton estate in Gloucestershire. 

‘Would the fact that so many people have beards be indicative that individuality is in decline?’ muses Bunter, as the rock musician duke is known to pals. 

Perhaps he has been communing with artists Gilbert and George, whose last exhibition was entitled The Beard Pictures? 

They concluded that whenever they switched on the television, the only thing they saw were ‘barbed wire and beards, all over Europe and all over the world’. 

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk