For now, the skirmishes are being conducted via social media. American socialite and aspiring film producer Noor Alfallah, 22, fired the first shot — a picture of her cuddled up to Rolling Stone boyfriend Mick Jagger, with his bandmate Ronnie Wood and his wife Sally grinning broadly.
‘Same time last year! Miss you guys!’ she wrote online on Monday. Sally wrote back: ‘Good times!! See you soon xx.’
Within a few hours, Jagger’s lover Melanie Hamrick, a steely New York ballerina who is the mother of his toddler son, had hit back.
Noor Alfallah (pictured) fired the first shot — a shot of her cuddled up to Rolling Stone boyfriend Mick Jagger
Her Instagram post was a picture of Jagger strolling by the sea with son Deveraux, 16 months, on his shoulder. She captioned it: ‘Father + son. My loves.’ You can see why Melanie would find Noor’s post annoying, even wounding — and why it would provoke her to deliver a none-too-subtle ‘hands off’ message of her own.
For at the time when Sir Mick was cuddling up to Noor, Melanie was in New York looking after their baby — Jagger’s eighth child — who was less than six months old.
And now? Well, Melanie is fiercely protective of her status as Mick’s ‘No 1’ girlfriend, and is driven to fury by suggestions that she is little more than his ‘Baby mama’ — just another woman who’s had a child by him — or that their romance is anything other than what she calls a ‘great, wonderful relationship’.
Friends of Mick’s warn not to call Melanie his ‘ex’ as the relationship is very much current. And it seems that she is quite willing to wade into battle with any flings of Mick’s who get ideas above their station.
‘Same time last year! Miss you guys!’ Noor wrote online as she shared this snap of her, Sally Humphreys and Ronnie Wood
A friend of Mick’s said that Noor’s Instagram post was ‘odd’ and added: ‘Noor is one of many other women. I think she hasn’t had a call from him for a long time, maybe she is missing him. It’s all very petty with the two of them (Mel and Noor) doing tit-for-tat.’
Certainly, while Mick’s second wife Jerry Hall cried oceans over his infidelity, Melanie is made of sterner stuff: she just gets angry with whichever girl has strayed into her cross hairs.
One pal explains that Noor’s use of social media drives a coach and horses through the first unwritten rule for Jagger’s lovers — discretion.
Also, by including Ronnie Wood and his wife, who seem very happy in her company, it makes Noor look almost as much of an official girlfriend as Melanie.
This week, friends of Jagger told me that Noor is ‘well and truly in the dumper’. One of them added: ‘It is just a fling from last year. It’s over.’
However friends of Noor insist that the romance is far from over.
While Mick’s second wife Jerry Hall cried oceans over his infidelity, Melanie is made of sterner stuff: she just gets angry
One said: ‘Mick sees Melanie and Noor equally. He is always spending time with Noor. You know, he is her first boyfriend. They are very serious about each other, but have to keep it quiet because otherwise Melanie hits the roof.’
As for Mick, it seems he doesn’t mind too much having two stunning young lovers bickering over his affections. He will be 75 in July, but the sexual Jaggernaut is evidently still rolling.
I can reveal that last week he was at his £10 million Chelsea home with Melanie, and she is planning to join him at some point during the Rolling Stones tour of the UK and Europe, which starts next month.
Melanie’s status, then, is of semi-official girlfriend.
‘She is his companion,’ says a friend. Meaning? ‘They have an open relationship, but he is trying to be a good father to Dev.’
I’m told there will never be a marriage, or a declaration of romance, but there is an understanding between her and the old rogue. She is happy to accept his ‘grown-up approach’ to monogamy — which is that it’s not for him, and that he will juggle his liaison with her alongside flings with whoever else catches his fancy.
It’s an understatement to say that Mick Jagger, whose reputation as a Romeo dates back more than 50 years, has never been noted for fidelity.
Girlfriends and wives have always been cheated on, never more egregiously surely than poor Jerry Hall, the mother of four of his children, who discovered that he had impregnated a Brazilian lingerie model called Luciana Morad while on tour in 1999.
Noor and Mick met at his birthday party at New York’s Bowery Hotel in the summer of 2015. Melanie was also there.
The cupid appears to have been film producer Brett Ratner, although he declined to comment this week.
The fling came to light in October last year when Noor was pictured attending some tour dates in Paris.
Melanie’s Instagram post was a picture of Jagger strolling by the sea with son Deveraux, 16 months, on his shoulder. She captioned it: ‘Father + son. My loves.’
The couple were pictured stepping into a car together and it was reported that they shared three nights at Mick’s flat in Paris — which he used to share with his late girlfriend, L’Wren Scott. Melanie and baby Deveraux had been with Mick on that leg of the tour but had just flown back to New York.
Three days after their dates in Paris, Mick was juggling again — flying to Mustique to meet up with Mel and Dev for a ten-day holiday, with Mel posting that she was ‘smiling through’ her ‘tiny plane anxiety. It’s always worth it though,’ she wrote.
Examination of Noor’s Instagram shows that she was no one-off fancy, either.
She had been on Stones dates in Cuba in March 2016; in Zurich, Switzerland, in September 2017 and at Desert Trip in California in October 2017 — times when Mick was officially ‘with’ Melanie.
One report suggests that in May 2016, when he was in Los Angeles for recording sessions, he and Noor spent nights in his penthouse suite at the five-star Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Noor lives at home with her parents in their £8 million Spanish-style mansion in a secluded cul-de-sac in Beverly Hills. Her sister Remi dated Michael Jackson’s son Prince when they were both at the private Buckley School in LA.
Three days after their dates in Paris, Mick was juggling again — flying to Mustique to meet up with Mel and Dev for a ten-day holiday
Lawyer John Branca, who is a friend of Noor’s family, said last year: ‘This is a real relationship. I’ve known Noor since she was in high school. She comes from an outstanding family and is one of the brightest young ladies I’ve ever known.’
A family source added: ‘Mick and Noor are in love.’
None of the family were willing to speak this week, although a source said: ‘Melanie and Noor know about each other. Melanie doesn’t want Mick to be seen with Noor and hits the roof if he isn’t discreet.
‘He keeps the peace.’
Or, at least, he tries to.
A friend of Mick’s said: ‘He visited Mel in Chicago when she opened in a ballet there about three months ago, and they see each other a lot in New York.
‘She comes down to Mustique for family holidays with all the kids, too. Mel and Mick are never going to come out and say that they love each other, but they see each other when they can. It’s a happy medium between them. They have a grown-up approach to it.’
Melanie Hamrick, who is 43 years his junior, has managed to hang onto a relationship with Mick for four years.
When they were first pictured together — only a few weeks after the suicide of his girlfriend of 13 years, L’Wren Scott — an indication was given that he had no plans to see her again.
However, entranced by her dancer’s body and her emotional coolness, the liaison has lasted. One in Jagger’s circle says: ‘He is fascinated by Melanie and he has always had a thing about ballet dancers.’
They first met in February 2014. Mick was in Tokyo with the Stones and she was there on a tour with the American Ballet Theatre. At the time she was engaged to a Cuban classical dancer. She and Mick kept in touch.
A romance began after designer L’Wren died the following month in her Manhattan apartment. Mick Jagger was in Australia at the time, as the Stones were preparing to tour.
Melanie Hamrick, who is 43 years his junior, has managed to hang onto a relationship with Mick for four years
Three months later, in June, Melanie was invited to go to Zurich to watch the Stones play. The couple were pictured on the balcony of the hotel’s penthouse suite the next morning.
When she fell pregnant with Dev, Jagger reportedly bought her a £5 million house in New York and is also said to have put a financial settlement in place for the child.
Originally from Williamsburg, Virginia, Melanie trained at the Eastern Virginia School for the Performing Arts before spending five years at the Kirov Academy of Ballet in Washington DC from the age of 11. Then she joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York.
As she put it in an interview with Marie Claire last year: ‘I’ve been training since I was five.’
She is currently a member of the corps de ballet — that’s the group of dancers who are not solo or principal dancers, but permanent members of the ensemble cast.
She observed acidly: ‘When people find out I’m a corps member, I’ll get these looks like: ‘Oh, well that’s OK, you could still make principal.’ It’s like they are suggesting my career is shabby. My career is not shabby.’
Now 31, she dances every day and trains for three hours a day, as a minimum. A ‘nice proper meal’ is a sandwich. She is one of the oldest members of the corps, and one of only two who is a mother.
She said: ‘In ballet, 31 is old, but I still have that competitiveness, the drive, and I want to be doing more. I still think I’m at the height of my career.’ She added: ‘You don’t become a ballet dancer thinking about having children because it’s so hard, it’s rare.’
By her account, her pregnancy by Mick Jagger was a delightful surprise. She told W magazine: ‘A lot of dancers miss their period. You are working insane intense amounts, so it’s not necessarily a red flag. I was like, OK, I’m tired, I need to eat better, get more sleep.
‘And then after a couple of weeks I was like, wait, when was the last time? I was like, how did that happen? I wasn’t planning on that. I was doing eight shows a week.
‘I was just like: ‘I have to get on stage, I don’t have time for this right now.’ ‘
In an interview in June last year, thought to have been calculated to bring Jagger to heel, she explained: ‘I definitely don’t think of myself as a ‘Baby mama’. In the technical sense, I’m not married to the father of my child. But I am in a great, wonderful relationship with him. So I don’t see myself like that.
‘I dance with one of the most well-known ballet companies in the world. To be put in that category is a little insulting, and it’s insulting to my boyfriend.’
And who would be brave enough to insult Mick’s No 1 girl?