Edo Mapelli Mozzi may feel that he’s got it all — a gleaming Range Rover, a grace-and-favour residence in St James’s Palace where he lives in wedded bliss with Princess Beatrice…
But Edo, 37, came down to earth this week — with a parking ticket.
‘He looked annoyed,’ a Chelsea local tells me, explaining that Edo returned to his car to find the ticket on his windscreen.
‘He ran after the traffic warden, but I don’t think it did any good.’
But neither did it curtail Edo’s zest for adventure. ‘He got in, drove 50 yards and parked on a single yellow while he went into a bakery,’ adds the onlooker.
Edo, 37, came down to earth this week — with a parking ticket
Hannah lights up the Thames with her £35m artistic quest
The Rothschilds have established themselves as philanthropists for successive generations.
Now I can reveal that Hannah Rothschild, novelist daughter of financier Jacob, is carrying on the family tradition and has been working behind the scenes on a major new art project to light up London.
Her endeavours will come to fruition next week when a switch is flicked and the bridges across the Thames, from London to Lambeth, will be bathed in light, forming the world’s longest artwork.
The £35 million project, which Hannah (pictured) has been working on since 2015, was supported by Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, Sir Leonard Blavatnik and Simon and Joyce Reuben.
The idea was inspired by a walk along the Thames after the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.
‘Who could forget the handsome David Beckham whooshing the Olympic torch up the Thames in a speedboat?’ says Hannah, 58.
‘Six months later, I took a melancholic walk along the same stretch of river: the same stretch of water, once a ribbon of hope and light had reverted to a snake of darkness curling through our midst. I walked on noticing, perhaps for the first time, the bridges which run from Tower through to Albert, 15 in total.’
In early 2015, she went to City Hall to pitch her idea to illuminate London’s bridges.
‘The audacity to dream is one thing: the challenge of implementation is another,’ she jokes, revealing that she had to negotiate with 50 different public bodies who have control over aspects of the river.
Leo Villareal, an American artist, famous for transforming San Francisco’s Bay Bridge into an international destination, was chosen to implement her vision.
‘The last artist to capture London’s bridges was Claude Monet,’ says Hannah. ‘The spirit of can-do and togetherness didn’t end with the Olympics — it’s still there, waiting to be harnessed.’
Hannah, who is a documentary filmmaker, businesswoman, philanthropist and former chair of the National Gallery trustees, has also written best-selling novels including The Improbability Of Love and The House Of Trelawney.
Once known as the thinking man’s crumpet, Baroness Bakewell says daily exercise helps keep her young, and she decries the negative image often given to fellow older people.
‘We have become used to a stereotype of being sad and helpless, worth nothing more than pity and casual neglect. How wrong can that be?’ asks Joan, 87. ‘I am lucky to enjoy relative good health, but I am certainly not as frisky as I once was.’ The secret of her stamina? ‘Every afternoon, for the past 40 years, I have a snooze after lunch, 20 minutes’ real sleep.
Actor and comedian Hugh Dennis says he was once robbed by a very considerate thief. ‘I was at a meeting at the BBC when I realised I’d lost my wallet,’ he recalls. ‘It had everything in it — my cards, driving licence and cash.
‘Then a few weeks later, in the post arrived a beautifully wrapped parcel with my wallet inside, complete with all the cards and the photos of my children — but no money. Still, it was heartwarming.’
Phoebe’s going from duchess to pottery magic
She is best known for swanning around London in immaculate dresses and neat blonde hair as a duchess in Bridgerton.
But Phoebe Dynevor, 25, looks anything but upper crust as she potters about in a dark, curly wig and dull, loose-fitting clothes for her latest role.
hoebe Dynevor, 25, looks anything but upper crust as she potters about in a dark, curly wig and dull, loose-fitting clothes for her latest role
She plays ceramic artist Clarice Cliff in Sky’s forthcoming biopic The Colour Room. Cliff was one of the most influential designers of the last century and her Art Deco works are much sought after.
The Colour Room follows her journey from young factory worker to ceramics pioneer. ‘The script is a beautifully written contemporary take on the 20th century,’ says Dynevor.
She is best known for swanning around London in immaculate dresses and neat blonde hair as a duchess in Bridgerton
Lucy Fox is selling the home of her late mother, actress Tracy Reed, who starred in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece Dr Strangelove.
Lucy, 60, the daughter of actor Edward Fox, inherited three-bedroom Millrace House in fashionable West Cork when her mother died in 2012. She tells me: ‘It breaks my heart to sell, but it’s time someone else filled it with fun and laughter as my mother did.’
Lottie loves to basque in LA sunshine
Having raised eyebrows by selling saucy snaps of herself on an adult content site, Lottie Moss, half-sister of Kate Moss, was at it again as she donned a corset and stockings for a photoshoot in LA.
The model, 23, certainly likes to attract attention. Only last week she claimed to be engaged to her friend Sahara Ray, 28, and alongside a picture showing the couple window-shopping in Beverly Hills she wrote: ‘We’ve been waiting to tell u guys but me and Sahara are engaged.’
She followed it up with an image of herself kissing her friend on the lips, alongside the words ‘I said yes’ — but as she made the claims on April 1st, many took it with a pinch of salt.
Having raised eyebrows by selling saucy snaps of herself on an adult content site, Lottie Moss, half-sister of Kate Moss, was at it again as she donned a corset and stockings for a photoshoot in LA
Once at the heart of David Cameron’s Notting Hill set, property entrepreneur Ralph Ward-Jackson, whose ex-wife, Kate, was Cameron’s ‘gatekeeper’ at No 10, has thrown his hat into the ring in the forthcoming Hartlepool by-election. Ward-Jackson, standing as an independent, derides the Tories’ Jill Mortimer for being so unfamiliar with the town that she gives ‘every impression of… having unexpectedly landed on Mars’. Unlike Ward-Jackson, whose great-uncle and namesake founded the new town of West Hartlepool and became its first MP in 1868.
Queen’s letter sells for £1,800
The Queen’s handwriting rarely comes up for auction, but yesterday a two-page letter signed by HM sold for £1,800.
The personal missive, sold by Dominic Winter Auctioneers, was written in 1951 when the Queen was a young Princess, and displays her youthful enthusiasm and character.
Written in blue ink on Sandringham letterhead and dated December 28, 1951, it was signed simply ‘Elizabeth’.
She was replying to the portrait artist Frank Salisbury after he wrote to her offering his portrait of her grandfather George V.
‘I cannot begin to say how very touched I am by your extremely kind gesture,’ she wrote. ‘And you can be certain that the picture will be a very treasured possession.
‘I only hope that I did not give the impression the other day that I was begging for it! After mentioning the fact that my grandfather’s likeness was very hard to find, I felt very guilty indeed!
‘With renewed thanks for such a generous gift and with very good wish [sic] for the New Year, Yours sincerely, Elizabeth.’
Salisbury, who died aged 87 in 1962, was one of the greatest society artists of his generation. He was the first to paint the Queen, and painted Winston Churchill more times than any other artist.
He was also hugely popular in America, painting six presidents.
Robin turns his Covid delirium into a canvas
After nearly becoming an early casualty of Covid last March, explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison is not only fully recovered but has also been daubing on canvas, too.
Inspired by the hallucinations he experienced during his five-week coma last year, he has created a collage to be auctioned in aid of mental health charity Cornwall Mind, depicting him in his hospital bed surrounded by a tarantula, jaguar, anaconda and a little green man.
‘These were creatures I had seen before in the Amazon rainforest,’ he tells me of his creation, Covid-19 — Sedation Delirium. ‘So I wasn’t afraid.’
Robin, 84, was taught art at Eton by Wilfrid Blunt — the brother of Anthony Blunt, who was in charge of the Queen’s pictures before being revealed as a Soviet spy.
‘But I had no aptitude so didn’t pick up a brush again until I was approached by the charity.
‘I feel I have been reborn, so am now determined to make the most of every minute,’ he declares.
Hallie pours cold water over Winslet’s sex scenes
Kate Winslet plays 19th-century scientist Mary Anning in her new film Ammonite, which conjures up a speculative same-sex relationship between the fossil hunter and Saoirse Ronan’s geologist, Charlotte Murchison.
But the movie has been lashed by historian Hallie Rubenhold, whose study of Covent Garden’s Georgian-era courtesans was turned into the raunchy TV series Harlots.
Ammonite is ‘beautiful to look at, but what a missed opportunity to delve into the story of Mary Anning the person, Mary Anning the scientist, rather than making up a story about her sex life about which nothing is known,’ says Hallie.
‘I can’t help but think that a woman filmmaker would have handled the subject entirely differently.’
Bafta voters appear to be in agreement with Hallie. Director Francis Lee, Winslet and Ronan failed to make the shortlist for this Sunday night’s awards.