As the captivating girlfriend and muse of a youthful Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull represented the cream of Swinging Sixties society, flitting from party to party and scandal to scandal.
But now, in news that is guaranteed to make us all feel old, I can disclose that the former wild child has moved into a care home. The 75-year-old singer is living at Denville Hall, the North-West London retirement home where the likes of film-maker Lord Attenborough, his actress wife Sheila Sim, and Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs faced their final curtain call.
‘She’s adding a touch of glamour to the home,’ one of her friends tells me.
Faithfull (pictured in her heyday, left, and, right, in 2016)
Faithfull has been beset by multiple health problems in recent years. She spent three weeks in hospital in 2020 after suffering a serious bout of Covid, later saying it had affected her voice and short-term memory.
‘I think I’ll get my voice back,’ she said. ‘I just have to practise. I really hurt my lungs. This, after smoking most of my life and having emphysema.’ Two years earlier she revealed that, having recovered from a broken back and a serious infection, she had arthritis. ‘I recovered from all those awful things, like the broken back and the hip and bone infection. That was bad enough — then I got this arthritis.’
The Army major’s daughter had previously survived her heroin addiction, breast cancer, hepatitis, eating disorders and suicide attempts.
A spokesman for Faithfull confirms: ‘Marianne is staying at Denville Hall while she recovers from the ongoing effects of Covid.’
A spokesman for Faithfull confirms: ‘Marianne is staying at Denville Hall while she recovers from the ongoing effects of Covid.
The Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain has revealed that staff at restaurants she visits are so nervous about their puddings falling below her high standards that they try to remove the dessert menu. ‘I find [it] absolutely infuriating,’ she says. ‘They’re like: “Are you sure you want dessert?” And they get really nervous.’ She adds: ‘I hate that because, as much as I love baking and cooking, when I’m at a restaurant I just want to eat what I want to eat. You don’t have to be an expert.’
The caption mentions she’s ‘engaged to Mark Hedges’, but doesn’t mention he’s the editor.
Country Life editor Mark Hedges’s chat-up line is clearly: ‘Do you fancy being my girl in pearls?’
And it must work, because the latest woman to pose for the celebrated ‘girl in pearls’ page of the hunting, shooting and fishing set’s house journal just happens to be his new fiancee, Rachel Podger.
The caption mentions she’s ‘engaged to Mark Hedges’, but doesn’t mention he’s the editor.
‘The photoshoot was really good fun,’ says Rachel, 53, a psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher who began her romance with Hedges, 58, in 2018. That’s the year I revealed he’d separated from his wife, Stacey, amid claims he was being comforted by a younger woman.
He and Rachel have known each other since they were teenagers and she is pictured at the Hampshire cottage they’re renovating.
They are due to exchange vows in May in a West Sussex church. She adds: ‘We’re very, very excited for the wedding.’
Her cookery books have sold millions of copies, and she’s taught many of us how to boil an egg, but Delia Smith left a sour taste in Tony Blair’s mouth. She’s revealed she rejected his plan to elevate her to the Lords.
The proposal was made by the then PM’s right-hand man, Alastair Campbell, and their mutual friend, the former editor of the Daily Mirror, Mike Molloy. ‘Alastair said, “The reason I wanted to meet you is because Tony Blair wants to offer you a place in the House of Lords”.’
Delia Smith left a sour taste in Tony Blair’s mouth. She’s revealed she rejected his plan to elevate her to the Lords.
Smith, now 80, burst out in peals of laughter. ‘That was the reaction I had,’ she says. ‘What’s a below-stairs cook doing in the Lords? I was doing a TV series, books up to here, how could I possibly go to the Lords? Anyway, I didn’t want to wear the robe. I couldn’t do it.’
Helena Bonham Carter was devastated when she split up with U.S. film director Tim Burton in 2014.
Now, she’s spoken of her good fortune at meeting art historian Rye Dag Holmboe at a wedding in 2018.
The couple have since moved in together.
The actress, 55, tells me she’s ‘very lucky’ to have met Holmboe, who is 22 years her junior. Speaking at the book launch party for The Red Of My Blood, by her friend Clover Stroud (pictured with Helena), she makes clear she’s in no hurry to exchange vows, telling me: ‘I wasn’t married the first time.’
The ‘Princess of Soho’ India Rose James, who became richer than the Queen aged 21 after inheriting £329 million, reveals that she’s become the victim of terrifying stalking and aggression from a local drug addict.
The granddaughter of late porn and property billionaire Paul Raymond, who celebrated four years of sobriety this week, says the stalker posed as an artist at her Soho Revue Gallery and tried to lure her to his flat.
When he emailed her a portfolio of his work, India Rose, 30, discovered to her horror that it was a creepy ‘shrine of Soho and my family’.
After she resisted his ‘uncomfortable’ advances, he then ‘shouted abuse’ at her in front of her daughter. How nasty.
He was the chairman who helped turn High Street chain Next’s £46 million losses into profits of more than £100 million. And now I can disclose David Wolfson, who died last year aged 85, has left £3.9 million to his family. The Tory life peer, who was Margaret Thatcher’s chief of staff, appointed his eldest son, Simon, 54, executor of his will, according to newly released probate documents. Most of the money goes to his widow, Alicia. Simon has led Next since 2001.
