Mayfair membership calls time on membership

He would seem like completely outfitted for social success, being charming and good-looking, in a Maxim de Winter form of manner.

But that hasn’t prevented Piers Dunhill, great-great grandson of tobacco magnate Sir Alfred Dunhill, from including an unlucky addition to his curriculum vitae.

He has, I can disclose, been knowledgeable that his membership of 5 Hertford Street, probably the most trendy of London golf equipment, is at an finish.

‘His membership has been withdrawn,’ one among Dunhill’s admirers tells me, including that the 29-year-old had been given warnings for ‘conducting enterprise’ on the Mayfair membership which, since opening in 2012, has entranced everybody from George and Amal Clooney to Kate Moss and various sprigs of the aristocracy.

5 Hertford Street declines to remark. But its founder and proprietor, Robin Birley, who, abetted by society designer Jane Ormsby Gore, lavished £25 million on it earlier than the primary members flocked in, has exacting requirements.

And it appears Dunhill, an adventurous, stressed determine, had cultivated too broad a variety of enterprise acquaintances for Birley’s scrupulous tastes. ‘Robin did not like a number of the characters Piers introduced in,’ I’m advised.

Perhaps that is inevitable, given the scope of Dunhill’s initiatives. Briefly a director of his mom’s cannabidiol well being agency, he later teamed up with a meals scientist in a bid to create an alcoholic tomato sauce.

There was additionally Dunhill Bismarck Group, which listed Princess Alessandra von Bismarck as co-founder and helped firms elevate funds from ‘contacts everywhere in the world’.

At one stage, Dunhill, who loved a romance with Made In Chelsea star Tabitha Willett, was dogged by malicious allegations on a web site with the area identify ‘Piers.Dunhill.conman’. Happily, it was later taken down.

Dunhill doesn’t reply to invites to debate his terminated membership – too busy, maybe, together with his newest enterprise, Dunhill Ventures, ‘an unique platform’ for hedge funds, ‘blockchain and tech visionaries’ and even ‘heads of state’ and ‘Royal Family members’ .

Batman rescues Bond lady

She starred as Bond lady Strawberry Fields in Quantum Of Solace. But in actual life, I hear Gemma Arterton has been helped by a ‘Batman’ to get the go-ahead to increase her £1.8 million farmhouse close to Brighton.

Arterton, 38, had been refused planning permission as a result of bats had been roosting in her loft, however she has been granted a licence from conservationists Natural England and can put up packing containers as various roosts. 

‘Gemma is thrilled the constructing work can start,’ a pal tells me.

Call The Midwife star Jenny Agutter, who grew to become a intercourse image after her steamy scenes in movies equivalent to An American Werewolf In London, is urging younger actresses to not concern filming nude scenes.

‘As lengthy as they know what they’re doing, they will not have regrets,’ she tells me at a red-carpet occasion.

‘Things change a lot. Today you’ve got bought social media, the web, and I’ll say do what you wish to do – and do not do the rest.’

Michelle’s Downton blissful!

Downton Abbey star Michelle Dockery was a ravishing woman in purple as she attended the BFI Chairman’s Dinner held in honour of Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan receiving a BFI Fellowship.

The actress, 42, appeared in good spirits as she was accompanied by her husband Jasper Waller-Bridge – brother of Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge – whom she married final yr.

Their union marks a cheerful new chapter for Dockery, following the tragic demise of her then-fiance John Dineen eight years in the past. He had fought a 15-month battle in opposition to a uncommon type of most cancers.

Dockery performed Lady Mary Crawley within the six sequence of the interval drama that aired on ITV and the 2 movies that adopted.

One of her godmothers was Princess Diana, whereas her brother is the Duke of Westminster and her husband the broadcaster Dan Snow. 

But there’s by no means been any hazard that Lady Edwina Grosvenor would content material herself with a lifetime of cossetted privilege – therefore her intervention within the troubling matter of violent male intercourse offenders ‘figuring out’ as girls.

‘Why on earth would you set them in a girls’s jail?’ asks Edwina, who, since graduating in criminology and sociology, has been each a founder investor and ambassador of the Clink restaurant chain, which trains former inmates for careers in catering. 

‘Prisons are about threat,’ factors out Edwina, who’s additionally founding father of One Small Thing, an organisation devoted to reforming the justice system for the great of moms and kids.

He was as soon as playfully stated to have ‘wanted reward intravenously twenty-four hours a day’, so how will one-time king of the shiny journal world Sir Nicholas Coleridge – now inked in as subsequent Provost of Eton, as I disclosed final yr – deal with the information that the Prince and Princess of Wales are contemplating sending Prince George to Oundle, a £45,435-a-year co-educational faculty in Northamptonshire? 

The query is made extra piquant by the truth that 66-year-old Sir Nicholas’s youthful brother, Tim, is one among Oundle’s governors. But it will get worse – from Sir Nicholas’s perspective. 

‘Tim’s going to be Oundle’s subsequent chairman of governors,’ I’m advised.

Disney star sheds weight to play hero of Holocaust

He performed brawny Prince Eric in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, however Jonah Hauer-King is now shedding weight at an alarming fee for his function in forth­coming Sky Atlantic TV drama The Tattooist Of Auschwitz. 

Jonah, 28, whose father is restaurateur Jeremy King, will play the younger Lale Sokolov, the late Holocaust survivor. For the half, he has got down to lose 3½ st and says he is developed an ‘consuming dysfunction’.

‘I grew to become actually aggressive with myself and would typically drop manner beneath 800 energy,’ he tells the Before The Lights podcast. 

The 6ft1in actor had weighed 14½ st when he filmed The Little Mermaid — however for the six-part Sky sequence, his weight has fallen to 11st.