EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: DNA check plea to Duke over tragic upstairs downstairs love affair

Even by the often lurid standards of the aristocracy, it’s a remarkable story – one which will either be exposed as a mythical oddity or confirmed as an extraordinary, and tragic, episode which condemned three women to early graves.

It concerns Richard Montagu Douglas Scott, 10th Duke of Buccleuch, owner of four ancestral seats – Boughton House, known as ‘the English Versailles’, and three more north of the border, not to mention more than 200,000 acres – and Robbie Calder, 65, an asphalter from Kettering.

I disclosed last year that Calder claims his mother was the illegitimate daughter of the duke’s father, John Montagu Douglas Scott, 9th Duke, who, while still only 15, allegedly had a passionate affair with a maid in domestic service – Calder’s grandmother, Andrina.

That kind of upstairs/downstairs tryst was not unheard of. But in this case, claims Calder, it had catastrophic consequences because, unknown to the young lovers, they were in fact half-brother and sister – thanks to another illicit affair in the previous generation.

Now, I can reveal, Calder, who has fruitlessly attempted to contact the 10th Duke in recent years, has submitted a plea to the Selkirk Sheriff Court. 

This seeks ‘to serve a request to the [Duke] to provide DNA’, so as to establish if he and Calder are related – as Calder is convinced they are, not least because the 9th Duke, then wheelchair-bound, attended the funeral for Calder’s mother, who died aged 43.

‘I have nothing against the Duke,’ Calder assures me, adding that he believes his mother smoked herself to an early death – damned by the secret of her parents’ incestuous union, as were his sisters, who both died in their 30s.

‘I just want to know the truth. Anyone in my position would.’

The Duke of Buccleuch was approached for comment.

Bedtime stories 

For some people, reading is an enjoyably solitary activity, but not for Olivier Award-winning actress Juliet Stevenson.

The Truly, Madly, Deeply star, 69, prefers to listen to her husband, Hugh Brody, 82, an anthropologist. 

‘I love being read to,’ she says. ‘My husband reads to me in the night when we can’t sleep.

‘There’s nothing more soothing than for him to read to me in the middle of the night.

‘It takes your mind into other worlds, which immediately enables you to have a perspective of your own.’

‘Single-sex education is a terrible idea’

It seems The Inbetweeners star Joe Thomas didn’t have to dig too deep to play his lovelorn alter ego in the TV comedy. 

The actor admits he struggled to relate to girls after attending an all-boys school. 

‘Single-sex education is a terrible idea,’ he declares. ‘It made me think girls were kind of an alien thing.

‘It took me later than it would have taken other boys to be like, ‘Oh, girls are just the same as me. You can talk to them… they’ve got a brain.”

My girl’s no nepo baby, says Samantha Morton

Samantha Morton has hit back at those who suggest her daughter, the actress Esme Creed-Miles, has benefited from nepotism.

‘She’s so frightened of being a nepo baby,’ admits Oscar nominee Samantha, 48, who had Esme, 25, with Nil By Mouth star Charlie Creed-Miles. 

‘I’m like, ‘No, no, no, no! You did it alone. Also, that’s what you’ve been around – writing, drawing, painting, taking photographs… It’s in your blood, it’s in your bones.”

Esme, who landed her first role aged six in the film Mister Lonely alongside her mother, shot to fame at 19 in the Amazon series Hanna, and will next star in Sense And Sensibility.

Nadiya steals the show with Wicked outfit

As the stars of the Hollywood film, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were meant to be the centre of attention at the premiere of Wicked: For Good in London.

It was, however, Strictly Come Dancing professional Nadiya Bychkova who cast a spell over guests in a very daring gown.

The Ukrainian dancer, 36, waltzed down the red carpet – or Yellow Brick Road, as it was – in a £9,000 sheer blue dress by The Atelier London. 

Cut in a dramatic fishtail silhouette, it featured delicate beading and panels of translucent fabric. It’s a ten from me.

A plea for proper footwear at the BBC  

If the next BBC D-G is a man, could he please wear black shoes? 

Toppled Tim Davie has a terrible bias for sporting gym shoes with a suit. 

For his farewell speech yesterday, he wore gleaming white trainers. Fine for a bowling green, but not the footwear of a serious executive. 

Why ‘normal’ just didn’t fit Boy George

With his androgynous make-up and flamboyant outfits in the 1980s, Boy George is often seen as a highly subversive figure.

But the Karma Chameleon singer insists he’s misunderstood.

‘I love normality, I’m not against it – it just never let me in,’ he tells me at the European Diversity Awards at the InterContinental hotel in Mayfair.

‘I would have worn jeans and a white T-shirt, but it just didn’t look good on me.’