They are the most splendidly uninhibited of aristocratic families, so almost anything could happen this weekend at Knebworth, the Lytton Cobbold stately pile in Hertfordshire which has hosted everyone and everything from the Rolling Stones to jousting tournaments.
Aside from Henry Lytton Cobbold’s 62nd birthday tomorrow, they’re also celebrating the arrival of the first of a new generation — a boy, born to Henry’s daughter, former Burberry model Morwenna Lytton Cobbold, 34. She and her husband Phil Bush, who used to sing with rockers Cazals, have not yet named their son.
Former Burberry model and daughter of Henry Lytton Cobbold, Morwenna is having a baby boy
Morwenna Lytton Cobbold, 34, and her husband Phil Bush attend the UK premiere of Jeanne Du Barry in April
It’s a moment of sunshine-after-rain for the family who, as I disclosed, held a poignant memorial service this week for Henry’s mother, the inimitable Chryssie, Lady Cobbold.
During a long and happy marriage unburdened by convention, Chryssie and her husband, David, 2nd Lord Cobbold, who died in 2022, refreshed their affection for each other by meeting up in the bathtub to discuss the day’s events.
For her part, Morwenna prepared for marital life by ‘crowd-surfing’ at her hen party. She also posed with a graphically shaped pizza — which evidently primed her for motherhood.
(Very) modern manners
This will have the Garrick club’s members spluttering claret on their salmon-and-cucumber ties: saucy novelist Kathy Lette has been asked to join.
This week, members voted, by 60 to 40 per cent, to allow women to sign up for the 193-year-old gentlemen’s club in London’s Covent Garden. And now Lette tells me: ‘Stephen Fry did ask me if I’d like him to nominate me for membership.’
Stephen Fry and Kathy Lette attend the launch of her new book The Revenge Club yesterday
Speaking at the launch party for her new book, The Revenge Club, she says: ‘The Garrick is a power place where a lot of deals are done. I’m the Sir Edmund Hillary of social climbing.’
Lette adds: ‘If I joined, I would be swinging from the chandeliers with a toyboy between my teeth.’
Look out!
Sixty years of strapping on a Stratocaster have taken their toll on Eric Clapton’s back.
But the 79-year-old jumped out of his rocking chair when Dion, veteran singer of The Wanderer, asked Slowhand to record a guest part for his new album.
‘I called him and I said, ‘Eric, you sound 19 years old on this. You just blew me away.’
He said, ‘Well, Dion, I stood up in the studio. I wanted to do a good job.’
How top crime author James wasn’t much cop in real-life drama
Queen Camilla’s favourite crime author, Peter James, seems to have been a little too convincing when he performed a cameo role as a policeman.
The writer was attending a murder scene on the set of Grace, the ITV adaptation of his best-selling Roy Grace novels, in East Sussex.
‘We were standing on the beach, and two men from the public rushed up and said, ‘We’ve got an emergency, officer. Could you help us, please?’ ‘ he tells me while promoting the paperback edition of his latest novel, Stop Them Dead.
James, who was in full police uniform, had to inform the bystanders: ‘Sorry, we’re actors.’
Countdown wordsmith Susie Dent seeks new challenges as she approaches her 60th birthday.
‘There are two things that I’ve decided I would really like to do,’ declares Britain’s best-known lexicographer.
‘I love the sound of the oboe. I have this dream that one day I would be able to play Gabriel’s Oboe, the theme from the movie The Mission — it’s just beautiful.
‘The second thing I’d like to do is kickboxing. As you get older, that sense of adventure is really important.’
Why Strictly Kai dreams of Margolyes
His girlfriend is fellow Strictly Come Dancing professional Nadiya Bychkova, but Kai Widdrington would prefer to waltz with a very different character.
‘My dream partner would be Miriam Margolyes,’ he says of the potty-mouthed Harry Potter actress, 82. ‘I would be dying from laughter and I’d get a six-pack from laughing in rehearsals the whole time.’
Last series, Kai, 28, was paired with Angela Rippon, 79
Kai Widdrington would prefer to waltz with 82-year-old Harry Potter actress Miriam Margolyes
Last series, Kai, 28, was paired with Angela Rippon, 79.
And he says of the former newsreader’s stint on the hit BBC show: ‘If you can leave having had a great time, which Angela did, that’s all I can ask for as a professional dancer.’
At one stage during his seven-year stint in Los Angeles, where he hosted The Late Late Show and introduced an American audience to ‘Carpool Karaoke’, he swelled to a mighty 21 stone.
But now back in Britain, James Corden is being bracketed with a far larger figure: 25.1 million, to be precise.
No, it’s not the 45-year-old’s weight in grams — he has, in any case, shed more than five stone since he was in his US-fuelled pomp — but the gross profit amassed by his production company, Fulwell Productions.
The business, in which Corden is one of five partners, saw its turnover balloon from £79 million to £94 million in the last financial year, according to newly filed accounts.
No struggle, then, for Corden to put bread on the table for his wife, Julia, and their children — son Max, 13, and daughters Carey, nine, and Charlotte, six.
She consolidated stardom with the title role in the Mary Poppins remake but Emily Blunt doesn’t have practically perfect memories of the film.
Emily Blunt said she thinks she still has PTSD from filming her entrance from the skies on her umbrella as Mary Poppins
Referring to the nanny’s dramatic entrance from the skies on her umbrella, she says: ‘I don’t love heights. The last time I did a height thing was on the entrance of Mary Poppins and I think I still have PTSD from it. That’s a never-again. It was horrible.’
Not supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?