King Charles may seem beset by troubles at the moment, but things are even worse for Princess Michael of Kent.
I hear that Marie Christine, who is married to Queen Elizabeth’s beloved first cousin Prince Michael, is seriously ill.
‘Her Royal Highness suffered a stroke,’ one of her friends tells me. ‘Sadly, she is now bed-ridden.’
It is just the latest misfortune for the princess, 81, who attended King Charles’s pre-Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace in 2024 with her wrists encased in splints.
She had broken them in a fall down the stairs at Kensington Palace, where she lives with her husband, 83.
The accident came ten months after the tragic death of her son-in-law and while she continued to recover from heart surgery.
She was carrying an armful of overcoats when the accident happened. Luckily, she fell into the coats but broke multiple small bones when she put out her hands out to break her fall.
‘So many things that you rely on being able to do, like cleaning your teeth, are impossible,’ said the princess, an author. ‘I can type with one finger on a mobile, but I can’t use a laptop.’ She adds: ‘I am told that, after an accident like this, if you do one wrong movement on top of the unhealed bones, you are back where you started.’
Nicknamed ‘Princess Pushy’ because of her supposedly assertive personality, Marie Christine had undergone heart surgery a year earlier. ‘It shocked me,’ she said. ‘I still have to rest every afternoon.’
The princess’s serious health problems came after the death of her son-in-law, Thomas Kingston.
Handsome and popular, the financier was married to Prince and Princess Michael’s daughter, Lady Gabriella Windsor.
He died aged 45 from what was described as a traumatic head wound. A gun was found near his body at his parents’ Cotswolds home.
Marie Christine said she had no indication that he was unwell. ‘Tom was a lovely man, so kind and so thoughtful,’ she said. ‘They were very happy together.’
Referring to her son, Lord Frederick Windsor, his wife, the actress Sophie Winkleman, and their two daughters, Isabella and Maud, the princess said: ‘We often had them here with Freddie and Sophie and the girls for Sunday lunch. We never had any inkling anything was wrong.’
Lady Gabriella told the inquest her husband shot himself in an ‘impulsive’ decision caused by an adverse reaction to prescribed drugs.
I hear that Marie Christine, who is married to Queen Elizabeth’s beloved first cousin Prince Michael, is seriously ill. Pictured: The couple at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral last year
What Erin finds ‘really hot’ in men
Did Erin O’Connor split up with long-time boyfriend Steve Gibson because he was too much of a man?
‘I personally find men with feminine energy really hot,’ says the catwalk model, 48. ‘The boldness and confidence of them wearing clothes that people perceive to be for women only, it’s really sexy in an alarming way.’
Erin, who has two sons with the Irish businessman, adds: ‘I’ve been so startled by men with an effeminate edge. They know who they are, and that is the most compelling thing when I’m attracted to a person.’
Erin O’Connor in November last year. The catwalk model has split up with long-time boyfriend Steve Gibson
Has DIY supremo Nick’s lingerie firm gone bust?
BBC presenter Nick Knowles, who persuaded Prince William to appear on DIY SOS, enjoyed seeing his young wife, Katie Dadzie, wearing lingerie so much that he set up an underwear firm with her.
But has the business, Boa Boa Lingerie, now gone bust, so to speak?
I ask only because the website for the firm, which was established in 2022, is unavailable and its Instagram account hasn’t been updated since last year.
Latest available accounts for the company, Boa Boa Wear Ltd – of which Nick, 63, and Katie, 35, are co-directors – report that it’s more than £12,000 in the red.
A spokesman for Knowles declines to comment.
Katie Dadzie and Nick Knowles are co-directors of Boa Boa Wear Ltd. The website for the firm, established in 2022, is unavailable and its Instagram account hasn’t been updated since last year
Meet ‘Lady’ who cast unladylike jibe at Dara
Last week I revealed that Dara Huang, ex-fiancee of Princess Beatrice’s husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, had quit the forthcoming series of Ladies of London after she was called a ‘madam’.
Now, one of her fellow cast members has admitted that she made the extraordinary comment.
American actress Margo Stilley, 43, who’s best known for starring in the sexually explicit film 9 Songs, says, enigmatically: ‘London is a very small place. Everybody knows absolutely everybody.’
Ladies Of London: The New Reign features a dinner party at which a guest was heard to tell Dara: ‘I heard a rumour you were a madam.’ Others around the table were visibly shocked.
There is no suggestion that Dara is a ‘madam’.
Dara, 42, who’s an architect, interior designer and television presenter, left the show long before recording finished and did not feature in most of the promotional material.
She has a nine-year-old son with Edo called Christopher. Known as ‘Wolfie’, he has spent Christmas with his stepmother and the Royal Family at Sandringham.
Ladies of London cast members include the Marchioness of Bath and model Lady (Martha) Sitwell.
Lady Bath says of Dara’s departure: ‘You can’t leave when you’re not getting your own way.
‘That’s like what children do on a bad day.’ Ouch!
Margo Stilley poses to promote Ladies of London season four. She is best known for starring in the sexually explicit film 9 Songs
Dara Huang, ex-fiancee of Princess Beatrice’s husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, in 2023. She quit the forthcoming series of Ladies of London after she was called a ‘madam’
No fear for Hammond’s girl Isabella
Top Gear star Richard Hammond got back behind the wheel after crashing a 288mph jet-powered dragster, leaving him in a medically induced coma for two weeks.
And Hamster’s daughter, Isabella, is just as fearless.
Izzy, 25, survived a high-speed crash in a Formula E race in Saudia Arabia last month.
Yet she tells me: ‘I’m looking forward to getting back to it.’
Speaking at an International Women’s Day event at Jack Barclay, Mayfair, Izzy says: ‘My dad can’t really say anything because he’s done this many times before. I spoke to him on the phone after the crash and he said, “It did look pretty cool, though”.’
She adds: ‘I’m a bit of a daredevil, an adrenaline junkie and generally I like scaring myself.’
Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close thrilled film lovers when they agreed to reunite on screen more than 30 years after they faced off as Claus and Sunny von Bulow in Oscar-winning thriller Reversal Of Fortune. Now, however, Irons tells me that he has scrapped plans to appear in Encore, a film by Simon Curtis, the director of Downton Abbey: A New Era.
The pair were due to play former Broadway stars Nigel and Marie, who become residents of a retirement home and stage their own show.
‘We’re not going to do that,’ says Irons, 77. ‘We’ve decided we don’t like the script enough.’
Norton’s model ex bares her soul in ‘raw’ new watercolours
Happy Valley star James Norton split up with Prada model Charlotte Rose Smith last May after a six-month romance.
And when the actor joined celebrity dating app Raya just days later, she took a swipe at him by sharing online a photograph of Nicole Kidman celebrating her divorce from Tom Cruise.
Now Charlotte, 27, has discovered another way to navigate love and loss.
‘I went through a break-up recently,’ she reveals when asked about heartbreaks in her life at a Q&A session in Mayfair. ‘I have been painting large watercolour self-portraits.
‘I wanted to put more of myself in my work.’
She explains: ‘Initially, my style was very graphic and impersonal to who I am… but the new collection I’m working on is quite intimate and honest and raw.
‘I’m scared, but it’s good for me.’
Prada model Charlotte Rose Smith is moving on from James Norton in style. The pair had been going out for six months
Former England rugby loosehead prop Joe Marler admits he won’t be having any more tattoos because they hurt too much. ‘I’ve got a few,’ says Joe, 35, who was wrongly branded a traitor in the dramatic climax to The Celebrity Traitors.
He lives in East Sussex with his wife, Daisy, and their children, Pixie, Maggie, Felix and Jasper.
‘I’ve got four kids and I’ve got a J for my eldest son and I’ve got an M for my eldest daughter.
‘Then I didn’t get a letter for the other two cos I just sort of realised that I don’t want any more tattoos and it hurts.’
Good luck explaining to your younger two, Joe!
Turning 70 next week, Lesley Manville insists she’s happy to embrace ageing. The Olivier award-winning actress, who played Princess Margaret in The Crown, remarks: ‘I’m just not interested in having a needle stuck in my face, let alone having it cut open. It’ll age… great. People can make of it what they want.’
Photographer Alison Jackson – who specialises in amusing images featuring lookalikes of the famous – caused outrage at the Baftas.
‘I told a woman she was a dead ringer of Ghislaine Maxwell,’ Alison tells me at the Mumble x Moco Museum International Women’s Day charity cocktail gala at the Maddox Gallery in Mayfair. ‘She was furious.’
Hardly surprising given Maxwell is in prison in the US for sex trafficking of a minor.
Alison adds of the ceremony guest: ‘She was so upset and said people normally tell her she looks like Helen Mirren.’