Eight charities have cut ties with Sarah, Duchess of York since the publication last month of an email she sent to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2011.
In it, she described the jailbird as a ‘steadfast friend’ and ‘humbly apologised’ for criticisms of him she’d voiced in public.
Fergie’s elder daughter, Princess Beatrice, is, however, still valued for her advice.
Indeed, so valuable is Beatrice’s guidance that her advisory company is enjoying rapid success, I can reveal.
King Charles’s niece established the firm, BY-EQ, in 2022, understood to stand for Beatrice York and Emotional Quotient (intelligence).
In its first year, it reported a modest £39,000 profit. However, newly published accounts for 2024, BY-EQ’s second year of trading, report an astonishing increase to just under £500,000 in earnings.
After bills of £214,615, Beatrice retained £274,846 in accumulated profits.
The princess, 37, pictured, who has been working as a private equity analyst for more than ten years, described BY-EQ as ‘an advisory organisation focused on adding more exceptional emotional intelligence in an age of artificial intelligence’.
Newly published accounts for 2024, BY-EQ’s second year of trading, report an astonishing increase to just under £500,000 in earnings
Her father, who has been accused of a lack of intelligence, emotional or otherwise, with his dubious friendships, has been cut off financially by his older brother, the King.
Beatrice has two daughters, Sienna and Athena, with her husband, property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 41. This year, he expanded his Banda interior design company to include fitting out private jets. ‘It’s escapism,’ he explained of their appeal. ‘When you’re in the air there are no people constantly asking you questions or children hanging off you.’
Helen and Cara’s front row embrace
Dame Helen Mirren and Cara Delevingne at the Stella McCartney show at Paris Fashion Week
At 33, Cara Delevingne could be Dame Helen Mirren’s granddaughter.
But the pair appear to have struck up a touching cross-generational friendship.
As she arrived at Stella McCartney’s Paris Fashion Week show on Tuesday, model and actress Cara embraced Dame Helen, 80, like a long-lost pal.
As she hugged the Oscar winner, she showed off a number of tattoos on her left arm.
Cara wore a black vest emblazoned with the words ‘come together’, a nod to the Beatles song co-written by Stella’s father, Sir Paul McCartney.
Twenty-one years after his memorable appearance on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, Princess Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell is hoping for a spot on Strictly Come Dancing. ‘I would love to be bedazzled on Strictly,’ enthuses Burrell, 67, currently promoting his latest royal memoir. He adds modestly: ‘It’s a popularity contest, so I know I wouldn’t be in there for very long.’ Isn’t there another stumbling block? Sources recently claimed he had been ‘vetoed’ from appearing on the show, due to fears this would upset diehard fan, Queen Camilla.
TV explorer Levison Wood saw the fall of Kabul in 2021 and was once embedded with Iraqi troops fighting Isis. Now, the former Parachute Regiment officer is making a film about the Falklands War. At Hannah Shergold’s art exhibition at London’s Mall Galleries, he tells me: ‘Iraq and Afghanistan get a lot of coverage, but with the Falklands there’s a gap. I met veterans who’d never told their story.’
His Hampshire manor is for sale, priced at £3.95million. But fans lacking that kind of cash can take heart: Alan Titchmarsh is also selling more than 200 treasures amassed over the decades. Items to be sold by David Foord-Brown Antiques include a Victoria Crown inkwell, priced at around £2,500, and a desk previously owned by royal dressmaker Sir Norman Hartnell.
Hicks puts new twist on fancy dress
There was no shortage of fantastical attire at a party to celebrate the wedding of Greek shipping heir Nicolas Niarchos – son of fashion icon Daphne Guinness – and Italian artist Malu Dalla Piccola.
Angela Hicks wore a dress fashioned out of a children’s play tunnel
Filmmaker Oscar Boyson wore a black suit with chain-mail chest piece – and a pair of obliging white cockatoos on his shoulders
But the true show-stopper was Angelica Hicks, 33, granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth’s bridesmaid Lady Pamela Hicks and great-granddaughter of the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma.
The quirky artist arrived at the ‘imaginarium’ themed bash in Rome in a dress that looked like a corkscrew. It was fashioned out of a children’s play tunnel – with two black gowns slipped over the top.
‘I always leave my outfits to the last minute. Especially when it’s a themed party,’ admits Angelica, sharing this picture online. ‘Everyone kept asking if I would be able to sit for dinner. Not only could I sit, I could alter the length for the after-party.’
She attended with her boyfriend, filmmaker Oscar Boyson, left, who proved equally game in a black suit with chain-mail chest piece – and a pair of obliging white cockatoos on his shoulders.
Gran, 94, ‘too excited’ to sit at book launch
Eminent historian Lord (Andrew) Roberts joined Sir William Shawcross, official biographer of the Queen Mother, at the launch party for Never Again?, Jake Wallis Simons’s compelling new book examining the return of virulent anti-Semitism.
But the undoubted star of the evening was one of the most diminutive of those crowding into Daunt Books in London’s Marylebone – the author’s 94-year-old grandmother, Ruth.
Her husband, Tony, in the RAF frontline from D-Day till the fall of Berlin, died in 2012 but Ruth, who is barely 5ft tall, soldiers on with undiminished spirit.
‘She was offered a chair,’ Wallis Simons tells me, explaining that Ruth waved it away ‘because she was too excited’.