Time has been kind to Patti Hansen — the wife of Keith Richards, who can still slip into her wedding dress from more than 30 years ago.
The former model, 66, donned what’s now surely classed as vintage bridal wear from the 1980s, as she marked her 39th anniversary with the Stones guitarist, who was also celebrating turning 79.
The picture was posted by their daughter Theodora, 37, who said: ‘My parents have been married for 39 years — really it’s 43 years of togetherness but we’ll go off the legitimacy of their 1983 Cabo wedding,’ she says.
‘I am so proud of this family. We’ve been through a lot but the love is so strong and powerful that it carries us forever forward on a cloud of compassion and courage.’
Patti Hansen, 66, pictured with husband Keith Richards, can still slip into her wedding dress from more than 30 years ago
Their daughter Theodora, 37, who said: ‘My parents have been married for 39 years — really it’s 43 years of togetherness but we’ll go off the legitimacy of their 1983 Cabo wedding’
Pippa wins planning battle with neighbours
She is spared the spotlight of continuous attention which accompanies every move of her elder sister, the Princess of Wales.
But never suppose that, just because she’s out of the public eye, Pippa Middleton lolls around taking it easy.
I can disclose that Pippa, 39, and her financier husband, James Matthews, 47, are celebrating a triumphant outcome to a year-long battle at 72-acre Bucklebury Farm Park, in Berkshire.
The park’s ‘petting zoo’ was a favourite of a very young Prince George, who was regularly taken there by his mother when she visited her parents’ house, Bucklebury Manor, a mile or two away.
When Farm Park was put on the market last year for £1.5million, Pippa and James snapped it up.
Pippa Middleton, 39, and her financier husband, James Matthews, 47, are celebrating a triumphant outcome to a year-long battle at 72-acre Bucklebury Farm Park, in Berkshire
Displaying characteristic ambition, they wasted no time in building a covered seating area — so little time it would appear that they must have overlooked the need to apply for planning permission. This was brought to the attention of the local authorities.
A neighbour then objected to their stated intention to divert a public footpath, pointing out that the proposed new route was ‘prone to flooding’, which regularly reduced the relevant stretch of land to ‘a quagmire’.
Concern was voiced owing to their being no provision for delineating the footpath so as ‘to prevent potential conflict’ between walkers and those visiting the park by car.
But Pippa and James held their nerve — and have been rewarded by being granted retrospective permission for the covered seating area. And, as if to prove it’s Christmas, they’ve also been given the green light to refurbish and extend an existing ‘visitor barn’ and to erect a ‘play barn’ and a huge new storage building — plus new loos and a 100-vehicle car park.
The couple, whose third child, Rose, was born this year, don’t live ‘above the shop’. As I revealed, this summer they shelled out £15million for a Georgian mansion — under 20 minutes away.
It hasn’t all been plain-sailing for Oscar-winner Dame Emma Thompson. Despite being one of the country’s most coveted actresses, she insists that didn’t used to be the case: ‘I mean there’s been loads [of rejections], of course, when I was younger. ‘Oh yeah, I got lots of “thank you but no, you’re not quite right”.’
Steph gives up on glam
Famous for portraying perennial glamourpuss Sable Colby in Dynasty, Stephanie Beacham reckons the role ended up type-casting her.
And, as a result, she no longer hankers to be the centre of on-screen glitz.
‘I don’t want to do just glamour; it’s boring. I mean I’ve done that for real in Dynasty,’ the 75-year-old actress (pictured as Sable) tells me at a charity ball in Manchester.
She had been in the North-West quite a bit lately, playing Martha Fraser, Ken Barlow’s former love interest in Coronation Street.
‘I want to play really interesting older people,’ she adds.
‘It has been very wonderful to be known as the glamorous Stephanie Beacham, but that’s the very thing that can hold you back because you then get typecast.’
Poet Pam Ayres seems a little low on festive cheer, sharing this year’s Christmas literary gem:
Well, happy Christmas mateys you can’t get on a train,
The Border Force is striking so you can’t get on a plane,
The nurses on the picket line feel underpaid and wronged,
And if you need an ambulance, your wait could be prolonged.
No turkey on the table, the blighter’s got the flu,
Here’s a Yuletide sausage, one’ll have to do,
Let’s raise a glass of water, with blankets on our knees, And drink to the festive merriment, as we gently freeze.
Despite it being over four decades since she was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Charles and Diana, it’s still arguably India Hicks’s life-defining moment. But the now 55-year-old’s overriding memory of the 1981 royal wedding is just how bad her hair looked. ‘It was literally the worst hair day, in front of a billion people. An awful haircut,’ says India, who lives in the Bahamas with her husband David Flint Wood and five children. ‘It’s interesting — there’s part of me that’s slightly embarrassed by it because it kind of sticks with you for life — “Oh my God, you were Princess Di’s bridesmaid”, and I didn’t earn that in any way. And there’s another part of me that says you are part of an amazing background — accept it.’
Sounds like Theresa May is rather pleased to have returned to the backbenches after her three-year stint as PM ended in 2019. The 66-year-old had been a Tory frontbencher since 1999. ‘I am very much enjoying being on the backbench again,’ the MP for Maidenhead tells me at a party in London. ‘It’s very rewarding to be serving my constituents.’ Very rewarding indeed. I reported last month that she made £900,000 for just 63 hours’ work on the after-dinner speaking circuit. Kerching!
PM Nick Clegg’s wife, Miriam Gonzalez, said: ‘To think that when my husband was in government and we had access to this house, we had to deal with endless pompous nonsense from Chevening bosses simply because we had young children. Karma definitely exists’
It’s karma, says Clegg’s missus
It would appear one person at least is revelling in recent allegations about behaviour at Chevening in Kent.
It was reported there had been traces of a Class A drug found at the government grace-and-favour home following parties apparently attended by MPs, a claim denied by a spokesman for former PM Liz Truss.
However, that didn’t stop former deputy PM Nick Clegg’s wife, Miriam Gonzalez, from sticking the boot in. ‘To think that when my husband was in government and we had access to this house, we had to deal with endless pompous nonsense from Chevening bosses simply because we had young children. Karma definitely exists,’ she snarls. ‘First question I was asked was: “Do you have a nanny?”‘
