Property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi was still sharing his life and London home with Dara Huang when he met Princess Beatrice.
But, happily, Edo’s ex-fiancee does not appear to hold grudges and has remained remarkably close to Beatrice’s husband.
Sadly, Dara was, I hear, unable to maintain such friendly relations with her fellow cast members on forthcoming reality television series Ladies Of London: The New Reign.
Indeed, so bad did things become that she quit the show long before recording finished and does not feature in most of the promotional material.
She does, however, make a fleeting appearance in the American trailer for the series which features a dinner party at which a fellow guest is heard to make an extraordinary comment to Dara.
‘I heard a rumour you were a madam,’ a woman tells her, to the visible shock of guests.
A source on the series, which begins on Bravo TV next week, claims: ‘That was the final straw.’
Dara, 42, has a nine-year-old son with Edo called Christopher.
Dara Huang (pictured) has remained close to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, her ex-fiancee and now Princess Beatrice’s husband
Dara features fleetingly in the US trailer for the new Ladies of London series
Known as ‘Wolfie’, he has spent Christmas with his stepmother and the Royal Family at Sandringham.
It was not previously known that Dara appeared in Ladies of London.
Cast members who have been announced include the Marchioness of Bath, who was known as Emma Weymouth when she competed on Strictly Come Dancing, model Lady (Martha) Sitwell and former Made in Chelsea star Mark-Francis Vandelli.
Dara is an architect, interior designer and television presenter who was born to Taiwanese immigrants in Florida, where her father worked for Nasa.
She was with Edo, 42, for three years from 2015 until he met Bea at her sister Eugenie’s wedding at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2018.
Dara, who was granted British citizenship in 2022, has said she’s enjoyed co-parenting Wolfie alongside Beatrice and Edo.
‘Wolfie has two sets of parents to help him on both sides, and I just think, ‘The more, the merrier’,’ she said.
Dara declines to comment.
Mystery as Queen transfers home deeds
It’s a love that Queen Camilla has never troubled to hide, a passion which sees her steal away at weekends – royal duties permitting – to embrace the place where, in the playful words of a chum, she can ‘sit down with a big G&T, kick off her shoes and watch Coronation Street, which Charles loathes’.
So it’s intriguing to note that ownership of HM’s beloved Rey Mill, the house in Lacock, Wiltshire, she bought in 1996 for £850,000, following her divorce from Andrew Parker Bowles, has been discreetly transferred.
Land Registry documents disclose that the new registered owners are her son-in-law, Harry Lopes, and the financier Jake Irwin.
A friend of the family tells me that Lopes represents his wife, the Queen’s daughter Laura, and Irwin represents her son, Tom.
The pal explains: ‘It is not best practice in such circumstances for beneficiaries to be trustees themselves.’
Last year, King Charles bought a £3million house which shares a private lane with Rey Mill, amid fears it would be sold and turned into a wedding venue.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman declines to comment.
Queen Camilla (centre) pictured with her son Tom and daughter Laura
Andrew ‘believes he’s victim and blames King and Wills’
There appears to be no danger of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being consumed by remorse – or even buttoning things up behind the proverbial stiff upper lip.
‘He’s really insistent that he can and will clear his name,’ I’m told by one of his old friends who has been in touch with him recently.
And, far from being grateful that King Charles continues to give him money and a home on his Sandringham estate in Norfolk, Andrew feels let down by his brother.
‘His view is that he has been unfairly – even brutally – treated, and the person he blames for this is the King,’ the friend says.
Charles is not alone in being the object of his ire.
Prince William, is also in his sights – so much so, I’m told, that Andrew uses distastefully strong language when referring to both of them.
The friend adds: ‘It’s as though he’s deliberately blocked out the outside world.’
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor feels he has been ‘let down’ by his brother and uses strong language when referring to the King and Prince William
Zac’s £13k gorilla stolen from gallery
Even charity events are vulnerable in Labour Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan’s increasingly lawless London.
I hear that former Conservative minister Lord (Zac) Goldsmith was forced to close his sculpture exhibition after a brazen thief walked into a gallery in London’s West End and stole a solid silver statue of a baby silverback gorilla.
The show had raised £300,000 to help animal welfare organisations before the theft of the nine-inch gorilla, which cost £13,000 and was crafted by Zac, 50, pictured with his new wife, Hum, 34, a great-niece of James Bond author Ian Fleming.
The steel shutters went down to protect the other 27 bronze and gold and silver-plated statues of exotic animals and birds ranging in price from £4,000 to £32,000 and all limited editions of 12.
On show were Zac’s sculptures of elephants, cheetahs, jaguars, anteaters, dolphins and humming birds – and even a life-size Galapagos giant tortoise bronze weighing 120kg.
Zac Goldsmith pictured with his new wife Hum, a great-niece of James Bond author Ian Fleming
Why Stella Tennant’s girl is ahead of the fashion flock
The fashion world was devastated when top model Stella Tennant died three days before Christmas in 2020 at the age of 50.
Now, the society model’s daughter, Iris Lasnet, is following in her footsteps down the catwalk – but not during lambing season.
For the 21-year-old swaps her stilettos for wellies in Scotland, where she is a shepherdess.
‘If you stay on a farm, you work on a farm,’ says Iris, who chose to live with her aunt and uncle on their farm in Berwickshire after her mother’s death.
Her father, the photographer-turned-osteopath David Lasnet, who had separated from Stella before her death, lives abroad.
‘All my clothes do two jobs,’ Iris adds.
‘If I need to go and check the cows, I’m not getting changed.’
Iris, who is 5ft 11in, says she has delivered about 800 lambs since she was 12.
The late Stella Tennant’s daughter Iris Lasnet (pictured) is a shepherdess in Scotland
Her mother was the granddaughter of the 11th Duke of Devonshire and his wife Deborah Mitford.
In addition to modelling and working on the farm, Iris studies at Gloucestershire’s Royal Agricultural University.
But she admits to finding it difficult being away from her beloved Irish skewbald horse, Trigger.
‘I get back [from university] and say, ‘Mum’s home’, and I always get a whinny.
‘My world revolves around him.’
Beeny plays Cupid
Sarah Beeny is to give the online dating site she founded 20 years ago the kiss of life.
The property presenter, 54, sold the majority shareholding in My Single Friend by 2026.
However, she now tells me: ‘I’m relaunching my dating website as an app at the end of March. I’m back at the helm 100 per cent.’
Speaking at Lock & Co, in St James’s, at an event to promote Brain Tumour Research’s Wear A Hat Day on March 27, she adds: ‘It’s unlike any other app.’
Orginally, it gave people the chance to suggest their friends for dates.
Now, Sarah promises: ‘It’s even better than that. You won’t have any single friends by the time the app is out.’
Sarah Beeny has plans to relaunch her dating website and said she was ‘back at the helm’
There’s little chance of spotting Fearne Cotton on the slopes again, after a ski trip from hell with pop singer James Blunt.
‘I was just about getting the hang of it [skiing] and he was, like, ‘Right, we’re going to do one of the harder runs’,’ says the broadcaster, 44, who joined the former Household Cavalry officer, 52, in Verbier, in the Swiss Alps.
‘I was panicking, all the way to the top of this mountain. We started going in this zig-zag and I felt wildly out of control. I just found it chaotic, every bit of me, and I started having a tantrum and was, like, ‘F*** this, I want to get down from this mountain’. I jumped on his back and he skied me to the bottom.’
(Very) modern manners
Richard E. Grant said he wasn’t seeking romance after his wife Joan Washington died in 2021, but added: ‘That may change.’
If it does, women hoping to seduce the star are advised to keep their socks on.
‘Bad feet are passion killers supreme,’ declares the actor, 68.
‘Where I grew up [Swaziland in southern Africa], I was bare foot because it was so hot.’
Grant adds: ‘If I saw an absolutely beautiful woman with extreme hammerhead bunions, the attraction would be instantly killed.’
Talk about putting your foot in it!
Richard E. Grant said ‘bad feet’ were ‘passion killers supreme’
Formula 1 world champion Jody Scheckter, 76, and wife Clare, 65, are celebrating joyful family news, six years after the tragic death of daughter Ila from a drug overdose at the age of 21.
I hear that his son Freddie, 31, has got engaged to former Soho House executive Bethany Harris, 31, who friends describe as ‘one of the nicest people you could ever meet’.
