Richard Eden: Could it be kicking off for Princess Beatrice’s husband?

Princess Beatrice‘s husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, rode in the Royal Procession of carriages at Royal Ascot yesterday, but could the property developer soon be swapping horses for football?

I ask only because Edo, 40, enjoyed a night out in Mayfair this week with Amanda Staveley, 51, who helped a Saudi consortium take over Newcastle United and joined the board of directors. 

They were joined by the Yorkshirewoman’s Iranian-born husband, Mehrdad Ghodoussi, 50, also a co-owner of the Toon.

‘They seemed to be deep in conversation and really hit it off,’ one fellow guest at the event tells me.

Staveley has a connection to Edo because she is a former flame of his father-in-law, Prince Andrew.

The smart set’s taking about… Detmar’s jetset parent 

Some suggest that his family is cursed, while others say that it’s been damned by its own misdeeds.

So it’s heartening to hear of the equilibrium Detmar Blow has achieved in his personal life, 17 years after suffering the loss of his first wife, inimitable style icon Isabella Blow, who fatally poisoned herself with weedkiller.

Two years ago, he broke up with Martha Fiennes, sister of film stars Ralph and Joseph, to whom he’d been engaged since 2016. He is now, I can disclose, on the friendliest of terms with Mara Castilho, the Portuguese-Brazilian artist with whom he had a son, Sasha, a year after Issie’s death, and married in 2010, only for her to leave for Lisbon in 2011.

‘I sometimes stay with Mara in Lisbon to see Sasha,’ Detmar, 60, tells me, adding that, during term-time, when Sasha is at £46,000-a-year Bedales School, Mara comes over and stays at Hilles, the arts and crafts house in Gloucestershire built by his grandfather.

Before playing the role of John Falstaff in Player Kings, Sir Ian McKellen felt the need to explain why he wore a fat-suit.

‘Would it really be better if I put on the weight, and after the production is finished, take it off again?’ asked the star, 85, best known as Gandalf in The Lord Of The Rings films. 

And I hear that Sir Ian, who spent much of this week in hospital after falling off stage mid-performance at the Noel Coward Theatre in the West End, was spared from worse injuries thanks to the chunky bodysuit he wore beneath his costume.

‘It was the fat-suit that he had to wear as Falstaff that saved him,’ a source tells me. ‘He more or less bounced.’ 

McKellen, who was treated for injuries including a broken wrist, said he would not return as Falstaff for the remaining three London shows. Let’s hope he bounces back to full health soon.

Guinness the sole singer

Fashion icon Daphne Guinness’s fondness for extraordinary, heel-less platform shoes is not just about style. She says it has health benefits.

‘People ask all the time why I’m always in these shoes,’ Lord Moyne’s daughter says. The 56-year-old singer, who has just released her fourth album, called Sleep, explains: ‘The whole point about these is I can go down and relax my back and move my hips. When you’re warming up for a vocal take you want to have the diaphragm and lower core muscles in shape.

‘It’s not a fashion statement, it’s comfort, it’s my physical health, which for me is crucial.’

Newsman Colin and his new wife Olivia’s extended family

When news broadcaster Colin Brazier’s wife, Jo, lost her battle against breast cancer in 2018 at the age of 55, he was left a widowed father of six children.

Now, however, he has married again – to a family friend who also lost her spouse.

She is Olivia Warham, 54, whose husband, Mark, was a colourful City financier.

‘Olivia and I feel incredibly lucky to have found love after loss,’ Brazier, 56, tells me.

‘We want to thank all our friends, and particularly our children, for supporting us during good times and bad. We are incredibly excited to be starting out together for pastures new.’ 

The couple exchanged vows at Our Lady of Victories church in Kensington, West London, in front of all nine of their children (above).

Keep it to yourself but…

A recently bereaved beauty of a certain age is revered by surviving contemporaries for a spirited act of re-invention. 

Many decades ago, at London’s Portobello market, she bought an antique ring bearing both a coat of arms and the name of a continental family. 

Thereafter, she wore the ring — and splendidly adopted the noble name as her own. 

Princes’ polo pal dates childhood chum Sophie

Prince William and Harry’s polo team-mate has found love with the ‘young Judi Dench’.

William Melville-Smith, 37, who played with the royal brothers at the 2016 Audi Polo Challenge in Ascot, is going out with Sophie Kennedy Clark, 34.

The actress played the younger version of Dame Judi’s character in the award-winning 2013 film Philomena. 

‘We’ve known each other since we were kids,’ Sophie tells me at the opening night of the Raindance Film Festival at the Curzon Mayfair cinema in London. ‘We went to school together.’

Sophie — who is the granddaughter of Scottish singer Calum Kennedy — and her boyfriend both attended King Charles’s alma mater Gordonstoun.

(Very) modern manners

Known for talking to his plants, King Charles is now offering a ‘sound bath’ at his Norfolk retreat.

For £25 a head, visitors to the Sandringham Estate can take part in a ‘midsummer sound bath’ in which they’ll experience ‘an array of instruments including drums, crystal bowls, chimes, gongs, tuning forks, Himalayan singing bowls, shakes, rattles, and many more’.

A spokesman explains that sound therapy ‘is recognised as a beneficial approach that not only aids in addressing physical ailments but also contributes to emotional balance and mental tranquillity’.