Earl scolds his daughter, Lady Venetia Baring, after she makes a controversial remark about Princess Diana in Tatler magazine

She adorns the cover of Tatler, with the society magazine proclaiming her ‘The new It-Girl’ and feting her for her uninhibited, chain-smoking style and scarlet hair. But the blaze of attention for Lady Venetia Baring, 25, has come at a fearful cost — earning her a ferocious dressing-down from her father, Evelyn, 4th Earl of Cromer.

‘Lady Venetia Baring alleges that my late mother, the Dowager Countess of Cromer, said ‘She really didn’t like [Princess] Diana’ and that ‘Diana should get a grip’,’ he notes in a withering letter to The Times.

The Old Etonian peer, 77, then makes it plain that it is, in his opinion, inconceivable that his mother would ever have uttered such words, noting that she ‘served the late Queen for 17 years and was rewarded for her loyalty, work and affection by a CVO’.

‘Throughout her long service my mother was the soul of discretion,’ he adds, pointing out that his mother would ‘no doubt’ have learnt the necessity for such discretion while married to his father, who was successively Governor of the Bank of England and then British ambassador to Washington.

‘It would be totally alien to my mother to make a comment on a member of the Royal Family to anybody, least of all to one of her grandchildren,’ concludes Lord Cromer, ‘and especially to Lady Venetia Baring, my daughter, who was born after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.’

It’s possible that the peer, now divorced from Venetia’s mother, Shelley Hu Cheng-Yu, and living in Thailand with his third wife, Jiraporn Buengman, felt this was the only way of conveying his disapproval to Venetia, who, Tatler says, has ‘blocked most of her family on Instagram’.

She now lives in South London with her boyfriend, Sasha Zhovtobryukh, with whom, she says, she ‘bought a tattoo gun’.

It’s since been put to prolific use. Her father, she adds, knows about ‘some’ of her tattoos. ‘He’s one of those parents that always said, ‘If you ever get a tattoo, you’ll be disowned.’ ‘

Seems it’s not just tattoos which can secure that fate…

 It’s a hatty birthday for Trinny

Trinny Woodall clearly has a spring in her step as she turns 60 today.

The former What Not To Wear presenter swung her large bag as she strolled in South-West London in a pair of £1,000 Prada loafers.

Wearing an elegant hat, the beauty entrepreneur also sported a £225 Loewe brooch.

Last month, I disclosed that Woodall celebrated some impressive figures at her make-up brand, Trinny London.

Newly published accounts disclosed that the company earned more than £153,000 a day last year — £56 million worth of cosmetics over the year.

We must give royal family space, says Labour MP

Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting — who had a kidney removed following a cancer diagnosis in 2021 — has called for the Royal Family to be given space to come to terms with King Charles’s health battle.

‘I commend him for being as open as he has been, having been there myself,’ Streeting tells me at the Parliamentary Book Awards in Westminster.

‘People need to remember he’s human like everyone else.

‘[They] have got to respect the fact that this will come as a shock.’

The Labour MP, 41, who attended the King’s coronation last year, adds: ‘His family will be going through an emotional rollercoaster — often it’s worse for the family than for the patient. We’ve got to give them the time and space.’

Kate’s sports club at break point over yobs

This is worrying: the Hurlingham Club, Britain’s snootiest sports enclave, where the Princess of Wales takes her children for tennis lessons, has become afflicted by yobbishness.

Simon Duffy, chairman of the club by the Thames in Fulham, has written to members, announcing the creation of a ‘conduct committee’. He says there have been ‘a growing number of instances of unacceptable conduct’ and warns: ‘If a complaint is made and upheld, sanctions may range from a written warning and a requirement for an apology to suspension from the club for a fixed term or even permanent expulsion.’

CHAT show host Alan Carr has one of the most recognisable voices in the country, but he’s often mistaken for a woman when talking to strangers. ‘When I’m on the phone, and they hear my voice, sometimes I have been Mrs Carr. [They’ll say] ‘Very good, madam.’ ‘ On occasions he’s put them right, informing them that ‘It’s Alan’, but he admits: ‘When I’m embarrassed, I just pretend I am a woman.’

IS Freddie Fox taking drastic measures to distance himself from his controversial cousin Laurence Fox?

I only ask because Freddie, 34, seems to have a radical new image. He turned up at a London event with a spiky hairstyle, looking like 1980s punkrocker Billy Idol.

Well-nourished musical theatre star Michael Ball bemoans that turning 60 — he’s 61 — has wreaked havoc with his lifelong weight-watching efforts.

‘Your metabolism is shot,’ he says of becoming a sexagenarian. ‘What happened to the days where I could go, ‘If I don’t eat for three days, I could lose a stone?’ Not any more. It sucks.’

If that was Ball’s idea of sensible dieting, no wonder his metabolism is now kaput.