He’s blessed with a £19.5 million Tuscan-style mansion with seven bedrooms, thirteen and a half bathrooms, library, cinema, gym, pool and chicken coop — not to mention two delightful children and a bewitching wife who yearns for you to taste her jam.
But Prince Harry and, indeed, his entire neighbourhood may now urgently be in need of a ‘scrubber’ machine — or several of them — as I will explain.
That’s the verdict of those contending with a ‘skunk-like’ odour, a ‘jaw-clamping stench’ and an ‘ungodly stink’.
It’s caused by the cannabis which is now legally grown in California — including at the farm where Meghan and a 50-strong crew will film much of her impending home-cookery series for Netflix.
Lying just ten minutes from the Sussexes’ Montecito residence, the farm is one of several which have seen traditional crops — like grapes and avocados — make way for cannabis, grown on an ‘industrial scale’.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (pictured in Nigeria as part of Invictus Games Anniversary celebrations) have a cannabis farm lying just ten minutes from the Sussexes Montecito residence
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle splashed out $14.7 Million for a Tuscan-style mansion in Montecito, California
The aromatic consequences have, alas, been overpowering for unsuspecting residents, prompting one to remark he thought ‘something [had] died in the basement’ — until, that is, he remembered he didn’t have a basement.
Convinced the noxious smell was caused by rodents, he called in pest control. ‘The gentleman came over and installed a trap. We waited… and waited.’
Nothing was trapped. Realising the air itself was contaminated, the house owner helped bring a lawsuit against two farms — not the one where Meghan will be filming — whose output is alleged to be especially foul.
This is where scrubbers can, apparently, come to the rescue. A scrubber is the name for a filtering machine which, it’s claimed, can rid the air of 84 per cent of the hideous cannabis reek. But it comes at a price — $22,000 or £17,000-a-piece. That’s not all: ten are needed per acre if they’re to be effective.
It’s enough to get the farmers using some of their own product — one which Harry, in his memoir Spare, said had ‘help[ed]’ him, bringing him ‘a sense of relaxation, relief, comfort…’
I hear it is greener pastures for Idris Elba, who has just returned from a jaunt in Ibiza where he DJ’ed for stars including models Amy Jackson and Leomie Anderson, pictured together right, at Grey Goose’s launch party for their new vodka, Altius.
For the Luther star, whose net worth is estimated at £40 million, is focusing his attention on the quainter venture of gardening, I can now disclose.
Newly filed documents reveal Elba, 51, is launching his own range of fertilisers and will trade under the name of Growing Media — with products in the range including peat moss, bark, rice hulls and wood fibres. Alan Titchmarsh, look out.
Idris Elba (pictured in April 2024) is launching his own range of fertilisers and will trade under the name of Growing Media
It certainly wasn’t hard to spot dancing queen Rosamund Pike at this week’s second anniversary celebration of Abba Voyage.
The Saltburn star, 45, was spotted in a 70s-style, sequinned jumpsuit at the Abba Arena in East London, which features avatars of the legendary Swedish pop band. But Abba star Bjorn Ulvaeus was transfixed by something else.
‘It’s very hard to grasp emotionally that we wrote these little songs and it gave rise to this,’ he said. ‘I have no idea what it really is that makes people want to listen to music that was done [over] 30 years ago.’
While Princess Beatrice used to be a frequent guest at the Monaco Grand Prix, Dara Huang — the mother of her stepson ‘Wolfie’ — has only just got her debut off to a racing start.
‘My first Monaco Grand Prix and it was every bit as exciting as I anticipated it to be,’ the architect wrote alongside this selfie she shared online.
‘I met inspiring people that surround this incredible sport.’
Ms Huang, 41, who was previously engaged to Beatrice’s husband, property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, was born and grew up in America.
She recently opened up about co-parenting with the King’s niece, saying: ‘Wolfie has had two sets of parents trying to help him on both sides, and I just think the more, the merrier. I feel lucky to have such positive people around him, who really embrace him. It didn’t have to be so easy.’
With Cannes Film Festival security guards under scrutiny after appearing to clash with high-profile stars, fashionista Victoria Magrath has relived her own ‘brutal’ nightmares from the famous French steps.
‘Numerous times I was shouted at, pushed along, ushered, ushered and ushered until I had to give up trying to smile for one photo,’ she writes about the city’s Palais des Festivals staircase.
‘I’m hoping that the backlash they’ve received this year might make them a bit more lenient.’
Victoria Magrath (pictured) has relived her own ‘brutal’ nightmares from the famous French steps of the Cannes Film Festival
Former Bond girl Marilyn Galsworthy — who was plunged into a shark tank in The Spy Who Loved Me — is on the road to recovery after falling into a coma earlier this month.
Galsworthy’s model daughter Jasmine Lennard says she has been left ‘completely traumatised’ and ‘exhausted,’ by the experience. While the cause of the actress’s coma has not been disclosed, it is understood she has since woken and is recovering with her daughter by her side.
