Making light of her recent, bone-breaking skiing accident – which left her, as I disclosed, with what she called a ‘busted shoulder’ – Princess Diana’s old friend Julia Samuel pressed ahead with her Therapy Works podcast this week, during which her guest, Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, spoke candidly of the sexual abuse he’d endured at prep school.
What made Julia’s unruffled poise even more remarkable was that her afflictions weren’t limited to a broken shoulder. Photographs of her with Spencer show her with a black patch over her left eye, and with the same side of her face drooping as though she might have suffered a stroke.
In fact, as acclaimed psychotherapist Samuel, 64, explains with characteristic candour, she’s been assailed by Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder caused by the varicella-zoster virus – the same virus that causes both chickenpox and shingles.
Though it usually only strikes those over sixty, in 2022 it ensnared Justin Bieber, then only 28, paralysing the Canadian pop singer’s face in what he described as a ‘very scary and random’ attack.
Prince George’s godmother Julia Samuel (pictured), a close friend of Diana, is left seriously ill after undergoing a shoulder operation because of a ski accident.
The Princess of Wales (left) chats with Julia Samuel in the Royal Box
In Julia’s case, the virus – which normally lies dormant in those who’ve had chickenpox – was, as she puts it, inadvertently reactivated as a ‘result of shoulder op’.
Declining to become obsessed by her condition, which can usually be successfully treated by a combination of steroids and antivirals, Samuel, whose best-selling books include This Too Shall Pass, tells me that she thinks she’s ‘said enough about the virus’.
Instead, she uses this latest, unsought challenge to reflect on how, ‘in difficult times, we move between despair and hope’.
Defining hope as ‘the alchemy that turns a life around’, she explains that it ‘isn’t just a feeling. It is also a Plan A and a Plan B and the belief you can make it happen.
Samuel, 64, explains she’s been assailed by Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder caused by the varicella-zoster virus – the same virus that causes both chickenpox and shingles
‘And that is, I think, what changes psychologically your nervous system because when you have hope, you also have calm and less fear and then that slows your system down.’
That, she adds, is both ‘anti-inflammatory’ and ‘good for your cognition, and so there’s a kind of physiological aspect of hope as well as the psychological and the emotional’.
How wise the Wales’ were to name her as a godmother to Prince George.
ONCE the foppish star of romantic comedies such as Four Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill, Hugh Grant plays a breakfast cereal mascot in Jerry Seinfeld’s forthcoming Netflix film, Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story.
His character was once a Shakespearean actor but is now forced to play a Kellogg’s Frosties mascot in order to meet his car loan payments. Grant, who hasn’t auditioned for a role in 30 years, nevertheless sent Seinfeld an audition tape.
The director says: ‘He asked me if it matters that Tony the Tiger has a British accent. I told him: ‘No.’ ‘
Eric’s ex Pattie mourns passing of time as she sells personal treasures
Swinging Sixties icon Pattie Boyd, who turns 80 on Sunday, is auctioning off letters and possessions from the days of her love triangle with the late Beatle George Harrison and guitarist Eric Clapton (left with Pattie).
But the model and photographer, who inspired a string of songs including Harrison’s Something and Clapton’s Layla, is remorseful about losing one item — a Hamilton watch expected to fetch up to £6,000. ‘I love that tiny cocktail watch,’ she tells me at a viewing of The Pattie Boyd Collection at Christie’s in London. ‘It’s so pretty. I wish that wasn’t in the auction — it’s too late to claw it back.’
Eric Clapton pictured with Pattie (left)
Pattie bought the Art Deco timepiece in the 1980s at a New York vintage watch show at the suggestion of Clapton, 78, who, she says, ‘winked at me’ when she spotted it.
The Royal Family’s love of Balmoral has been evident since the time of Victoria. But the Windsor’s’ affinity for Scotland goes far beyond its 50,000 acres — right out to the Western Isles. So it was that the Princess Royal paid a nostalgic visit this week to the Hebridean Princess, a former ferry converted for cruising which Queen Elizabeth chartered for her own 80th birthday celebrations, for Anne’s 60th — and for family jaunts each summer.
Cult TV show too risky now says star
Is Britain rapidly losing its sense of humour? A star of The Inbetweeners says the hit Channel 4 comedy about teenage boys wouldn’t be commissioned these days.
‘I don’t think The Inbetweeners would get made now,’ Belinda Stewart-Wilson tells me of the show that first aired in 2008. The actress, 52, who played desirable Polly MacKenzie, aka ‘Will’s Mum’, explains: ‘It’s just so fruity. I don’t know how it would be taken now, but I don’t think producers would take the risk. They wouldn’t commission it.’ Speaking at the premiere of her latest film, Licence To Love, at London’s Courthouse Hotel, she adds: ‘I’m just glad the show had its day in the sun.’
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby rejected suggestions last week that Anglican bishops in the Lords were biased towards the Opposition, insisting they ‘were as objectionable to Labour last time they were in office’. But historian Andrew Roberts debunks his claim with some hard figures.
‘In 2008/09, they voted in 60 per cent of divisions against the Labour government, and in 2009/10 in 65.4 per cent,’ Lord Roberts notes. ‘By total contrast, in 2021/22 they voted against the Conservative Government in 95.8 per cent of all divisions and in 2022/23 a staggering 98.2 per cent. The voting record of the Anglican bishops is statistically even more reliably anti-Tory than that of some Labour peers.’
Jade wins the fashion stakes
Jade Holland Cooper, whose equestrian style label is loved by the Princess of Wales, helped turn the Cheltenham Festival into a fashion parade.
Jade Holland Cooper arriving on day three of the 2024 Cheltenham Festival at Cheltenham Racecourse
The wife of Superdry co-founder Julian Dunkerton arrived at the racecourse decked out from head-to-toe in more than £2,000 worth of clothing from her Holland Cooper brand, including a £849 Marlborough trench coat (left).
‘The races are no longer just about horses,’ Jade, 37, tells me. ‘Now, they are also a celebration of timeless fashion, style and elegance. For me, it’s the country catwalk come to life.’
