India branches out into swimwear… and she’s hoping for plenty of exposure!
It’s where her godfather, King Charles, honeymooned with Princess Diana – but India Hicks appeared to have Windermere Island all to herself this Easter, judging by this uninhibited snap, where she is lying on a branch topless.
‘Lucky me, just spent a few days on the island of my childhood,’ says India.
Her parents, Earl Mountbatten’s younger daughter, Lady Pamela Hicks, and interior designer David Hicks, built Savannah House on Windermere – often described as the Bahamas’ best kept secret – in 1967.
Sited on a hill, the cubist building has views of the Atlantic on one side and still turquoise waters on the other.
India Hicks (pictured) in her bikini on Windermere Island in the Bahamas this Easter
India, who is the daughter of Lady Pamela Hicks and interior designer David Hicks, when she appeared on Lorraine in 2021
But every bit of Windermere is blissful, according to India, 56, who’s rhapsodised about its ‘freedom and privacy’ – qualities which, she acknowledges, she’s taken full advantage of.
‘Just spent a few months developing a swimwear collection,’ she says, adding that the new range ‘will offer quite a bit more coverage than I have on now’.
Property ladder star Sarah Beeny was a self-confessed city girl, living in London for 30 years before she upped sticks in 2019 to a 220-acre former farm in Somerset.
Now she and her artist husband, Graham Swift, are planning to open up their land to the next generation. ‘We’re building a TV and film studio and an art centre, to try to engage young people in alternative careers,’ she tells me at a party in London. ‘It’s very cool. I want the funkiest carpets.’
Another school tale to make you run a mile
Further memories of Cheam, the prep school attended by Prince Philip and King Charles, reach me following my disclosure that it once employed a matron who bonded with the boys more intimately than their parents could have imagined. ‘In our first week, the entire dormitory of seven- and eight-year-olds, were beaten, standing by their beds, by the headmaster,’ a Cheam old boy tells me, recalling the early Seventies.
Prince Phillip (pictured) and King Charles both attended the prep school in Surrey
The boys’ crime? ‘Running around the dormitory.’ But word reached one of Cheam’s governors. ‘The headmaster was gone by the end of the term,’ adds the Cheam alumnus.
‘After that, it was a benign and very happy place.’
It seems artificial intelligence is no match for the country’s most famous lexicographer, Susie Dent.
The Countdown star was left unimpressed after putting AI to the test.
‘I asked AI to deliver me some choice 17th-century insults and it came back with far more recent examples,’ she tells me, adding: ‘I then found myself correcting it… It has a long way to go still.’
Model Freya monkeys around with gorillas at her dad’s wildlife park
Like most twenty-somethings, Freya Aspinall is fixated on the object of her affection – but unlike her counterparts, she prefers to bestow her love on a gorilla.
In a video shared online, the model kisses the lips of Tambabi, one of the gorillas at her father Damian’s wildlife park in Kent.
Freya Aspinall (pictured) with one of the gorillas at her father’s wildlife park
In a video shared online, the model kisses the lips of Tambabi, one of the gorillas at her father Damian’s wildlife park in Kent
‘She’s so gentle and loving,’ says Freya, 20, daughter of actress Donna Air. Their bond dates back to childhood: ‘This group of gorillas I’ve known my whole life and have developed completely natural relationships with them.’
Is that you, Lady Mary Crawley? Having showcased her musical talents when she once sang in Downton Abbey, Michelle Dockery, 42, has now struck a chord with viewers in her debut as Estella, an alcoholic mother and singer, in BBC drama This Town.
Michelle Dockery, 42, in her debut as Estella in the BBC drama This Town
Michelle Dockery shot to fame for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the award-winning series Downton Abbey
The six-part series, penned by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, follows the rise of a band in the 1980s amid social unrest in Birmingham.
‘You see her sober and you see her drinking,’ Ms Dockery tells me of her character at a screening in BFI Southbank in London. ‘So I just immersed myself into it, depending on what stage she was at when it came to her addiction.’