RICHARD EDEN: Royal author finds love with queen of plastic surgery

He documents the Royal Family in great detail in his meticulously well-informed biographies, but Hugo Vickers’s own life appears to be just as intriguing.

I hear that the royal historian has separated from his wife and is enjoying a passionate romance with an American known as the ‘queen of plastic surgery’.

Vickers, 74, is now going out with Cindy Jackson, 70, a former girlfriend of royal cad James Hewitt.

‘We have been together since last year,’ Cindy tells me. ‘People have been surprised. They didn’t realise that people could experience such joy at our age. I tell them that it’s a plot twist and this is our final chapter.’

Cindy, who used to model herself on Barbie, was reported in 2011 to have undergone a former world-record 52 cosmetic treatments. She describes herself as an aesthetics and anti-ageing specialist. She split up with Princess Diana’s former lover Hewitt in 1999.

‘I knew James had a terrible reputation and my friends warned me to stay away from him,’ Cindy said at the time. ‘Stupidly, I thought I was the one who could change him. But now I know I was wrong.

‘He is a total rat. I trusted him and he repaid me by breaking my heart.’

Eton-educated Hugo has three children with his second cousin Elizabeth Vickers, whom he married in 1995. ‘I first met her when she was six,’ he explained. ‘She was a little girl on a tricycle. That was in 1970, when I was 18.’

He joked: ‘I’m a thoroughly modern man. I’ve allowed my bride to keep her maiden name for professional reasons. One has to make concessions.’

His relationship with Cindy has not been without its hiccups. She was delayed at the airport en route to Germany, where they are promoting his latest book, Elizabeth II, serialised in the Daily Mail. She posted on social media: ‘Held up at passport control again for not looking 70, as my passport states.’

Jo parcels up ditched lover’s little helper… 

Jo Wood was devastated when her husband, Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie, abandoned her for an 18-year-old Russian cocktail waitress.

Now, however, the 71-year-old is turning her heartbreak into business. The ex-model and Strictly star is launching ‘break-up boxes’ for the newly single, worth more than £200, including a silk pillowcase, a bottle of rosé and a sex toy.

‘When you break up you need something to cheer you up,’ Jo, pictured, tells me at the launch party for her audiobook, The Resurrection Of Flo. ‘Who needs a man when you’ve got a satisfier?

‘There’s a book to write your feelings, also a lovely candle to remind you that you must love yourself.’

Mariella Frostrup is at the end of her tether with her husband, Jason McCue, thanks to his newly acquired habit of saying ‘toodle-pip’ to everyone. ‘It’s really disconcerting,’ says the broadcaster, 63. ‘He’s not really a ‘toodle-pip’ kind of guy. He’s a human rights lawyer – very serious. I don’t know why he’s started saying it. He says it to the kids, the supermarket driver. I need to say something.’ 

Mr Loophole ensures he’s the one and only

Nick Freeman, the lawyer known as Mr Loophole for helping the likes of David Beckham beat driving convictions, has taken steps to protect his nickname.

‘I read the local newspaper over breakfast when my eyes drifted to a solicitor in Ashton-under-Lyne who’d won his first driving case for his client, and the article referred to the ‘local Mr Loophole’. That really hacked me off,’ he says.

‘I might not have liked having the tag, but I certainly wasn’t going to let anyone take advantage of it – of my success in court – so I embraced the loophole and I trademarked it.’

Matt Brittin, the former Team GB rower and Google president who takes over the BBC next month, wasn’t always a high-flier. ‘I’m at primary school and my parents are called in and told by my teacher that I am appalling and I’m going to be a juvenile delinquent by 14,’ he says. ‘I was quite disruptive. It was smart-arse remarks.’ A psychologist said the teenager was bored. Team rowing, offered at his secondary school, ignited a lifelong passion and set Brittin on the path to greatness. 

Yasmin leaves fiancé in her wake 

His jet-set proposal may have won Yasmin Mills’ heart, but the former model has now called off her engagement to ‘eco-chef’ Justin Horne.

‘Unfortunately, it didn’t work out, and we’re just friends,’ she tells me at a party at Fitzrovia Studios in London.

‘I don’t know if getting married is the most important thing to me any more. I’ve been married before and know how hard it can be. But as long as you’re happy, that’s the main thing.’

Yasmin, 60, met Justin, 48, at a party hosted by make-up guru Charlotte Tilbury and he proposed on a speedboat in the Med in 2023.

She was previously wed to TV producer and man about town Simon Mills.

Ody’s odyssey ends with a cracked skull 

Like his ancient Greek namesake Odysseus, who faced many perils on his epic homecoming journey, Odysseas of Greece has hit turbulence on his travels.

I hear that the 21-year-old son of Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece is recuperating after being seriously injured in Italy.

‘My sweet Ody had a bad fall and fractured his head,’ reveals his London-born mother, Marie-Chantal.

‘We had to forgo our Orthodox Easter with the family and rush to Florence to be by his side and bring him home.’

She added: ‘We made the long journey back to London by train. Not quite the Easter we had imagined, but just very grateful he’s safe and on the mend.’

Ody’s sister Maria-Olympia is King Charles’s goddaughter.