As a distinguished royal biographer, Hugo Vickers is used to documenting the Windsors’ milestones.
It is, however, his new girlfriend who’s celebrating a landmark in her own life.
Cindy Jackson – an American known as the ‘queen of plastic surgery’ – has revealed she has felt able to display her bare arms in public for the first time in a quarter of a century.
The 70-year-old, who once hit the headlines after going out with royal cad James Hewitt, underwent surgery costing about £10,000 to remove the fat from her upper arms and insert it into her hands.
‘I had a brachioplasty, or upper armlift, so I now have the right to bare arms,’ she tells me. ‘Armlifts are the new facelifts.’
She is pictured with Hugo, 74, at Kitty Fisher’s restaurant in Mayfair – her first outing since she went under the knife.
‘It was the first time that I had been sleeveless in 25 years,’ Cindy says.
Cindy Jackson is once again happy to be seen out and about with Hugo Vickers
She was keen to have the surgery on her hands because of the unflattering comments people make.
‘They always say you can tell how old someone really is by looking at their hands,’ adds Cindy, who describes herself as an aesthetics and anti-ageing specialist. ‘So now they won’t be able to.’
It was reported in 2011 that Cindy, who used to model herself on Barbie, had undergone a former world-record 52 cosmetic treatments.
I disclosed in April that she was going out with Eton-educated Hugo, who has three children with his former wife Elizabeth Vickers, a second cousin 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.’
Dua’s nod to new mother-in-law
The dramatic wide-brimmed hat pop princess Dua Lipa wore when she married actor Callum Turner on Sunday wasn’t just an apparent nod to Bianca Jagger’s headwear as she exchanged vows with Sir Mick in 1971.
Dua Lipa’s hat garnered much attention after she and Callum Turner got married
I can reveal that it was also a tribute to Callum’s mother, Rosemary.
Stephen Jones created Dua’s headwear
The hat was created by milliner Stephen Jones, who worked with Dua’s mother-in-law at his first shop, PX, in London’s Covent Garden in the 1980s.
‘Many congratulations to Dua Lipa and Callum, who I have known since he was a baby,’ the hatter says.
Rosemary, who raised Callum on a Chelsea council estate, is now a psychotherapist.
Last month I reported that BBC comedy chief Jon Petrie vowed to ‘camp outside the office’ of new director-general Matt Brittin ‘like I’m trying to get Wimbledon tickets, to meet him and make sure he understands just how vital it is that the BBC keeps backing comedy’. Perhaps Petrie’s name didn’t come up in the Brittin ballot. Yesterday, Petrie announced he is quitting the BBC to join Have I Got News For You? producer Hat Trick as its new creative director.
How cyclist Victoria put boys in a spin
Victoria Pendleton won two Olympic gold medals and nine World Championship golds, but the cyclist admits her talents took a toll on her love life.
‘I never really had boyfriends, mostly because I concentrated on sport,’ admits the former Strictly Come Dancing contestant, 45.
Victoria, who was married to Olympic cycling coach Scott Gardner for five years until 2018, explains: ‘I thought that by beating the boys it would impress them. But I realise now that most men, unfortunately, are not impressed if you beat them at sport. That was my error.’
Victoria admits that boys took a backseat when it came to her pursuit of sporting excellence
Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain really is turning into a banana republic! The Prime Minister’s fellow north London resident Hunter Davies has revealed he’s grown the fruit in his garden. ‘One unusual result of this incredible spell of tropical weather is that my banana plant has produced for the first time in about 30 years,’ the authorised biographer of The Beatles says. ‘I have them displayed in a bucket of water for the whole street to admire. They are small and green but, you never know, they might turn yellow.’
Prince Ed to tour school in ‘bully row’
When the Duke of Edinburgh visits St Julian’s School in Portugal today, he will be following in the footsteps of his late parents, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
But what Prince Edward will not know is that the top British international school, where one of Madonna’s children was a pupil, is at the centre of a furious row over child bullying.
I understand a small number of pupils have been withdrawn by parents unhappy at the way the school treated their complaints.
‘What began as physical bullying developed into sustained psychological bullying, including verbal abuse, humiliation and exclusion,’ one parent tells me. ‘The school failed to adhere to its own anti-bullying and behaviour policies. I am withdrawing my child from the school.’
Another parent who withdrew their child claims: ‘They didn’t want to tackle the parents of the bullies. I think there’s a lot of fear at that school.’
The head, Paul Morgan, tells me: ‘Like all large schools, we occasionally receive allegations of bullying behaviour… We take every one extremely seriously.’
Reform UK’S candidate at this month’s Makerfield by-election, Robert Kenyon, is not quite the Full Monty, suggests historian Lord (Andrew) Roberts. He compared the contest to the first battle of El Alamein in the Second World War, and his leader Nigel Farage to hero Viscount Montgomery of Alamein. ‘He was perhaps forgetting Montgomery was not present at that battle, but rather at the Second Battle of El Alamein four months later,’ Lord Roberts notes. ‘General Sir Claude Auchinleck, who commanded the British Army at the first battle, had pressures on his right flank – a bit like Mr Kenyon seems to be experiencing now.’
