When it was disclosed in July that Natasha Archer was leaving Kensington Palace after a decade and a half, royal watchers noted that the Princess of Wales would deeply miss her ‘invaluable’ aide and confidante.
Now, I hear that Catherine is not the only one whom Natasha is leaving.
Friends say she has separated from her husband, the royal photographer Chris Jackson.
‘They haven’t been together for some time,’ claims one pal. ‘Chris has attended a string of social events on his own.’
Neither Chris, 45, nor Natasha, 37, wish to comment, but she was conspicuous by her absence from holiday snaps that the photographer shared on social media from a trip to Greece with his mother and two sons this summer.
Also missing was the wedding ring that Chris previously wore. He was last pictured with Natasha at Easter.
The couple, who married in France in 2017 and have two young sons, are hugely popular in royal circles. Queen Camilla is particularly fond of Chris, whom she and King Charles chose to take their portrait on their 20th wedding anniversary in Italy this year. He was also granted behind-the-scenes access on the day of the Coronation in 2023.
Natasha Archer pictured with royal photographer Chris Jackson. The pair’s eight-year marriage seems to have come to an end
Natasha has helped her close friend Catherine become the fashion icon she is today
Natasha, or Tash as she’s known to chums, has left the palace to set up a private consultancy firm. She was credited with overhauling the princess’s image by encouraging her to show more leg, ditch wedges for heels and wear more High Street outfits.
She has been seen by the princess’s side on social occasions and has accompanied her on official overseas trips, including to Canada, Pakistan, Norway and Bhutan, often pictured stepping off aeroplanes laden with luggage and shopping bags full of clothes.
She started working as a personal assistant, or ‘Girl Friday’, for Catherine and Prince William in 2010, the year of their engagement. She soon took on the role of unofficial stylist to the princess.
Awarded the Royal Victorian Order for services to the Royal Family in 2019, Natasha was seen as Catherine’s right-hand woman and was promoted to senior private executive assistant three years later.
Last year, she was seen visiting the princess at The London Clinic during her 14-day stay following her planned abdominal surgery – a reflection of the closeness of their relationship.
Chef claims Marco called her ‘delicious’
Aussie Chef Jordan Hartley was working in Britain at the time she claims Marco made inappropriate comments to her
He was once the popular enfant terrible of the restaurant world, but now Marco Pierre White, 63, has been accused of making degrading remarks to a female chef.
In a video posted online, Australian chef Jordan Hartley, 31, claimed that two months ago ‘Marco Pierre White called [her] delicious’ while she was working in Britain. She added: ‘He also told his managers to stop looking at my t**s because he had been looking at them, too.’ She did not make a formal complaint.
White declined to comment.
He’s delighted to have a new filly in his stable – elegant divorcee Harriet Sperling, to whom he announced his engagement last month. But King Charles’s nephew Peter Phillips won’t be able to parade her at the Festival of British Eventing, held at Gatcombe Park, his mother Princess Anne’s Gloucestershire estate, ever since its inception in 1983.
Cancelled for the past two years – financial considerations made it ‘unfeasible to run’ – the festival now seems doomed for good. I can disclose that Phillips, 47, has just applied to close down the company Festival of British Eventing Ltd after it reported accumulated losses of £68,000 in July. Happily, Harriet, 45, is a full-time paediatric nurse – a relief for Phillips, who divorced Autumn Kelly in 2021.
Bargain Hunt star gives away his most precious treasure
With his trademark scarf and jovial manner, auctioneer Philip Serrell is rarely off daytime TV screens.
Yesterday, the star of programmes such as Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip was, however, at Worcester Cathedral giving away his most precious treasure.
Serrell, 71, who had ditched his scarf for once, walked his daughter Clementine down the aisle before she exchanged vows with her Danish fiance, Jorgen Deal.
Phillip Serrell with his daughter Clemmie at her wedding at Worcester Cathedral
Cake-maker Clemmie hand in hand with her new Danish husband Jorgen Deal
It was a particularly poignant occasion for cake-maker Clemmie, 41, who has spoken movingly about her struggle with eating disorders.
‘I still have bad body-image days,’ she has admitted. ‘Occasionally I weigh food, and I still know the calories in a lot of things, but I really feel like I’m “normal” again – as normal as I’ll ever be, at least.’
She added: ‘I will always talk about eating disorders, and I’ll always be honest.’
Tenant farmer’s son Serrell, who became a TV favourite after Bargain Hunt producers invited him to join the BBC game show’s first filming session in Malvern in 1999, admitted he struggled at first to understand his daughter’s health issues.
A last word on Christina Shand Kydd, 86, sister-in-law of Lord Lucan, whose death I reported yesterday, from North Sea oil pioneer Algy Cluff.
‘Christina was a very generous and attractive woman,’ muses Algy, who’d known her husband Bill since school. Friendship endured, he adds, ‘even though I was in the opposite camp after the murder [of Lucan nanny Sandra Rivett].’
Elle, 61, says she’s too old for miniskirts
She returned to the catwalk for the first time in almost 14 years in 2024, but Elle Macpherson admits there is one item of clothing that she will not be putting on.
‘I probably wouldn’t wear a miniskirt today,’ says the 61-year-old supermodel known as ‘The Body’.
At 61, Elle Macpherson says she would no longer wear a miniskirt – and at 6ft high heels are also out the window
There’s also some footwear that the Australian avoids. ‘No more platform shoes – at 6ft tall in flats, there’s no need,’ she says.
Asked what she wears to bed, Elle adds saucily: ‘A smile and a grateful heart.’
With its bondage scenes and close-up images of chewed lips, blindfolds and whips, the trailer for a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi has been described as ‘softcore porn’.
The director Emerald Fennell’s mother insists there’s no need for a cold bath.’It’s absolutely not a Fifty Shades of Grey-style film,’ Louise Fennell, an author, tells me at her husband Theo’s event in aid of The Leopards, a charity mentoring young talent in the British jewellery industry.
‘It’s the best thing ever. Emerald’s a genius, and people are going to love it.‘
Geri ordered to tear down her summer house
Geri and husband Christian Horner sought retrospective planning permission for their summer house, but it has been denied
She’s the sort of glamorous figure any rustic lad would consider an adornment to village life, especially when glimpsed in jodhpurs and splendidly mounted. Yet the effervescent Geri Halliwell now finds herself bracketed with the impertinent phrase ‘an unsympathetic addition’.
That’s the damning summary of a pergola and a gazebo – both oak-framed – which the former Spice Girls singer and her husband, Christian Horner (above), recently erected at their idyllic 15th-century manor house on the Oxfordshire/Northamptonshire border.
Such was the couple’s enthusiasm for these additions – their property already boasts a helipad, boating lake, orangery, indoor pool and stables – that they didn’t apply for planning permission, but only sought it retrospectively, as I recorded in July.
Alas, to no avail: I can reveal that the local council has just refused to grant permission. The couple can appeal. Or grit their teeth and dismantle the outdoor accessories. A hands-on job for Horner, who was sacked two months ago as Red Bull Formula 1 team boss.
Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante admits to getting carried away while working on her latest project.
‘If somebody was to stand outside the door when I’m writing, they’d think, “I’d better have the straitjacket ready for her, because she’s a lunatic”,’ says the crime writer. ‘I’m in there talking away to myself.’
La Plante, 82, who also wrote 1980s hit drama Widows, is not impressed by one popular BBC drama. ‘In Silent Witness you’ve got a pathologist investigating crime, going out to locations. You don’t do that,’ she insists. ‘The pathologist is in the lab.’
