EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Celebrated actress reveals ‘furious’ row at palace party given by King Charles and Queen Camilla

Buckingham Palace has not seen anything like it since Lady Susan Hussey’s unfortunate contretemps with campaigner Ngozi Fulani in 2022.

I hear that Dame Sheila Hancock got involved in a heated argument during a reception at the palace.

So furious did the confrontation become that a fellow party-goer had to intervene to calm down the Olivier Award-winning actress.

The row is thought to have taken place at a party for guests who had attended the Christmas carol service at Westminster Abbey last December organised by the Princess of Wales.

‘I was at a Christmas party given by the King and Queen when I inappropriately got into a furious political argument with someone important,’ confirms Dame Sheila.

The widow of late Inspector Morse star John Thaw does not disclose the identity of the ‘important’ fellow guest or the cause of their dispute.

However, she confirms that a bystander intervened to defuse the situation.

‘Trying to keep the peace was a good-looking gentleman who stayed with me when my angry antagonist stalked off,’ she writes in Prospect magazine.

Dame Sheila’s mood then worsened when she spotted Justin Welby, who had resigned as Archbishop of Canterbury a few weeks earlier.

‘To my horror, I could see that Justin Welby – who the day before had made an unforgivably light-hearted speech in the House of Lords about his crass inadequacy in dealing with abuse in the Church – was about to approach me,’ she says.

‘Fearful of irretrievably blotting my royal copy book with a second confrontation, I made my poor new friend block the way between me and the holy man.’

The actress, 92, is no stranger to hostile encounters. 

In 2013, her co-star in a West End show, Keeley Hawes, dropped out of the production after reportedly clashing repeatedly with Dame Sheila. 

One source described it in The Mail on Sunday as a ‘battle between two divas’, with one particularly heated argument allegedly leading to an ‘arm-grabbing’ incident.

Lady Susan Hussey, a loyal aide of the late Queen Elizabeth, was forced to step down from her royal duties after she inadvertently offended domestic abuse campaigner Ngozi Fulani at a Buckingham Palace reception.

Did someone pack the wrong holiday outfit, Hofit?

No bush hat and khaki shorts for Hofit Golan.

Cara Delevingne’s pal appears to have gone on safari wearing only a bikini. The model, 40, has shared this holiday snap of her in a burgundy two-piece while surrounded by animals. ‘Born to be wild,’ she says. ‘Making friends with the locals, deep in the savanna of Tanzania.’

Hofit is thought to have introduced Jack Brooksbank to the scantily clad models he partied with aboard a boat trip shortly after his wife, Princess Eugenie, gave birth to their son August in 2021.

Amanza: I’m no princess!

A star of Netflix reality series Selling Sunset, Amanza Smith was once a ‘briefcase girl’ on US game show Deal Or No Deal, just like the Duchess of Sussex.

But Amanza, 48, who is also an artist and model, says she is glad that Prince Harry met Meghan, not her.

‘Meghan was on the show a season before me,’ she tells me at the first British exhibition of her art works, at Grove Gallery, London.

‘But now, looking at her journey, I’m glad I missed the boat. I don’t think the Royal Family would want me married into it.

‘I used to drink quite a lot, I have like 30 tattoos, I vape and I cuss like a sailor.’

Oh, I don’t know…

Who cast doubt on final UK tour 

Pete Townshend, who smashed guitars while his bandmate Roger Daltrey sang ‘I hope I die before I get old’, said last year: ‘It feels to me like there’s one thing The Who can do, a final tour where we play every territory in the world and then crawl off to die.’

Now, the old rockers aren’t so sure.

‘The UK has decided to make it as difficult as possible to go from A to B, the US makes it as easy as possible,’ said Daltrey, 81, as he announced the band’s North America Farewell Tour – The Song is Over.

Speaking at a Press conference at the Iconic Gallery in St James’s, London, Townshend referred to their last world tour, which ended in 2021.

‘It was a strange one,’ he mused. ‘We’d have an insurance problem that meant we couldn’t play a lot of classic venues that one plays at on a UK tour.’

Pete Doherty, the once drug-addled boyfriend of model Kate Moss, regrets being estranged from his elder daughter, Aisling.

‘I don’t see her at all,’ the rock singer says of the 13-year-old, whose mother is South African model Lindi Hingston.

The father of three, 46, hopes to atone by bringing his two-year-old daughter, Billie-May, to his concerts.

He explains: ‘I’ve missed opportunities in the past to be a father and I don’t wanna miss this one. If she wasn’t happy [at gigs] I wouldn’t be able to do it – because I wanna be with her.’

Billie-May’s mother is Doherty’s wife, Katia de Vidas. ‘One of her first words was ‘gig’,’ he says.

How Rory helped West nail Charles

Reflecting on his Bafta-nominated portrayal of King Charles in Netflix hit The Crown, Dominic West admits an hour-long Zoom call with impressionist Rory Bremner helped him find the monarch’s voice.

The Old Etonian actor now modestly adds: ‘I fear my performance was partly Rory Bremner and partly, hopefully, a bit of Prince Charles…

‘I spent the next two years trying to get away from that [Bremner’s impression]. It’s a tricky one.’

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham is said to be still ambitious to be prime minister.

His daughter, Annie, meanwhile, is keen to make a name for herself in the literary world. ‘I’m wanting to write a sapphic historical fiction book about the 1920s and 1930s,’ she says.

In one video that she has posted online, Annie praises Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 lesbian novel, The Well Of Loneliness, revealing that her girlfriend, Alex

Lowe, bought it as a present for the first anniversary of their relationship. ‘They were alive and queer, quite openly, in 1928, so I thought this would be quite interesting to read in research for my book,’ Annie explains.