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Devastated when his wife, fashion editor Lulu Anderson, died of cancer in 2022 at the age of 60, chocolate heir Cosmo Fry has found love again.
I can reveal that the Eton-educated son of the late inventor Jeremy Fry is dating an American pop star 26 years his junior.
She’s Diane Birch, a 41-year-old singer-songwriter who has performed with superstars like Stevie Wonder and Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates.
“We met in Somerset, where I live,” Cosmo, 67, tells me at the Nutcracker gala in Havana, at London’s Southbank Centre.
Diane adds: “I’m in the next town.”
The couple has already traveled together to Japan and New York.
Cosmo founded Big Sleep Hotels with Lulu, who was his third wife. Guests at their wedding party included actor Richard E. Grant and designer Jasper Conran.
Cosmo’s first wedding, to Lady Cosima Somerset, was attended by 500 guests, including his cousins, Zac and Jemima Goldsmith. The couple separated six weeks later.
Chocolate heir Cosmo Fry and his new girlfriend, American pop star Diane Birch, 26 years his junior.
Fry was devastated when his wife, fashion editor Lulu Anderson (pictured with him above), died of cancer in 2022 at the age of 60.
He later married Amanda Aspinall, daughter of the late gambling magnate John.
They had a daughter, March, and a son, Orson, sometime boyfriend of model Alexa Chung, before divorcing.
Aspinall, who later married American pop star Daryl Hall, was found dead in 2019 at the age of 61.
With Lulu, Cosmo had one more son, Jude, who has been romantically linked to Ella Clapton, daughter of Eric Clapton – guitar legend and writer, of course, of Tears In Heaven.
Clean living guru gets dirty looks… advice falls on deaf ears
Kate Moss is said to have ended her nine-year relationship with photographer Count Nikolai von Bismarck, 37.
A source claimed: ‘At 50, Kate wants to have fun. Nikolai wants to enjoy a quieter life. He continues on his sober path.”
Now one of Kate’s friends, nutritionist Rosemary Ferguson, 49, admits she has been trying to convince other former members of party group Primrose Hill to also aim for sobriety.
But he adds: ‘They don’t listen! Everyone rolls their eyes at me.
Kate Moss’s friend Rosemary Ferguson, 49, admits she has been trying to convince other former members of the Primrose Hill party scene to aim for sobriety.
The Merry Widow’s Vows Plan
Opera star Danielle de Niese, who will be seen playing the title role in The Merry Widow which will be shown on the BBC on Christmas Day, has an even bigger date on her diary before then.
Next week, the soprano, 45, will celebrate the 15th anniversary of her wedding to Gus Christie, executive director of Glyndebourne Opera in East Sussex.
She tells me, ‘I said to Gus, “Wouldn’t it be so nice if just the two of us renewed our vows at our church?”
The couple exchanged vows for the first time at St Bartholomew the Great Church in the City of London.
“It turns out that one of Gus’s ancestors was buried there, and it was only by chance that we saw him there,” he says.
‘I would love to renew them. Although I don’t think we can adapt it this year.
And he adds: ‘I would like our renewal to be one by one because we had this crazy wedding. It was a great event. Maybe as a renovation it would be nice to have just the two of us.
Opera star Danielle de Niese celebrates the 15th anniversary of her wedding next week to Gus Christie, executive director of Glyndebourne Opera in East Sussex.
The girl Bonny Blandford who has failed to free the heir
Crowns high! The Marchioness of Blandford celebrates the birth of a daughter, Leonora Eliza Cressida Spencer-Churchill.
Newcomer Lady Leonora is a splendidly timed early Christmas distraction for her older sister, four-year-old Lady Olympia, while her mother, Camilla, catches her breath before the festivities begin.
But is it too brutal to wonder if Camilla Blandford will already be eyeing a third addition to the family in due time?
She met her husband, George, eldest son of the 12th Duke of Marlborough and heir to Blenheim Palace, when he was just 16 and she was 21, and married him a decade later.
Unless they have a son, the heir to the family dukedom will be George’s half-brother, 16-year-old Lord Caspar, whose mother, Edla, became the second wife of Jamie Blandford (as the 12th Duke was then known) in 2002, but is now estranged from it, as I revealed this year.
The Marchioness of Blandford celebrates the birth of a daughter with her husband, George Spencer-Churchill
Newcomer Lady Leonora is a splendidly timed early Christmas distraction for her older sister, four-year-old Lady Olympia.
Historian Lady Antonia Fraser is “tired” of the public asking her: “Are you who I think you are?”
At the end of the day, he reflects that “it is a question that is impossible to answer.”
The widow of playwright Harold Pinter has given a poetic response. “I composed a bad verse to scare people,” he says.
‘And it kind of works: “Are you who I think you are?/ Your question really goes too far/ I’m never who you think I am/ In the meantime, why don’t you get out?”‘
Historian Lady Antonia Fraser (drawn above) is “getting tired” of the public asking her: “Are you who I think you are?”
Protester beats Battling Burgess over housing scheme
HIGH OCTANE lawyer Lord Banner, ennobled this year by old Oxford friend Rishi Sunak, does not shy away from confrontation, as a British Airways cabin crew discovered in 2022 during a dispute over the right of his family’s nanny to a club class seat.
Nor his lordship’s client, property developer Jack Burgess, who was once involved in a fight outside Stringfellows over the merits of one of his lap dancers.
But until now they had not confronted charity campaigner Laura Chapman.
Dismayed that Burgess’s proposal for 850 high-rise apartments in Bristol had been given the green light, she crowdfunded a legal challenge.
He was due in court next week, but I can reveal that rather than send Banner into battle, Burgess agreed to a scaled-down plan. “Laura’s rooster,” they tell me.
Monty’s tribute to Queen’s beloved Beth
THIS must have been one of Queen Camilla’s most touching engagements this week. I hear you had a private meeting at Buckingham Palace with TV gardener Monty Don.
He is designing a dog-friendly garden for the Chelsea Flower Show, with the Queen’s Jack Russells, Bluebell and Beth, having their names inscribed on the garden path.
Sadly, Beth was euthanized last month at the age of 13 after an inoperable tumor was discovered.
Keep it to yourself, but…
A recent addition to the aristocracy horrified her husband’s family by snorting a white powder during her son’s baptism celebrations.