EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Queen's favourite stallion dies on Christmas Eve

EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Final Applause for the Queen’s favourite stud as stallion dies on Christmas Eve

The Royal Family has lost its greatest stud. Royal Applause, a favourite stallion of the late Queen Elizabeth, died on Christmas Eve, aged 29.

Stabled at the Royal Studs at Sandringham, the Norfolk estate where the royals are spending Christmas, the horse is estimated to have fathered several hundred foals — at £9,000-a-go — since his retirement from racing in 1997.

He covered up to 110 mares a year in his prime, some of those horses racing in Her late Majesty’s colours.

The King has sold off some of his mother’s prized horses, but he’s recruiting a number of seasonal staff to work at the Royal Studs.

EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: The Royal Family has lost its greatest stud. Royal Applause, a favourite stallion of the late Queen Elizabeth, died on Christmas Eve

Queen Elizabeth II accompanied by her stud groom Terry Pendry (L) applauds as her horse ‘St. James’ wins the ‘Veteran & Veteran-Plus, Ridden’ class at the Royal Windsor Horse Show on May 11, 2011 in Windsor

Two mares at the Royal Stud on the Queen’s Estate at Sandringham, Norfolk, clean each other as they prepare for dates with stud stallion, and retired champion racehorse, Royal Applause

The role would see successful applicants working during the breeding season from January through to the end of May.

The job advertisement says experience ‘would be advantageous’ but is not essential.

Aimi: ‘I was damaged by Stonehouse affair lies’

As ITV prepares to screen its eagerly awaited drama about John Stonehouse, 1970s TV star Aimi MacDonald says false claims that she had an affair with the disgraced Labour Cabinet minister badly damaged her career.

‘I will certainly be watching the series to see how authentic it is,’ she tells me.

The Glasgow-born actress, who appeared on TV comedy quiz Blankety Blank, was named in 1976 as a lover of Stonehouse, who faked his own death and went on the run in Australia.

She denied a romance when Stonehouse’s bitter mistress, Sheila Buckley, claimed she was one of the ‘other women’ with whom he cheated on his wife, Barbara. He will be played by Matthew Macfadyen in Stonehouse, a three-part series which stars the actor’s real-life wife, Keeley Hawes, as Barbara.

‘I don’t think the Stonehouse thing did me any favours,’ MacDonald, 80, says. ‘I was upset about it. Somehow, I managed to get mixed up in all that sort of horror. Suddenly, I went from Mrs Family Entertainer to The Scarlet Woman.’

She made her name in At Last The 1948 Show, a satirical series with John Cleese, which was a forerunner to Monty Python’s Flying Circus — whose catchphrase ‘and now for something completely different’ she was first to utter on screen.

At the height of her fame, she shared a mansion in Ascot with racehorse owner Geoffrey Edwards.

‘Stonehouse was a friend of Geoffrey,’ she explains. ‘I didn’t even fancy John. He was a terrible flirt, and I remember him trying to play footsie with me under a dinner table, and I was thinking: “If Geoffrey could see what you’re doing, you’d be dead.”

‘He was terrified of Geoffrey, who had a 12-bore shotgun.’

A ride on the wild side for Madge’s kids

Madonna is determined to show that motherhood is a wild ride.

The Queen of Pop, 64, shared this photograph of her with her four adopted children on a festive cycle at night-time in London.

‘X-mas ride or dies!’ she jokes about the loyalty of her crew: David Banda, 17, Mercy James, 16, and ten-year-old twins Stella and Estere Ciccone.

The family posed for the snap near Hyde Park. The American singer also has a daughter Lourdes, 25, with dancer Carlos Leon and a son, Rocco, 22, with her ex-husband, British film director Guy Ritchie, 54.

She owns a ten-bedroom Georgian townhouse in Marylebone worth many millions.

The Queen of Pop, 64, shared this photograph of her with her four adopted children on a festive cycle at night-time in London

At the age of 73, Bill Nighy has set his sights on an unlikely new direction — as the hero of a comic-book movie.

‘I’d like to have an action career,’ declares the languid star of Love Actually.

‘I’d like to play the most unlikely action hero in the history of action movies, which would probably mean that I’d have to have a superpower because otherwise how’s it going to work? Look at me.’

I trust Adele’s loved ones received lavish Christmas presents. For I can disclose that the pop superstar added another £11.4 million to her fortune last year.

Her firm, Melted Stone Publishing Ltd, had a surplus of £15 million in its profit-and-loss account, up from £3.6 million in 2020, according to new figures.

Adele, 34, was brought up by her mother in a flat above a South London shop.

That’s a wow, Luciana (as is the tree)

While Sir Mick Jagger wished his fans the season’s greetings with a conservative photograph of him standing next to his Christmas tree wearing a colourful shirt, his ex-lover Luciana Gimenez opted for something more daring.

The Brazilian TV host, 53, who has a son, Lucas, 23, with the Rolling Stones singer, 79, posted a gallery of photographs of her decorating her tree while dressed in a gold swimsuit, along with stilettoes and reindeer antlers.

Currently keeping Luciana on her toes is Brazilian businessman Renato Breia, who is 17 years her junior.

She’s taught many of us how to boil an egg, and her cookery books have sold millions, but Delia Smith will never get behind the stove again in her own kitchen.

She has revealed that her husband Michael Wynn-Jones, a former author and book editor, has now assumed the role of home chef permanently, after he took over all the cooking for five years while she wrote her latest book.

‘My husband, since he’s retired, has got very, very keen on cooking,’ says Delia, 81.

‘So while I was writing he would cook supper every night. And now that’s working out so well I’m able to do other things that I wasn’t able to do before.’

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