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Meghan Markle abandoned her acting career as soon as she was presented with an engagement ring, but Prince Harry’s cousin is keen to make his mark in showbusiness.
I can disclose that Earl Spencer’s son and heir Louis, who has the title Viscount Althorp, has won the first of what he hopes will be many screen roles.
Using his stage name Louis Lyons, Princess Diana’s nephew stars in a poignant and troubling film called Pinch & Ouch, which is based on a harrowing experience suffered by the film’s writer, director and lead actress Nicole Kent.
Louis, 31, who will one day inherit the family’s 13,000-acre Althorp estate in Northamptonshire, plays Sam, boyfriend to Nicole’s character Lil.
She’s an actress so ambitious that she flies to Los Angeles during Covid pandemic lockdowns to take acting classes from ‘the legend who trained everyone in Hollywood’.
And in the film, Louis’s character warns her, ‘I really don’t think this is a very good idea’, before Lil travels to Los Angeles to meet the acting coach, who turns out to be a sexual predator.
Nicole tells me: ‘Louis is amazing to work with and a great actor.’
Speaking at artist Hannah Shergold’s solo exhibition at London’s Mall galleries, she adds: ‘It’s such an important film because it highlights the dangers many actors face – and reveals the warning signs to watch out for.’
Louis, who grew up in South Africa with his mother, Victoria, after she divorced Diana’s brother, is not the first member of his family to play a role in highlighting abuse in educational settings.
His father Charles, a historian, claimed in his memoir last year that he’d suffered sexual abuse at the independent Maidwell Hall School in Northamptonshire in the 1970s.
Louis studied at Edinburgh University before undertaking an acting course at ArtsEd, the west London drama school that trained Bridget Jones heart-throb Leo Woodall.
Nicole Scherzinger ‘kept fans waiting to flog £550 selfies’
Royal Albert Hall concert-goers left exasperated by a 50-minute wait for Nicole Scherzinger to come on stage on Monday may be rather shocked to hear the reason for the delay.
An announcement informed them that it was ‘due to unforeseen circumstances’. However, I can disclose what these ‘circumstances’ were. The Pussycat Dolls singer, 47, was in the basement at the London concert hall, posing for selfies for admirers who paid £550 each.
‘We were told to arrive at 7.30pm [the same time as she was due on stage],’ one fan who paid for the ‘meet and greet’ tells me. ‘We got a quick photo with her before being quickly ushered away. I hear that she made £25,000 from the whole “meet and greet” session.’
A spokesman for Scherzinger declines to comment.
Earlier this week, I reported a string of complaints about her behaviour while she starred in Sunset Blvd. on Broadway.
Keep it to yourself but ...
An eminent figure who confidently expected to be elevated to the House of Lords after four decades of public service has had his peerage quashed because of what’s euphemistically described as ‘trouble with his fly buttons’.
Luther star’s £13million payday
He's never likely to forget his first challenging years as an actor during which he earned his keep by working night shifts at Ford’s Dagenham factory.
But if there’s any doubt that Idris Elba has now advanced to the other end of the spectrum it’s dispelled by what he tucked away last year at his firm, IE7 Holdings Ltd.
New figures disclose that Elba, 53, who married model Sabrina Dhowre, 36, in 2019, banked £13 million in 2024.
The actor, who won cult status as Stringer Bell in US drama The Wire and as DCI John Luther on the BBC, boosted that particular piggy bank to £15 million – up from £2.3million the year before.
Sir Elton John was alarmed when someone managed to gatecrash a party he was hosting at a restaurant in Kensington, west London, for members of his staff.
However, the pop singer changed his mind when he discovered the gatecrasher was the 1st Lord Snowdon, Antony Armstrong-Jones, ex-husband of Princess Margaret.
‘Tony demanded to stay,’ recalls his friend, the former Tory MP Gyles Brandreth, on his Rosebud podcast.
‘We were given two extra places at the table. Then Snowdon complained about the meal…he complained about the wine…’
The smart set’s talking about...Oasis star daughter’s very practical approach to love
Noel Gallagher's daughter, Anais, admits she takes a direct approach when it comes to finding love.
The 25-year-old model, whose mother is the Oasis star’s ex-wife, Meg Mathews, is currently going out with It’s A Sin actor Callum Scott Howells, but says: ‘When I was single, I don’t think I ever got asked out once.
‘I would send about ten DMs [private messages on social media] a f***ing week to people because at least three are going to respond. It’s maths.
‘I really am a big believer that if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
‘You should see my DMs. I’m constantly asking for stuff from people.’
She met Callum, 26, three years ago by ‘sliding into’ his DMs after seeing him in Cabaret in the West End. ‘I went to see the show and I messaged him, like, “It was one of the most incredible performances I’ve seen on stage”. The rest is history.’
Comic Coogan bins grand designs for his £5million country pile
Multi-millionaire Steve Coogan is counting the pennies at his £5million country home after scrapping plans for a studio and cinema.
The Alan Partridge star sparked fury when he furloughed the gardener and housekeeper during Covid lockdowns before later paying the cash back.
He was given the go-ahead by planners to convert a barn and stables into a home screen room, editing suite and office.
But building work never started at his house in East Sussex, which boasts a swimming pool and tennis court. And the three-year deadline for permission has since run out.
Coogan, 59, has now submitted revised plans for just a ‘modest’ conversion of a stable into a one-bedroom annexe for guests.
His planning agent said: ‘There was significant cost implications in this scale of conversion, and these proposals are presented as a revision to that.’
Why Branson’s still spitting mad about Pistols anthem
Sir Richard Branson believes an Establishment plot prevented the Sex Pistols, his most controversial Virgin Records signing, from topping the charts in 1977, the year of Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee.
‘Enormous pressure was put on the BBC to stop God Save The Queen getting to Number One, and there was no question that it was Number One, and they skewed the charts,’ the 75-year-old entrepreneur claims.
‘I was hoping that Sex Pistols could stay together and go on to become the new Rolling Stones of their era, which I think could have been possible, but obviously they imploded.’
Branson had to settle for signing the Stones themselves in a £40 million record deal, 25 years later.
Caroline Quentin put in some memorable performances in Men Behaving Badly and Jonathan Creek, but she had the most dramatic impact as a teenager.
‘When I was 16, I was in an end-of-the-pier summer season,’ says the actress, 65. ‘I was doing the can-can in a velvet skirt and bra. In the can-can, you yelp, kick your leg up, then go into the splits.
'During one performance, as I yelped, my top burst open. I saw several elderly gentlemen in the front row nearly have heart attacks.’
Angela Rippon who stunned Strictly Come Dancing viewers with her jaw-dropping high kick, turns 81 tomorrow. And the former newsreader has revealed the secret of her flexibility – following the example of her feline friends.
‘If you ever watch a cat get up from sleeping, the first thing they do is stretch – and that’s what I do,’ she explains. ‘I do a series of stretching exercises for ten to 15 minutes every single morning of my life, wherever I am.’
Former Primrose Hill party girl Pearl shares bedtime secrets
While Kate Moss appears to be reliving her party days, her old friend Pearl Lowe is sticking to her new regime of early nights and sobriety.
‘I’m in bed by 9pm with a book,’ the pop star-turned-interior designer tells me.
‘That Pearl is dead and gone – it was 20 years ago. I’ve come back and I’m middle-aged now and I’m a very different person.’
With Moss, the 55-year-old singer was a member of the hedonistic Primrose Hill set in north London in the 1990s.
However, speaking at the launch party for her book Faded Glamour In The City, at Beyond Retro in London, she explains: ‘The Primrose Hill days were fun, but I moved to the countryside and got sober and live a different life now.’
Pearl, who is married to Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, recently returned to the capital after a decade living in a Georgian house in Somerset.
‘I never thought I would come back, but being in London is pretty amazing,’ she tells me. ‘Everyone is so good-looking and stylish. It feels very creative here, there’s a lot of fun things to do .’
Follow me on @richardaeden and on Instagram @edenconfidential richard.eden@dailymail.co.uk