EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Duchess of Bedford becomes New Zealand citizen at the age of 84 because ‘England doesn’t feel like it used to’

Her beauty brought her to Country Life magazine as one of the “girls in pearls” and to the brink of a film career, where she subsequently renounced “lights, camera, action!” in favor of marrying the future 14th Duke of Bedford, owner of Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, with its 24 priceless Canalettos, not to mention a safari park.

But now that she’s 84, the Dowager Duchess of Bedford has undergone her latest transformation. Henrietta became a Kiwi and took New Zealand citizenship.

The Duchess found the dedication ceremony a special pleasure. “I didn’t know I had to give allegiance to King Charles,” she says. ‘Such a wonderful feeling.’

She explains her reasons for emigrating: ‘It feels like England used to do that. England doesn’t feel like it used to when I was a kid.’

As a debutante in 1957, her parents held a party for her at Claridge’s in a room converted into a nightclub, the walls covered with silk butterflies.

Perhaps not quite what the Duchess meant.

Very modern manners

It’s a good thing that Abbey Clancy and former England footballer Peter Crouch can afford airline excess baggage charges.

When the Liverpudlian model, 38, and her husband, who has four children, were asked if they had plans for the next two weeks after returning from a recent holiday in Dubai, he turned to his wife and asked: ‘Are you going just unpack for another two weeks, right?’

Lumley’s Candlelight Beauty Secrets

Evergreen Dame Joanna Lumley has had enough of the poor lighting in hotel bathrooms.

“What women hate is a top light in the bathroom because you can’t do your makeup,” laments the 78-year-old star of Absolutely Fabulous and The New Avengers.

‘So sometimes I look a bit strange because I’ve done make-up by candlelight or torchlight – it’s interesting and a challenge.’

Dame Joanna added of her television appearances: ‘I’m very grateful to the viewers who say good things, even if I’m a little crumpled up.’

Following her father into comedy was always going to be a challenge for John Cleese’s daughter Camilla, but now she’s trying to use it to her advantage.

“She wrote a sitcom called Nepo Baby,” reveals the Monty Python star, 84. “It’s very funny.”

The term “nepo baby” refers to children of famous people who are believed to have used their family connections to succeed in careers similar to those of their parents.

Who says there’s no money in writing books these days?

Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl On The Train, has managed to rake in £18.5 million.

Newly published figures from her company, Paula Hawkins Ltd, into which she channels her income, show she bought £320,000 worth of artworks last year.

The purchases bring the value of the art she owns through the company to £2.3 million.

The professor’s daughter, 51, has also invested her royalties in property worth £1.7 million, plus £9.9 million in other investments, and has also kept £4.4 million in cash.

Is that Van the Man, or just a taxi driver?

Sir Van Morrison enjoyed recording at the Wool Hall so much that he eventually bought the studio near Bath in Somerset.

During one of his many sessions there, the staff mentioned that they had a party later that evening and that he would like to come along.

“No one actually expected the famously grumpy musician to actually show up,” reports Robin Askew in his new book, The West’s Greatest Rock Shows. ‘But that’s what he did.

‘Unfortunately, when he rang the doorbell, the door was opened by someone who had no idea that the man standing in front of him was the least starry rock legend in the world.

“So he turned and shouted back into the room, ‘Did anyone order a taxi?’

West End live show for TV’s Naked Attraction?

Here’s a sign of how much the West End has changed since 1968, when many theatergoers walked out after the cast of the musical Hair appeared completely naked from behind a sheet and chanted the words: “Beads, flowers, freedom and happiness.”

Now a stage must be filled with naked bodies – and there will be no sheet.

Naked Attraction host Anna Richardson says discussions have begun about a West End version of the Channel 4 dating show, in which a clothed singleton is shown a gallery of six naked potential partners and chooses a date based on their attributes .

She tells me: ‘We are in talks to do Naked Attraction Live as a theater show, that would be great.’

Jeremy Clarkson is unlikely to raise a glass to his The Grand Tour co-star James May this weekend.

May owns the Royal Oak in Swallowcliffe, Wiltshire, but says he will not be serving Clarkson’s Hawkstone beer.

“The brewery that makes its beer is over 80 miles from the pub and we have a policy of using local beers, for the same reason that Clarkson’s farm shop can only use produce within an eight to ten mile radius,” he explains out.

Instead, he serves beer brewed by film director Guy Ritchie.

‘It doesn’t really make sense that we’re suddenly drinking a boutique Cotswolds beer in a pub in south Wiltshire when a few miles away we’ve got Guy Ritchie’s brewery producing really good beer for us.’

Clarkson is said to be eyeing his own pub, the Grade II listed Coach and Horses, near his Hawkstone brewery in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire.

Andi Oliver, who replaced Prue Leith as a judge on the BBC2 show Great British Menu, is fed up with the trend of turning drinking establishments into pompous dining rooms.

“So many pubs are essentially restaurants now,” she tells me at the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards at The Royal Exchange in London.

The chef, 61 this month, explains: ‘You often have to reserve a table, it absolutely drives me crazy. They have to stop it.

You should just be able to come in, play a game of pool, drink and laugh.” The author of cookbook The Pepperpot Diaries previously ran award-winning restaurant Andi’s in Stoke Newington, and is the former creative director of the Birdcage pub in the East End.

She adds, “I’ve tried to keep my restaurants very pub-by.”