Here’s a scoop: The King’s grocer, Fortnum & Mason, is embroiled in a furious row with a graffiti artist.
James Goldcrown made a name for himself with his repeating hearts, which he spray-painted on walls in London, Los Angeles and New York, before receiving commissions from brands such as L’Oréal, MTV and shoemaker Skechers.
However, the 43-year-old Londoner was shocked to see Fortnum using a similar design for the Valentine’s Day display at his Piccadilly store.
He accuses the company of ‘ripping off’ his designs, claiming: ‘You’d think bigger companies like Fortnum would know better by now than to hire lazy designers who studied online rip-off skills during the pandemic. Not much is original these days.”
A spokesperson for Fortnum & Mason acknowledges that the exhibition is inspired by graffiti artists, but denies that Goldcrown has been plagiarized. “The entire design of this packaging is inspired by street art,” he said. “Many different versions of graffiti hearts exist.”
Graffiti artist James Goldcrown made a name for himself with his repeating hearts, which he sprayed on walls in London
However, the 43-year-old Londoner was shocked to see Fortnum and Mason using a similar design for their Valentine’s Day display (top right) at their Piccadilly store.
(Very) modern manners
Roxie Nafousi, who has dated pop superstar Harry Styles and artist Damien Hirst, has joined a dating app for the first time in five years.
“To be honest, I’m a sex-on-the-first-date kind of guy,” she says on London Edition’s Sex Talks.
‘I don’t think there are any rules. If you meet someone and the chemistry is incredible, and you feel comfortable and safe with them, and you have that feeling of home, and with that comes this lust, then do it.”
Roxie Nafousi has joined a dating app for the first time in five years
Roxie, 33, a “self-development coach” known as the “Queen of Manifesting,” says: “I recently became single. I don’t join the app because I want to meet someone now, but because I want to put myself out there energetically and feel like I’m open to it. Self-help is not sexy.
‘Someone called me a bad guy on the app. “I don’t know what a bad guy is, but my assistant saw the message and cried.”
A villain is someone who is considered “hot and sexy,” or so I’m reliably informed.
The smart set is talking about… the ‘looting’ of Oxford students at rival Cambridge
The annual sports day between the Corpus Christi schools in Oxford and Cambridge, known as the Corpus Challenge, is a cornerstone of university social life, with students competing in football, hockey, frisbee and even darts.
However, I hear this year’s challenge has been canceled after Oxford students went on the rampage in Cambridge and pinched a photo of Boris Johnson’s son Theodore.
They also ransacked a children’s common area, taking pool cues, light bulbs and a teddy bear.
On Cambridge College’s confessions page, distressed students paid tribute to the teddy bear that was allegedly dismembered, describing him as ‘loved forever’.
The looting of the common area was described as ‘savage’ by one student, who told the Varsity newspaper that ‘they took everything they could’.
A spokesperson for Corpus Christi College Cambridge confirmed: ‘With the agreement of the Deans of both Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, the Corpus Challenge 2024 has been cancelled.
The deans and colleges will evaluate the 2025 Challenge in due course.’ Tut tut. That wouldn’t have happened in Boris’ time, would it?
Anya’s gamble to take on Gwynnie
Peaky Blinders star Anya Taylor-Joy appears to be taking a leaf out of Gwyneth Paltrow’s book and launching her own lifestyle company.
I can announce that the aspiring actress, 27, who played gangster’s wife Gina Gray in the BBC hit Brummie gangster drama, has applied to the Intellectual Property Office to trademark the name ‘Anya’ for a wide range of goods and services.
According to newly published documents, they range from make-up bags and phone cases to stockings and suspenders.
Interestingly, her application also covers games, so Taylor-Joy, who starred as child prodigy Beth Harmon in the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, could bust out her own chess set.
Anya Taylor-Joy appears to be taking a leaf out of Gwyneth Paltrow’s book and launching her own lifestyle company
Taylor-Joy played chess player Beth Harmon in the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit
She has said that her fans often “want to elope me.” She said, “I don’t have one (a chessboard) with me, but the point of jumping from project to project is that you gain skills through that particular project.”
Last year, Anya, a dual US-British citizen, married American musician and actor Malcolm McRae, 29, in Venice, Italy.
SamCam’s brother poses with his new erotic girlfriend
Samantha Cameron’s brother Robert Sheffield seems the picture of contentment with his new girlfriend, Athena Lemanska, an artist who specializes in sexually explicit paintings of women.
Last month I announced that the baronet’s son and heir, 39, was enjoying a blossoming new friendship with the American. Now he poses for a photo with the erotic artist in California, where she lives.
Samantha Cameron’s brother Robert Sheffield posed for a photo with his new girlfriend Athena Lemanska
The brother-in-law of Foreign Secretary Lord (David) Cameron split from the mother of his three-year-old daughter last year.
Old Harrovian Sheffield had lived with Gucci model and actress Ellen Francis Gibbons in Sutton Park, his family seat in North Yorkshire.
India Hicks, King Charles’ goddaughter, admits she left cabin crew stunned on a recent flight after bursting into tears when they offered her an ice cream.
The granddaughter of the first Earl Mountbatten of Burma was returning from a visit to Ukraine, where she helped deliver vital aid through Global Empowerment Mission (GEM).
“I felt I was getting used to seeing life in a war zone,” Hicks, 56, tells the British Airways Executive Club magazine. ‘I thought I could handle it better emotionally. And when I flew from Warsaw, your cabin crew started handing out ice cream in a box.
‘With GEM I hand out boxes of food, warm blankets, battery packs for telephones and the like. When the cabin crew handed me the ice box, I burst into tears and sobbed in my seat. They were terribly confused as to how ice cream had made me so hysterical.”
It’s one of England’s most beautiful country houses and the resting place of Princess Diana, yet Althorp has fallen victim to the modern plague of rural flycatchers. Adey Greeno, conservation manager at the 13,000 hectare estate in Northamptonshire, reveals the staggering scale of illegal dumping.
“To date, 183 tonnes of waste has been removed from the Althorp land in recent weeks,” he said. ‘All at high costs. The countryside is being degraded at an alarming rate. It’s a national shame.’
If only Diana’s formidable stepmother, Raine, were still around to scare them away.
Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly are two of Sir Elton John’s most ardent fans, but they have so far failed to persuade him to sing in their long-running ITV1 show Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, which is on the is about to end after twenty series in April.
“We always wanted Sir Elton to come and open with Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting, but he always very politely told us to stop,” Ant admits. “But you never know, we’ll keep trying.”
The inseparable duo was in the audience during Sir Elton’s concert in Paris last summer.
Ant and Dec on ITV’s This Morning on February 23
Bridget Skelton was the toast of punters when she landed the County Hurdle at Faivoir at the Cheltenham Festival last March.
But I can reveal that she will not be riding at the Cheltenham Festival next month as she and her husband Harry, the 2021 champion jump jockey, are expecting their first child in April.
They have just returned from a short holiday in Florida, visiting Harry’s father, Olympic gold medalist Nick Skelton, who has a training base there for his show jumpers.