EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Zara Phillips’ pal wears ‘lady in waiting’ badge at the races 

Queen Camilla abolished the historic title of ‘Maid of Honor’ after her husband was proclaimed monarch, but Zara Tindall seems set to keep it.

King Charles’s niece appeared at Cheltenham Racecourse in Gloucestershire with her friend Dolly Maude with a plaque reading ‘Lady in Waiting’.

The badge allowed Maude, a National Health Service maternity nurse, to enter the highly restricted Royal Box.

A Zara spokesperson insists: ‘It was a joke. Zara does not have any kind of Bridesmaid.

Perhaps Maude feels she deserves the badge of honor after helping deliver Zara’s third child, Lucas, on the bathroom floor, at the Tindalls’ Gatcombe Park home in 2021?

Zara’s husband, former England rugby star Mike Tindall, would certainly agree. He once joked that Maude is ‘more important’ than him.

No room at Fay Weldon’s funeral for ex ‘coercive’

His extraordinary life and talent never ceased to amaze or delight. Nor, I can disclose, Fay Weldon’s funeral on Monday.

Retired parish priest, and former star of The Communards in the 1980s, Reverend Richard Coles conducted the burial.

The setting, a Northamptonshire crematorium, might have dismayed many, but not Fay, I’m sure.

“I was sandwiched between a solar panel farm and a high-security prison,” muses a mourner. She would have loved it.

Another detail might have delighted Fay, author of the classic feminist revenge novel The Life And Loves Of A She-Devil, even more.

That was the absence of her third husband, Nick Fox, from whom she dramatically announced her estrangement three years ago, at age 89, accusing him of “coercive control and financial mismanagement.”

He strongly denied it, calling the accusations ‘a slander’.

Fox, 15 years younger than Fay, tells me he doesn’t hear “anything” from his family. They haven’t told me about any funerals. They didn’t even bother to tell me when he died.

Divorced from Weldon last summer, he adds he learned of her death from a friend who he found “indescribable” that he had been kept in the dark.

The antipathy is, unfortunately, completely reciprocal. “It’s a good thing she wasn’t there,” explains one of the 150 Fay family and friends who gathered at the Nene Valley crematorium. I think she would have been lynched.

Instead, the service was as intense and moving as Fay would have wanted. She was a committed Christian. Richard [Coles] he received communion both at his son Nic’s house and at the nursing home where he died.’

It was also at Nic’s house that Fay’s inimitable life was celebrated afterwards, with plenty of champagne.

Patsy plays the changes

When I revealed last September that Patsy Kensit had gotten engaged, some refused to believe it.

After all, the actress had been married four times and had said she couldn’t “bother” men.

But here’s some evidence to prove the skeptics wrong.

Kensit, 54, is pictured in New Bond Street, Mayfair, with her fiance, property magnate Patric Cassidy, 58, buying a sparkler.

She divorced DJ Jeremy Healy, 61, in 2010 after a three-year marriage.

She was previously married to Oasis star Liam Gallagher, 50, with whom she has a son, Lennon.

She has another son, James, with her second husband, Simple Minds singer Jim Kerr, 63.

She had a fascinating life as the daughter of one of Britain’s most colorful billionaires, Sir James Goldsmith, before marrying cricket hero Imran Khan and moving to her native Pakistan.

Now, Jemima Goldsmith, 49, is considering following Prince Harry.

Asked if she would write a memoir, the TV producer says: “Let me come back to you after I’ve talked to everyone in my life, as the people who would be in it might be upset.”

But be careful with this space.

If only Harry had been so considerate. . .

Keanu and Guy arm in arm

Forget Hollywood, the real movie star talk goes on in Mayfair these days.

The latest couple seen hatching a new blockbuster is The Matrix star Keanu Reeves, left, and British director Guy Ritchie, who spent the night at Oswald’s, Robin’s trendy private club Birley.

The night went so well that Reeves, 58, linked arms with Ritchie, 54, when they saw a photographer.

Reeves recently finished filming John Wick: Chapter 4, while Ritchie’s thriller The Covenant is due for release in April.

University Challenge viewers complained about last week’s music round in which Queen’s Belfast students were unable to identify the voice of Linda Perhacs, an obscure American singer.

Quiz host Lillian Crawford gleefully says, “Getting some sadistic pleasure from the carnage my round on psychedelic people caused.”

The good news for the students is that Ms Crawford has now left to join Counterpoint, the Radio 4 music quiz. I fear discord.

Fancy being a ‘student’ with Prince William and Kate Middleton?

The agency Extra People Ltd has carried out a casting for the actors to work as extras in a shoot in St Andrews, where the couple met at university.

It just says it’s ‘one of the biggest TV shows in the world’, but it’s believed to be The Crown. Successful applicants could earn £250 per day.