EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Chocolate heir finds love with American pop singer 26 years his junior

Devastated when his wife, fashion editor Lulu Anderson, died of cancer in 2022 at the age of 60, chocolate heir Cosmo Fry has found love again.

I can disclose that the Eton-educated son of the late inventor Jeremy Fry is going out with an American pop star 26 years his junior.

She is Diane Birch, a 41 singer-songwriter who has performed with superstars including Stevie Wonder and Daryl Hall, of Hall and Oates.

‘We met in Somerset where I live,’ Cosmo, 67, tells me at the gala performance of Nutcracker in Havana, at London’s Southbank Centre. 

Diane adds: ‘I’m in the next village along.’

The couple have already travelled to Japan and New York together.

Cosmo established the Big Sleep hotels with Lulu, who was his third wife. Guests at their wedding party included actor Richard E. Grant and designer Jasper Conran.

Cosmo’s first wedding, to Lady Cosima Somerset, was attended by 500 guests, including her cousins, Zac and Jemima Goldsmith. The pair parted six weeks later.

He subsequently married Amanda Aspinall, daughter of late gambling tycoon John. 

They had a daughter, March, and son, Orson – sometime boyfriend of model Alexa Chung –before divorcing.

Aspinall, who went on to marry U.S. pop star Daryl Hall, was found dead in 2019 aged 61.

With Lulu, Cosmo had one more son, Jude, who has been romantically linked to Ella Clapton, daughter of Eric Clapton – guitar legend and writer, of course, of Tears In Heaven.

Clean-living guru gets dirty looks… advice fall on deaf ears

Kate Moss is said to have ended her nine-year relationship with photographer Count Nikolai von Bismarck, 37.

A source claimed: ‘At 50, Kate wants to have fun. Nikolai wants to enjoy a quieter life. He remains on his sober path.’

Now, one of Kate’s pals, nutritionist Rosemary Ferguson, 49, admits she has been trying to convince fellow ex-members of the hard-partying Primrose Hill set to aim for sobriety, too. 

But she adds: ‘They don’t listen! They all roll their eyes at me.’

Merry Widow’s vows plan

Opera star Danielle de Niese, who will be seen performing in the title role of The Merry Widow to be screened on the BBC on Christmas Day, has an even more important date for her diary before then.

Next week, the soprano, 45, celebrates the 15th anniversary of her wedding to Gus Christie, executive director of Glyndebourne opera house in East Sussex.

She tells me: ‘I said to Gus, “Wouldn’t it be so nice if just us two renewed our vows in our church?”‘

The couple exchanged vows for the first time at St Bartholomew the Great Church in the City of London.

‘It turns out one of Gus’s ancestors was buried there, and it was just by chance we saw it there,’ she says.

‘I would love to renew them. I don’t think we’ll fit it in this year, though.’

She adds: ‘I would like our renewal to be a one-on-one because we had this insane wedding. It was a huge event. Maybe as a renewal it might be nice to just have the two of us.’

Bonny Blandford girl who has failed to clear the heir

Coronets aloft! The Marchioness of Blandford is celebrating the birth of a daughter, Leonora Eliza Cressida Spencer-Churchill.

The new arrival – Lady Leonora – is a splendidly timed early Christmas distraction for her older sister, Lady Olympia, four, while their mother, Camilla, catches her breath before the festivities begin.

But is it too brutal to wonder whether Camilla Blandford will already be contemplating a third addition to the family in due course? 

She met her husband, George – elder son of the 12th Duke of Marlborough and heir to Blenheim Palace – when he was just 16 to her 21, and married him a decade later.

Unless they have a son, the heir to the family dukedom will be George’s half-brother, Lord Caspar, 16, whose mother, Edla, became second wife of Jamie Blandford (as the 12th Duke was then known) in 2002, but is now estranged from him, as I revealed this year.

Historian Lady Antonia Fraser is ‘getting fed up’ with being asked by members of the public: ‘Are you who I think you are?’

After all, she reflects that ‘it’s an impossible question to answer’.

The widow of playwright Harold Pinter has come up with a poetic reply. ‘I composed a Bad Verse to frighten people off,’ she says. 

‘And it sort of works – “Are you who I think you are?/Your question really goes too far/I’m never who you think I am/In the meantime, why don’t you scram?”‘

Protester beats Battling Burgess over flats scheme

HIGH-OCTANE barrister Lord Banner – ennobled this year by old Oxford chum Rishi Sunak – doesn’t shrink from confrontation, as a British Airways cabin crew found in 2022 during a row over his family nanny’s entitlement to a club-class seat.

Nor does his lordship’s client, property developer Jack Burgess, who was once involved in a bust-up outside Stringfellows over the merits of one of its lap dancers.

But until now they hadn’t faced charity campaigner Laura Chapman. 

Appalled that Burgess’s proposal for 850 high-rise flats in Bristol had got the green light, she crowdfunded a legal challenge.

It was due in court next week, but I can disclose that instead of sending Banner into battle, Burgess has agreed to a scaled-down plan. ‘Laura’s cock-a-hoop,’ I’m told.

Monty’s tribute to Queen’s dear Beth

THIS must have been one of Queen Camilla’s most poignant engagements this week. I hear that she held a private meeting at Buckingham Palace with the television gardener Monty Don.

He is designing a dog-friendly garden for the Chelsea Flower Show, with the Queen’s Jack Russells, Bluebell and Beth, having their names inscribed on the garden’s path. 

Sadly, Beth was put down last month at the age of 13 after an inoperable tumour was discovered.

Keep it to yourself, but…

A recent addition to the aristocracy horrified her husband’s family by snorting a white powder during the celebrations for her son’s christening.