'Hate club': Girlfriend of photographer David Bailey's son Sascha set to write tell-all memoir dishing the dirt on her time with Tommy Robinson and his fellow 'free speech activists'
Lucy Brown, who once stood shoulder to shoulder with far-Right activist Tommy Robinson, is getting ready to settle some old scores – and she's not pulling any punches.
I can reveal that the girlfriend of art dealer Sascha Bailey, son of celebrated photographer David Bailey, is to publish an explosive memoir.
'I'm writing a book about my time working in free speech activism that will probably p*** everyone off – which is what I'm hoping it will do,' she tells me.
Lucy has previously said that the behaviour of Robinson, who was jailed for 18 months last year for contempt of court, 'changed after the fame and money started rolling in'. She said the former English Defence League leader became 'very nasty and misogynistic'.
Her memoir, working title Hate Club, promises a no-holds-barred account of the chaos among the so-called free-speech warriors she once worked alongside. They include Robinson, Milo Yiannopoulos – who ran rapper Kanye West 's US presidential campaign last year – Lauren Southern, Gavin McInnes, Sargon of Akkad, and Count Dankula.
'Everyone was a narcissist,' she adds. 'It was terrible. Those people are a mess.'
Lucy, 34, says the book will draw on her experience organising the ill-fated Day for Freedom event in London in 2018, including never-before-seen footage she shot at the time.
'We tried to make it all free speech and punk and edgy and then it all blew up,' she recalls.
Now pregnant with her first child with Sascha, Lucy takes a very different view on the cause she once championed.
'I hate free speech [absolutism] . . . it's just a stupid concept that flits and changes depending on whether you like the person,' she says. 'I don't think, for example, Kneecap should be able to say that you should kill your Tory MP on stage, considering what happened to [murdered Tory MP] David Amess, and I couldn't give a toss that they're getting cancelled.'
Rather than trusting publishers to tell her story, she's opting to self-publish.
A bad break for poor Benedict?
The greatest mystery at the Cannes Film Festival was why Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch had to wear a sling on his left arm.
The Hollywood actor, 48, sported a black sling that matched his dinner suit on the red carpet for the Sunday evening premiere of Wes Anderson's new comedy The Phoenician Scheme, which also stars Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hanks. He was joined by his wife, the theatre director Sophie Hunter, 47.
And yesterday, Cumberbatch wore a patterned sling that matched his brown jacket at a photocall.
His spokesman declines to comment on the injury.
Age-old problem for Nicole, 57
Nicole Kidman, who received the Women In Motion Award at the Cannes Film Festival, says she faces a constant battle against ageism in the business.
'We get judged very harshly,' the Hollywood star, 57, tells me. 'You'll have a big film, then suddenly you're in your 40s and you haven't followed it up, or you've made some choices that didn't succeed. You're, like, 'But I'm not over. Please still keep investing in me.' That's important, resisting ageism.
'I've got a wealth of knowledge now and experience, yet I somehow have been cast out, or I'm not the cool person, or I'm not the one. So, it's always going, 'No, no, you can have a second to third chapter.' That's an important message.'
Charlotte's not weedy... she rips them out fast
TV presenter Charlotte Hawkins has a secret cure for the pressures of showbusiness.
'Whenever I get stressed, I take it out on the weeds in my garden,' she tells me at RHS Chelsea Flower Show's VIP preview.
'I know I give the appearance of being cool, calm and collected, but I do sometimes get wound up. It's therapy to me. I go outside and attack the weeds really aggressively.'
Charlotte, who turned 50 on Friday, lives in Surrey with husband Mark and daughter Ella.
Miriam's heartbreak over Stoppard affair
When Miriam Stoppard was betrayed by her husband of 20 years, the celebrated playwright Sir Tom Stoppard, with actress Felicity Kendal, she was the model of quiet dignity.
But now the doctor and journalist has revealed that her Oscar-winning husband's affair with The Good Life star plunged her into years of mourning.
'I never felt jealous, I never felt angry, but I did feel grief,' she tells Saga magazine.
'I grieved for three years, but I was grieving for the idea of how my life would be and who I would grow old with. And that was kind of chopped out of my life.'
Kendal was married to American theatre director Michael Rudman when she began her affair with Sir Tom, whom she first met while starring in his West End play The Real Thing in 1982.
Their relationship continued until 1998 when Kendal returned to her ex-husband, with whom she has a son, Jacob.
On his controversial former TV show, Jeremy Kyle never hesitated to tackle family matters. Nor did his father, Patrick. Kyle, whose mother died in 2017, reveals on Mark Wogan's Spooning podcast that his father's dying wish in 2019 was to know if his son's then-fiancee, Victoria, was 'the One'. He told Kyle: 'When I get upstairs, and it won't be long, I'm going to get a massive telling-off from your mother because I have been chasing women around the care home for six years, so I need to give her some good news.' Jeremy married Victoria in 2021.
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