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BEST FRIEND: (From left) Countess Greville of Warwick, Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess of Cambridge in the Nizam's necklace
Since Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, had not figured on the front pages of British newspapers for a very long time — perhaps as long as a couple of days — there was a frenzy of excitement when she appeared at a fundraising dinner at the National Portrait Gallery last week.
Sporting a suntan after a holiday with Prince George on the Caribbean island of Mustique, Kate looked beautiful in a 'dark-coloured Jenny Packham floor length dress', the British populace at large were informed.
'The night was billed as a black-tie do with a 'sparkle' and the Duchess followed the theme by wearing a dazzling diamond necklace loaned by the Queen,' gushed one breathless report.
What was really interesting was a throwaway line about the diamonds having been a wedding gift to the Queen from the Nizam of Hyderabad when she married Prince Philip in 1947.
For His Exalted Highness Nizam Sir Mir Osman Ali Khan Siddiqi Asaf Jah VII GCSI, GBE — said to have been the richest man in the world — the diamonds probably represented loose change.
The Queen personally chose the Nizam's gift — a demi-parure of a tiara and necklace — from Cartier stock as per his instructions. The necklace itself had found its first owner in 1936 but Cartier repurchased it a year later. The tiara was eventually refashioned.
We all know about the Kohinoor diamond, which was a 'gift' from the boy-king Duleep Singh to Queen Victoria in 1850. But it would be nice to know just how much of the Royal family's jewellery collection comes from India — a good part of it, I would imagine, though no one has done the research.
Envying Kevin
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Delhi's darling: Kevin Pietersen
With apologies to author Lionel Shriver and film director Lynne Ramsay, We Need to Talk about Kevin — that is Kevin Pietersen, bought by Delhi Daredevils in the IPL auction for $1.5m.
This comes after he was told by the England selectors that following a review of the disastrous Ashes series in Australia, the process of rebuilding a new side could best be achieved if he was dropped.
My own guess is that jealousy among his teammates is one of the reasons for the axing of Pietersen, generally considered the best batsman in the side. So far, no other England player appears to have made the cut in the IPL auction.
Imagine a bunch of girls from the same class going to a dance but only one of them gets asked by a boy. How would the others feel? Bitch endlessly about her, which is what some of Pietersen's teammates were doing behind his back.
The lot is ripe for selection on Koffee with Karan — maybe it should be Koffee with Kevin.
The effect of his latest lucrative Indian contract has been to rub red chilli into England's raw wounds caused by the terrific row over Pietersen's dismissal. Matters have come to such a pass that not playing for the IPL constitutes a test of loyalty. No wonder batsman Eoin Morgan withdrew his name from the IPL auction.
Blair's butt
Much more important, let me press once again for the evolution of an Indian Political League since we need to buy in the best politicians from abroad, especially to run West Bengal.
A good candidate available for Writer's is the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Rupert Murdoch's love-starved Chinese wife, Wendi Deng, 45, had the hots for 60-year-old Blair, kept meeting him alone (sometimes in her bedroom) and fantasised about him in her schoolgirlish diary: 'Oh, shit, oh, shit. Whatever why I'm so so missing Tony. Because he is so so charming and his clothes are so good. He has such good body and he has really really good legs [and] Butt... And he is slim tall and good skin. Pierce blue eyes which I love. Love his eyes. Also I love his power on the stage... and what else and what else and what else...'
What else is that a furious Murdoch, 82, News Corporation chairman, divorced Deng and vowed never to talk to former best friend Tony though he insists there was no hanky-panky with his wife.
Top girl
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SUMMITS CALLING: Wasfia Nazreen
The charming but modest Wasfia Nazreen, brave as they come, is a girl in a million. Since not too many Bengali girls go round climbing the highest summits in each continent — Wasfia has climbed five out of seven including Everest, the difficult route through Nepal, and Kilimanjaro in Africa — she is more accurately a girl in 250 million if the populations of Bangladesh and West Bengal are combined.
She is just the sort of spirited girl to have around in Calcutta but I am sorry to hear that Wasfia, 31, who was born in Dhaka where she now lives (though she grew up near the Sunderbans), finds it complicated getting an Indian visa.
She is in London to raise funds for her mountaineering expeditions, give talks, be felicitated by Bangladeshi MP and shadow education minister, Rusharana Ali, and generally make the point that 'not everything about Bangladesh is negative'.
High up in the mountains where she is often virtually alone, she frequently has to dig deep for reserves of physical and mental courage. Back home, as a social activist she encourages underprivileged girls to make more of themselves in a painfully conservative society.
Wasfia reassures me that on the summit she still hankers for 'dal, bhaat, maach — in my heart I'm totally Bengali'.
Twice booking
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Author honour: Anthony Horowitz gets his OBE from Prince Charles
Jaipur is the not the only place where authors have been making the news. My best family gift at Christmas was The House of Silk, 'the new Sherlock Holmes novel', written in the style of Conan Doyle, by Anthony Horowitz.
At the end of the novel, Horowitz includes as postscript his own favourite from the Holmes canon — The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans.
Horowitz was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by the Prince of Wales in Buckingham Palace last week.
Another author who has been similarly honoured is the Pakistani-Brit Hanif Kureishi, who was appointed commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2008. His new novel, The Last Word, is said to have been based on the encounter between the English biographer Patrick French and his subject, the Trinidadian Indian Nobel laureate, V.S. Naipaul.
'In The Last Word, Harry Johnson, a young biographer, is hired to write the life of Mamoon Azam, a giant of post-colonial literature who, after the death of his first wife, now lives in Somerset with Liana, his striking younger new wife,' The Guardian reviewer Mark Lawson points out.
On some pages, suggests Lawson, 'the only literary honour that Kureishi seems likely to be claiming is the Bad Sex prize'.
Tittle tattle
A peer I know, who asks me not to name him, has been having problems getting to his home in Sussex which is now surrounded by water though not flooded and has swans gliding up to the bottom of his garden.
A keen gardener, he is pleased: 'The floods bring in rich silt plus water-borne plants which seed themselves afterwards. If I sell them I could make �500.'