As love stories go, it was, in key details, an age-old one. She was a young woman of show-stopping beauty, he had less obvious physical charms, being thickset, grey-haired and 27 years her senior.
He compensated for it by owning an Italian palazzo, a chateau outside Paris, an 18th-century residence at Hampton Court and another in Moscow – and by flying from one to the next by private jet.
But, says Vogue model and style icon Elena ‘Lena’ Perminova announcing her divorce from KGB colonel-turned-oligarch Alexander Lebedev, ‘even the most beautiful stories come to an end’.
Stressing that they are parting on the best of terms she adds: ‘There was a lot of kindness and goodness. And most importantly four wonderful children came out of all this. They couldn’t have wished for a better father.’
It’s an impeccably optimistic spirit – one which perhaps owes something to her escape from an unpromising start in life. Born into a family in which money was tight, Lena was persuaded to deal in ecstasy by an older, unscrupulous boyfriend.
Arrested aged 16, she was sentenced to a six-year stretch, which, in its grimmest moments, saw her confined to a claustrophobic cell.
Her father pleaded for help from a member of Russia’s parliament – Lebedev. He married Lena, who’s now 38, in 2005. ‘He was my angel,’ Lena later said. ‘There is no other word for it.’
In 2011, Lebedev punched a fellow guest when appearing on Russian television, and was subsequently sentenced to community service for disorderly conduct.
Let’s hope that he remains in touch with his angelic side – especially when he learns the identity of the man said to be comforting Lena after their split. He is Taras Romanov, a 6 ft 3 in toned male model.
Taras declines to comment. Perhaps that’s wise. A Ukrainian, he describes himself as a ‘freedom fighter’ and makes no secret on social media of his support for his country’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Lebedev publicly supported Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Petra leaves LA behind and returns home to London
When Formula 1 heiress Petra Ecclestone moved her family to Los Angeles from their home in Chelsea in 2018, she had hoped it would be a haven away from the ‘unsafe’ streets in London.
Now, however, billionaire Bernie Ecclestone’s younger daughter has returned after nearly losing her £25 million mansion to the wildfires.
‘We got evacuated and haven’t been back since,’ Petra, 36, tells me at the Autosport Awards at the Roundhouse, where her father was honoured with the 75th Anniversary Award.
‘We were in a hotel for a few days, realised it was getting bad and came back to our London home,’ she says.
The future is green at the palace
King Charles is said to ‘love’ Ed Miliband’s efforts to make Britain greener, even though the Energy Secretary’s zealous push to meet Net Zero targets is reportedly alienating some fellow ministers.
So this will please ‘Red Ed’ – the Royal Household has applied for planning permission to install seven electric vehicle charging points at four locations around St James’s Palace.
‘Reducing the palace’s carbon footprint has become a key aim for Royal Household Property Section in the build-up to the UK becoming carbon neutral by 2050,’ says a palace statement.
F1 star Coulthard is ready to wed again
As a Formula 1 driver for 15 seasons, his career was built on speed. But David Coulthard prefers to take things slowly when it comes to his love life.
Swedish model Sigrid Silversand tells me that he has proposed to her after four years together. ‘It was a surprise as David is really good at hiding stuff,’ she says. ‘He kept it a secret and asked my parents for permission to marry me. He’s a proper gentleman and there are only a few of them left.’
The retired racing star, 53, proposed to Sigrid, 29, in Mauritius. ‘I wasn’t nervous proposing,’ he tells me at a party in London. ‘I’m very happy.’
He separated from wife Karen Minier, a Belgian TV presenter, in 2021 after eight years. They have a son, Dayton.
Late peer’s past as a turncoat Labour MP
He was, in his pomp, every inch a lord, from the patrician face and equestrian prowess to the membership of no fewer than three gentlemen’s clubs – not to mention possession of a splendid, 18th-century country pile, Frampton Hall in Lincolnshire.
But the death aged 80, announced yesterday, of Lord Davies of Stamford has prompted memories of his unusual path to his peerage.
Quentin Davies had been a Tory MP for 20 years before defecting to Labour in 2007 when he said leader Gordon Brown was someone ‘I have always greatly admired’. Presumably he’d forgotten that, two years earlier, he’d called Brown ‘extraordinarily incompetent’.
Triple-Bafta winner Mike Leigh’s new film, Hard Truths, follows the life of a troubled woman who is quickly enraged by ‘inconsiderate’ strangers.
The director admits to having a complaint of his own when it comes to the public’s behaviour.
‘My gripe is people who walk about with umbrellas without any consideration for what the spokes are going to do to people’s eyeballs,’ he says at a screening at London’s Barbican Centre.
This Morning presenter Ashley James says her working-class parents were determined to send her brother to public school because of his hair colour.
The former Made In Chelsea star says: ‘My brother, he’s very academic, ginger. My parents were very worried how he’d cope [at state school]. They just didn’t want my brother to be bullied.’
Ashley was also sent to boarding school. ‘All the girls in my year had titles,’ she says. ‘I even remember going to friends in the holidays. They’d teach me how to curtsy.’
