Good news and bad news for Jemima Khan. Writing in today’s Spectator about the hopelessness of English men as flirts, Nancy Dell’ Olio refers to “the bumbling Hugh Grant sort, whose shyness, though endearing, suggested an underlying terror of women”. Grant and Khan used to date, of course. But then Nancy met Jemima’s new boyfriend.
“One of the few British men who bucks the trend is that shaggy-haired Casanova Russell Brand,” Nancy writes. “I recently experienced first-hand the gaze across the room from those penetrating eyes. Russell understands the power of the stare, that feeling of being ‘the one’.”
Nancy says Russell’s secret is that he’s openly fond of his mother, who adores him. “An Italian boy will be showered with devotion by mamma. There is nothing muted about an Italian mother’s love for her son, nothing English and restrained. No wonder the boy grows up with the conviction of being the answer to every woman’s dreams.”
