ALISON BOSHOFF: It's the Great British Booze Off! Nigella launches drinks business

Everyone loves Nigella Lawson on the Great British Bake Off – and it seems that she is preparing for a commercial renaissance to follow her re-entry into celebrity culture.

At 66, she has just set up a business venture, Bar Nigella Limited, which will be a wholesaler, selling wine, beer and spirits.

She’s never endorsed booze before and once said: ‘I’m not very good at alcohol’, explaining that it exacerbates her anxiety.

Now, though, she is set to join Kylie Minogue, Gary Barlow, Graham Norton and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, with her own marque.

The firm’s co-director is Nigella’s agent – production mogul Alex Fane, 33, who also runs the Henley Festival. They were pictured arm in arm in 2022 and have worked together for more than a decade.

Speaking in 2018, Nigella said: ‘I’m not very good at alcohol. I’ve never been a big drinker. I do like it. It’s being out of practice.’

She added: ‘It does something to me, but I think maybe that’s an age thing... after a certain age, you don’t deal with wine as well.

‘I feel that I’m quite an anxious person and drink can really exacerbate that anxiety. At first it gets rid of it all. But then afterwards, [there’s] that horrible tight feeling of worry and just generally not feeling quite right.’

Everyone loves Nigella Lawson on the Great British Bake Off – and it seems that she is preparing for a commercial renaissance to follow her re-entry into celebrity culture

Clock is ticking on Harry's Diana documentary 

Is Prince Harry giving himself an impossible task with the documentary about his late mother Princess Diana?

His team are now briefing that he is ‘considering’ making a show about Diana, timed to coincide with the 30th anniversary of her death next August (having hotly denied that there was anything going on a few months ago).

But there are two big issues. The first – as he admitted in his book Spare – is that he has few personal memories of his mother, who died when he was only 12. And some of those, he added in the book, were only recovered many years later, in therapy. 

That means he’ll need to secure some ‘talking heads’ who do have clear and fascinating insights to offer on the subject of the ‘People’s Princess’. Preferably ones who haven’t told those stories multiple times before.

The second is that there are only ten months left till the 30th anniversary, which I hear from several sources isn’t enough time to put together something of this complexity.

Is Prince Harry giving himself an impossible task with the documentary about his late mother Princess Diana?

Realistically, Harry has a couple of months to pull together the entire project, find and hire a director and a writer, sign up interviewees and then sell the project.

He’d then need to be filming soon after the turn of the year, to get it edited, subbed and dubbed for international release and passed legally.

As things stand, there isn’t even a full proposal yet to show potential broadcasters.(Netflix still has a ‘first look’ deal with the Sussexes.)

And even assuming the Prince, a rookie TV producer, can pull all of that off... won’t a documentary ruin his great objective in coming back to the UK, which is to have King Charles stand shoulder to shoulder with him at the opening of the Invictus Games in Birmingham in July next year?

One TV source said: ‘It makes no sense.’ As ever!

We're off to the privy

The stars of the new big screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility were not, perhaps, as ladylike as you might imagine

The stars of the new big screen adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense And Sensibility were not, perhaps, as ladylike as you might imagine.

Esme Creed-Miles, who plays Marianne Dashwood opposite Daisy Edgar-Jones as her sister Elinor, said of filming: ‘I remember very fondly us all being in this big country house together and going for wees in the bushes. Why did I say that?!’

Becks feud hots up as Mark Wahlberg joins Team Brooklyn 

Becks feud hots up as Mark Wahlberg joins Team Brooklyn

Brooklyn Beckham aimed a hard swipe at his famous family with his bombshell Instagram post in January, in which he revealed he had cut them out of his life, and had no desire to reconcile.

He returned to the fray again with the DoorDash advert during the World Cup in June, in which he referenced the row.

Now comes another pointed public ‘diss’, as the nepo chef has persuaded actor Mark Wahlberg – a former friend and now enemy of his father – to endorse his Cloud 23 hot sauce.

Wahlberg has posted an Instagram Stories endorsement of Brooklyn’s sauce, using it to spice up some grilled chicken. He holds up the distinctive Cloud 23 bottle to the camera proclaiming: ‘Sweet Jalapeno – my boy Brooklyn!’

Marky Mark used to be a good buddy and business partner of David Beckham... until it all went wrong, and Becks’ company sued Wahlberg’s fitness firm.

Just to rub salt in to the hot sauce, Wahlberg has been pals with Brooklyn’s billionaire father-in-law Nelson Peltz for many years and also played the father of Brooklyn’s wife Nicola in Transformers: Age Of Extinction in 2014. At the time, Wahlberg said: ‘I have known Nicola since she was like 13. I am very good friends with her dad and the rest of the family. She has a really great work ethic.’

In gaining Wahlberg’s endorsement, Brooklyn is once again leaning into Team Peltz and away from his own family.

Brooklyn Beckham aimed a hard swipe at his famous family with his bombshell Instagram post in January, in which he revealed he had cut them out of his life, and had no desire to reconcile

None of this messaging will have been lost on former footballer David, who appears to have been trying to make peace with his son again this week, ‘liking’ a social media post featuring Brooklyn from Paris Fashion Week. 

There was no reciprocal ‘like’ from Brooklyn, who has blocked his entire family on Instagram. Brooklyn and Nicola have been in Paris with her family, though unsurprisingly they steered clear of his designer mother Victoria’s event.

Brooklyn said in that January Insta post that he just wants to be left in peace and has found contentment in a life away from his ‘inauthentic’ and ‘performative’ family and their brand.

Those close to him explain that he finds it ‘stressful’ when his parents reference him on social media by, for instance, sending birthday or Christmas wishes.

And I broke the story in this column some months ago that he had asked them to contact him only through lawyers as a result.

David became friends with actor and entrepreneur Wahlberg when he was based in Los Angeles, and in 2020 signed a deal with Wahlberg’s fitness company, F45 Training.

The two families holidayed together in 2022. But in October of that year, Beckham sued F45 for $18.8million for breach of contract over the deal, which had seen him become a brand ambassador. The dispute centred around stocks which Beckham said he had been promised. It was settled out of court in 2024.

Digger disaster 

The Digger disaster is, naturally, a topic of discussion for everyone this week

The Digger disaster is, naturally, a topic of discussion for everyone this week. It opened to woeful global box office numbers, revealing limits to Tom Cruise’s power; the impact of his rigid ‘no questions’ PR strategy – whether they be about Suri, Katie, Nicole... or anything else; and the amount of Tom torso any of us wishes to see on the cover of GQ.

The box office bomb is one of the biggest in Hollywood history and, despite a handful of positive reviews (including one from my colleague Brian Viner), a sad final release for the iconic studio Warner Bros, which has been bought and folded into a new entity, Skydance.

Overlooked in the chatter is the fact that ‘dozens’ of Scientology staffers were invited to the royal premiere of the film. The actor remains committed to the religion and his adopted daughter Bella is understood to be a regular visitor to its UK HQ, Saint Hill in East Grinstead.

Is there something in the water?

Glenn Close will play King Herod in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar for the musical’s final week in the West End (at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane) in January

Two pieces of ‘gender blind’ casting were announced this week. The Globe will put on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar from November with Kate Duchene in the title role. 

Then comes news that Glenn Close will play King Herod in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar for the musical’s final week in the West End (at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane) in January.

Close is best known as the bunny-boiler in Fatal Attraction so Herod should pose no problem for her.

Reverend Richard Coles anecdote

The Reverend Richard Coles, who turned 64 this year, shared a cute Macca anecdote with the White Wine Question Time podcast recently.

He told how his friend Humphrey got a phone call on HIS 64th, and on picking up heard somebody warbling the Beatles hit (‘Will you still need me...when I’m 64’).

Coles said his friend replied: ‘Thank you very much. Who is it?’

‘The caller said: “It’s Paul McCartney.” ‘And it WAS Paul McCartney. Someone had got him to phone him up.’