EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Samantha Cameron’s sister blasts ‘frustrated housewife’ Sasha Swire

Samantha Cameron has maintained a dignified silence since Sasha Swire spilled the most intimate secrets about their friendship. But now her sister, Emily Sheffield, has hit back in the most personal fashion.

Emily has dismissed Sasha as a ‘frustrated housewife’ and suggested she wrote the tell-all book because she was bitter at not being mentioned in memoirs published by major political figures such as Emily’s brother-in-law, David Cameron.

‘You sort of wonder why she did it, but she was always a bit of a frustrated housewife, which, actually, is sad for women,’ declares baronet’s daughter Emily, who succeeded George Osborne as editor of the London Evening Standard.

‘If you’re feeling frustrated, you should go out and do something, and this is what she did. But do you have to write about your close friends to get you notoriety? In her acknowledgements, she says thanks to all the Cameroons for barely mentioning me in their memoirs. This is payback.’

Sasha’s husband, Sir Hugo Swire, is an old friend of his fellow Old Etonian David Cameron and was given a job as a Northern Ireland minister. 

But that didn’t stop his former journalist wife disclosing the most embarrassing details of their friendship in Diary Of An MP’s Wife. 

For example, that Cameron had told her to go behind him on a coastal walk because ‘the scent you are wearing is affecting my pheromones — it makes me want to grab you and push you into the bushes and give you one’. The Swires were staying at the Camerons’ holiday home in Cornwall at the time.

Speaking on The Spectator’s Women With Balls podcast, Emily declares: ‘I was definitely shocked when I read it and the level of detail she had put in because it felt unnecessary. If you’re having dinner with a great friend, and they’re on your holiday, the fact they’re going up every night to write everything down is kind of weird.’

Samantha is, however, determined to rise above it. ‘I spoke to my sister last night,’ Emily says. ‘She’s not losing any sleep over it.’

Scots comic Billy Connolly prefers the treatment he receives from fans in Florida, where he lives with his wife, Pamela Stephenson, and doesn’t get pestered for selfies.

‘It happens everywhere, except America,’ he says. ‘You can be in a restaurant and there’s a table full of people next to you. 

You’ll be talking to your wife and this table will get up, walk to the door, and as they’re going out they’ll look over and give you a little salute. It’s a very pleasant thing. They know who you are but they leave you alone.’

Fiery Marco Pierre White became the first Briton to be awarded three Michelin stars, and now his younger son, Luciano, is cooking up his own recipe for success.

I can reveal the 26-year-old is defying the economic crisis by opening his first restaurant next week: Luccio’s, in Dorchester, Dorset.

‘It’s classic Italian at affordable prices with friendly service,’ Luciano tells me. The £5.50 meatballs will be named after his paternal grandmother, Maria Rosa.

‘I worked with Pierre Koffmann in London, the Adria brothers in Barcelona, and [Marco’s] The English House in Singapore,’ he says. 

He spent countless hours in the kitchen with his dad, who taught Gordon Ramsay before starring in such hit programmes as Hell’s Kitchen.

Straight-talking Marco says: ‘He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, and he’s very good with money.’

Who needs Netflix? While Prince Harry and Meghan are flush with cash from the television streaming giant, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are super-charging their Royal Foundation with a hat-trick of eye-catching appointments.

Not only have they appointed BBC newsreader Zeinab Badawi to be a director, I hear they’ve also recruited Alice Webb, who was in charge of BBC children’s television and is now boss of DVD giant Eagle Rock Entertainment. 

Helping to give Prince William and Kate’s charity a new global reach will be former foreign secretary William Hague, who will also be a director.

‘William and Catherine are very much focused on their charitable efforts,’ a friend tells me.

Fancy owning one of London’s most spectacular party pads? I hear that PR supremo Matthew Freud, who inspired Matthew Macfadyen’s character Tom in acclaimed U.S. drama Succession, is looking to sell his Primrose Hill home. 

Everyone from Tony Blair to Hollywood stars has been entertained at the property, which includes a courtyard patio that, at the press of a button, opens up to become a swimming pool.

The house is likely to be valued at more than £20 million, but Freud, who was married to Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth, insists he’s in no rush to sell, telling me he’s ‘not very actively’ marketing it.

Perhaps Macfadyen might put in an offer?

She played ill-fated Fantine in the BBC’s acclaimed adaptation of Les Miserables, but Lily Collins is enjoying a happy ending in real life.

Her boyfriend, the Hollywood director Charlie McDowell, went down on bended knee yesterday during a trip to the mountains from her home in Los Angeles.

The 31-year-old daughter of pop star Phil Collins accepted McDowell’s proposal, later telling him online: ‘I’ve been waiting my lifetime for you and I can’t wait to spend our lifetime together.’

Surrey-born Lily, whose mother is Phil’s American second wife Jill Tavelman, has been courted by Charlie for a year. 

Charlie, 36, whose parents are A Clockwork Orange star Malcom McDowell and Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen, replied: ‘I will forever cherish my adventure with you.’

Beatlemania didn’t go out with the Sixties.

Keira Knightley has revealed her daughter, Delilah, has become ‘obsessed’ with The Beatles at the tender age of five — and is besotted with 78-year-old Sir Paul McCartney.

‘It is really obsessive,’ says the Atonement star, who is married to rocker James Righton. ‘She knows all of the four films.

‘I am a fan of The Beatles, but the films are not that great, but we watch them on a loop. Hard Day’s Night — she knows all the words.

‘Paul McCartney is her big one. Every time he comes on the screen she just screams.’

Under fire for blundering into U.S. politics, Prince Harry has at least won a vote of confidence back home from Boris Johnson. 

I hear the charity the Duke of Sussex set up to help injured former servicemen and women, the Invictus Games Foundation, has been awarded £57,000 by the Government’s Office for Veterans’ Affairs. 

‘The Invictus Games have been a fantastic way of supporting our Forces,’ a source tells me.

What should you do when the person you meet through a dating app turns out to be someone else entirely?

Saucy television chef Gizzi Erskine admits she had one such mix-up when using the members-only Raya. ‘I thought I was going out with Orlando from The Maccabees,’ says the daughter of the late Lord Erskine of Rerrick. ‘I’d just read ‘Orlando’, and I was like, ‘Brilliant!’

‘I’d fancied him for years. I turned up and it was someone half my age from another band — who will remain nameless.’

Rather than playing it cool, she admits: ‘I literally lay on the floor, p***ing myself in hysterics. I texted my friend saying, ‘How do I get out of this?’ I had a drink. He was very sweet.’

Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch might have detected something curious when an ambulance arrived at a family wedding yesterday.

Happily, it was an auspicious start to proceedings, as it was carrying the woman due to marry his brother-in-law.

Patrick Hunter, whose sister is Benedict’s theatre director wife Sophie, wed Gemma Taylor, a fellow paramedic — which is what inspired the bride’s unusual entrance.

Benedict and Sophie’s sons, Christopher, five, and Hal, three, were pageboys at the ceremony at The Orleans House Gallery in Twickenham, South-West London. Due to Covid rules, the boys didn’t attend the evening reception at a nearby hotel.

Benedict, however, made use of his thespian talents by delivering a heart-warming speech.