SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: Queen's niece Lady Sarah Chatto has her hands full at Waitrose 

As the Queen’s niece, Lady Sarah Chatto might be expected to have flunkies to carry out menial tasks such as shopping.

But, as viewers of the BBC’s Elizabeth At 90 — A Family Tribute saw recently, Princess Margaret’s 52-year-old daughter is the most down-to-earth member of the Royal Family.

Lady Sarah, whose father is celebrated photographer Lord Snowdon, was spotted lugging her own shopping bags from a West London Waitrose. The store has royal warrants from Prince Charles and the Queen.

As the Queen’s niece, Lady Sarah Chatto might be expected to have flunkies to carry out menial tasks such as shopping.. But Lady Sarah was spotted lugging her own shopping bags from a West London Waitrose

Wearing a plain black long-sleeved top, a green-and-blue patterned long skirt and scruffy black Hogan trainers that cost £236, she struggled with her large handbag and two carriers in one hand. 

In the other, Lady Sarah, who has two sons with actor-turned-artist Daniel Chatto, took a heavy multipack of Evian water bottles.

Prince William likes to bang on about how hard he works, but I’ve never spotted him at Waitrose.

Despite attending Chelsea Flower Show with her long-term boyfriend, the conservationist David Mills Dame Judi Dench was overwhelmed with memories of her late husband of 30 years, Michael Williams.

‘I love gardens,’ says Dame Judi, who starred opposite Williams in the long-running sitcom A Fine Romance. ‘My husband was mad about our garden and we spent lots of time there.’

Earlier this month I disclosed that the Oscar-winning actress did not want to marry Mills because no one could replace Williams, who died in 2001.

‘I always think of him at this time of year,’ she tells me.

‘If one of us was away when the wisteria came out, we would take a picture and send it to the other. So when it flowers I think of him.’

Despite attending Chelsea Flower Show with her long-term boyfriend, the conservationist David Mills Dame Judi Dench was overwhelmed with memories of her late husband of 30 years, Michael Williams

Sparks could fly between comedian Sir Lenny Henry, announced by ITV as a new member of the Broadchurch cast, and Charlotte Rampling, who played a QC in the previous series of the murder drama. Rampling’s suggestion that black actors didn’t deserve to make the Oscars shortlist this year got short shrift from diversity campaigner Henry. ‘I’ve bought a house next to Charlotte Rampling,’ he joked. ‘We get on like a house on fire. Her house is going to be . . .’ An open-and-shut case for David Tennant and Olivia Colman’s detectives to solve, perhaps?

Poldark's girls: Eleanor Tomlinson Heida Reed and Ruby Bentalll celebrate Heida's birthday

On screen they’re rivals for the affections of dishy Ross Poldark, but in real life the actresses who play his wife Demelza and his ex-fiancee Elizabeth are bosom buddies.

Flame-haired Eleanor Tomlinson — Demelza in the hit BBC drama — joined Heida Reed (Elizabeth) and Ruby Bentall, who plays Ross’s cousin Verity, at a North London pub.

They were celebrating Heida’s 28th birthday with a cake so small she was able to balance it in the palm of one hand. No doubt they’re conscious of squeezing back into those corsets.

Flame-haired Eleanor Tomlinson — Demelza in the hit BBC drama — joined Heida Reed (Elizabeth) and Ruby Bentall, who plays Ross’s cousin Verity, at a North London pub

As one of showbusiness’s most famously devoted couples, Sir Elton John and husband David Furnish are casting off reminders of their hedonistic past.

The pair, who have two young sons, are selling off an untitled joint painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol at Sotheby’s in Paris, where it’s expected to fetch £700,000.

It features a crudely drawn skull in black and white next to a red sketch of a stomach surrounded by black scribbles.

Basquiat is said to have had a ‘voracious appetite for sex, drugs and dancefloors’, while Elton used to arrange for baby-oiled male models to sky-dive into his own parties at the stroke of midnight.

But that, of course, is all in the past now, so the unconventional artwork must go.

The pair, who have two young sons, are selling off an untitled joint painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol at Sotheby’s in Paris, where it’s expected to fetch £700,000