One is the bespectacled, mild-mannered playwright who has become a national treasure; the other is a cantankerous New York restaurateur who publicly shamed James Corden.
So Alan Bennett and Keith McNally make a most unlikely couple.
But McNally, 73, is to reveal in his memoirs that he had two gay relationships, including a torrid, five-year romance with Bennett.
‘Keith wanted to be completely honest in his book,’ a source tells me. ‘However awkward that may be.’
When Bennett turned 90 last year, McNally posted on social media: ‘We’ve been best friends since 1968 when I was in Alan’s first play, Forty Years On.’
The relationship is understood to have started at that time of that production, which starred Sir John Gielgud.
Bennett had made his name as a satirist on the hugely influential comedy stage revue Beyond the Fringe, which also starred Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook.
McNally was an aspiring actor at the time and his relationship with Bennett is said to have continued until he moved to America in 1975 to become a restaurateur.
Bennett has lived in London for decades with Rupert Thomas, the former editor of The World of Interiors magazine.
He has said of himself, ‘I am homosexual’, but also admitted to ‘flings’ with women. Memorably, he once referred to questions about his sexuality as like asking a man who has just crawled across the Sahara desert to choose between Perrier or Malvern mineral water.
McNally was married to fellow restaurateur Lynn Wagenknecht, with whom he has children including the actress Isabelle McNally.
He hit the headlines in 2022 when he banned Corden from his Balthazar brasserie, describing the Gavin & Stacey star as a ‘hugely gifted comedian but a tiny cretin of a man’ for being rude to his waiting staff.
McNally claimed Corden demanded two rounds of free drinks for his table after he found a hair in his food, and on a second occasion had screamed at the waiting staff after finding traces of egg white in his wife Julia Carey’s egg yolk omelette.
The ban was lifted when Corden ‘apologised profusely’.
McNally’s memoirs, I Regret Almost Everything, are due to be published next week.
McNally and Bennett could not be reached for comment.
Humdinger of a party, Lady Alice!
Hum Fleming, great-niece of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, is due to wed former Tory minister Zac Goldsmith in September – so how will her wedding dress compare with this?
PR executive Hum, 35, wore a spectacular green dress and a floral crown to the 30th birthday party of Lady Alice Manners at her ancestral seat, Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire.
Her twin, Chloe, wore a pink veil and a floral headpiece, which she struggled to keep on her head while searching for her place at the dining table.
Lady Alice, inset, wore a pink dress for the party, whose theme was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With her is pal India Rose James, 33, who sported a pair of wings.
Little Mix Jade snaps up a £3million home
Pop star Jade Thirlwall complained this week that when she competed on The X Factor she ‘sold her soul’ for fame.
However, it hasn’t done her bank balance any harm – her subsequent career with Little Mix has been highly lucrative. So much so, in fact, that I can disclose that the singer, 32, has bought an impressive house in Blackheath, south-east London.
Jade paid £2.85million for the six-bedroom property, where she lives with boyfriend Jordan
Stephens, 33, frontman of the hip-hop duo Rizzle Kicks. He said this week that he was happy for her to be richer than him, adding: ‘My girlfriend earns more money than me. She’s super-successful and I f*****g love it.
‘To some people, it’s emasculating – which I find hilarious.’
Snakes alive! Pamela Hicks is 96
Lady Pamela Hicks, who was in India when her father, the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was viceroy, certainly had an exotic 96th birthday.
One of Queen Elizabeth’s two surviving bridesmaids, she was reunited at her Oxfordshire home with creatures including a milk snake, tarantula, sugar glider, meerkat, frog and scorpion that she first met three years ago.
They were brought along by Living Things, which provides wildlife experiences.
‘When I asked my mother what she would like for her birthday, she didn’t hesitate,’ reveals ex-model India Hicks. ‘She said, ‘I would like the tarantula back’. So he came, along with some other friends.’
West End star Dylan hurt by trans ruling
Bud Light’s woke partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney led to a conservative backlash in America and a boycott of the beer.
This week, the American made her West End debut in the musical We Aren’t Kids Anymore at the Savoy Theatre.
Her co-star Jenna Lee-James tells me ‘it has been a difficult time’ for Dylan, 28, pictured, after the Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. ‘Dylan has gone through a very public transformation,’ she says.
‘Why should people not be accepted for who they want to be? She’s a human being who now identifies as female.
‘She’s the most beautiful woman on the planet.’
David Baddiel says he and former comedy partner Rob Newman, 60, have finally become friends again following their acrimonious break-up.
He reveals that they recently met and were the closest they’d been since they became the first comedians to perform at Wembley Arena 32 years ago.
‘I would say it’s the best we’ve got on since Wembley,’ Baddiel, also 60, says. ‘It was actually really, really nice to see him, because it was quite bad.’
The comic has previously explained: ‘It was incredibly acrimonious. We weren’t speaking at times, except on stage. Fame… is quite toxic – it certainly was in that relationship.’
