Zara’s post-marriage hideaway

By RICHARD KAY, EDITOR-AT-LARGE
Updated: 19:41 EST, 29 March 2011

While other second homeowners fret about how on earth they will ever sell their retreats in bankrupt Portugal now its property market has collapsed, the Queen’s granddaughter, Zara Phillips, is just about to move into her brand-new holiday villa there.

Work has almost finished on the four-bedroom, four-bathroom villa Cascais, on a  200-acre gated development 20 minutes north of Lisbon.

Locals are saying it should certainly be ready to welcome Zara, 29, and her rugby-playing fiancé Mike Tindall for a pre-wedding break.

Resort retreat: Zara Phillips marries her rugby-playing fiance in July. Her holiday home should be ready long before then, locals say

The relatively modest house, which includes a private pool and terrace, cost around £600,000 and is part of the CampoReal Golf Resort and Spa being built by her father Captain Mark Phillips’ equestrian pal Eduardo Netto de Almeida.

The spread will include a riding school and equestrian centre with stables for 40 horses.

Though the couple have hinted they will have no time for a honeymoon after their July 30 wedding at Holyrood House in Edinburgh, I understand there is the possibility of a post-marriage trip.

They have a few days free before Tindall joins the England squad for its World Cup warm-up against Wales on August 6.

Holiday home: The CampoReal Golf resort near Portugal's Silver Coast, where Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall have had a 'relatively modest' house built

Titchmarsh and a royal Greek drama

By appointment: Titchmarsh and Prince Charles

He is Britain’s favourite gardener but Alan Titchmarsh rarely gets his hands dirty these days, having graduated from shrubbery to presenting music programmes, doing cartoon voiceovers and hosting a chatshow.

All the same, he was the obvious choice when he was invited to tour Highgrove with the Prince of Wales (on hands and knees, according to some unkind critics) for a show about Charles’s beloved garden.

And now he is reprising his ‘by appointment’ role for a documentary to mark Prince Philip’s 90th birthday.

Alas, filming for ITV’s The Duke At 90 has not been going entirely to plan. For I hear there was something of a brouhaha at the North London home of the exiled King Constantine of Greece, Prince William’s godfather.

The King was pleased to be invited to take part. Says a friend: ‘He agreed to be interviewed because of his love for the Royal Family which extended the hand of friendship when he was deposed in the Sixties.’

On the day, the production team arrived at Constantine’s large house in Hampstead Garden Suburb. According to a source all was fine until filming was about to roll when the King inquired: ‘But where is Mr Titchmarsh?’

At that point, I gather, Constantine was somewhat taken aback to be told that the broadcaster himself wasn’t actually going to conduct the interview at all. Instead, the questions would be put by an assistant.

Needless to say, his highness was less than happy and the film crew was told in no uncertain terms that the so-called interview was off.

Says a friend of Constantine: ‘If you are asked if you are prepared to be interviewed by Alan Titchmarsh, you do expect that Alan Titchmarsh will actually be there.’

Yesterday the King himself was playing the incident down. A spokeswoman tells me: ‘It is true the crew arrived for the filming and only then did it become apparent Alan Titchmarsh wasn’t there. But it is no big deal and the interview is being re-scheduled.’

Adds a spokesman for ITV: ‘All we can say is that there was an unfortunate misunderstanding.’

Herbie Kretzmer, lyricist of enduring West End favourite Les Miserables and hit-maker for more than four decades, is about to receive what he says is his greatest honour.

The songwriter, a former Daily Mail colleague and erudite television critic who recently was accorded the OBE, is flying to South Africa, which he left in the Fifties, to receive a doctorate from his old university at Grahamstown.

Herbie, a youthful 85, who wrote Susan Boyle’s big X Factor song I Dreamed A Dream, knows exactly what he will say in his acceptance speech: ‘I left the university without a degree. Now I’m getting an honorary one.

'What kept you so long?’

Former Cavalry officer-turned-Tory MP Hugh Robertson needed all his military expertise canvassing in his native Canterbury.

While his charm may have won over the voters, he had to take evasive action from a  voter’s angry dog.

Robertson, 48, recalls: ‘I was halfway up the path when a West Highland terrier appeared. It took one look, bared its teeth and charged. I just legged it. I jumped over the side of the gate, but unfortunately lifted the entire thing out of the ground.

'At that point the dog went straight for me. I ducked, he flew over my shoulder and, without a backward glance, headed off towards the North Downs.’

The Sports Minister tells Kent Life: ‘At that moment, the householders appeared to find their dog a disappearing dot on the horizon and their Parliamentary candidate holding their gate in his hands. I couldn’t find it within me to say: “And may I count on your vote?” ’

Just deserts for Pineapple queen

Honour: Debbie Moore at this year's Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Of The Year Award party

Former stockmarket pin-up Debbie Moore has stolen a march on fellow winners of the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year award, which this year went to civil engineer Michelle McDowell.

The Pineapple Dance Studios queen, who nearly 30 years ago became the first woman to float her company on the stock exchange, tells me her picture is to be hung in the National Portrait Gallery’s permanent collection.

‘I used to be asked by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a weekly basis to come and visit her and advise about engaging the young in the leisure industry,’ says Debbie, 64, at the champagne-fuelled awards at Claridge’s.

‘But this is a great honour.’

The painting of Manchester-born Debbie is part of a series on successful women from the North.

She is now one of the entrepreneurs on Business Secretary Vince Cable’s advisory task force who meet ‘once every three months’ — a far cry from the days when Lady Thatcher was in Downing Street.

Actor John Simm had to be extra careful filming a scene in new BBC drama Exile in which he slapped his screen lover . . . because she was played by his real-life wife Kate Magowan.

The Life On Mars star, 40, who has been married to dark-haired Kate, 35, for seven years, admits: ‘It was difficult to do those scenes. They aren’t particularly pleasant to do and you have to gee yourself up. You have to look like it’s really happened so I had to get it right.’

Happily, judging by their smiles at a preview screening of the drama at Bafta HQ in Piccadilly, no harm was done.

PS Blakes hotel founder Anouska Hempel has had her wings clipped after breaking an ankle in India.

It meant Anouska, wife of financier Sir Mark Weinberg, was unable to read as planned at this week’s Mass for Ned Ryan.

Instead her son Jonathan, 29, who works in Australia, read it, requiring a mammoth journey.

‘I got on a plane in Sydney in the morning, arrived in London, gave the reading at the Brompton Oratory, went to the wake and then got a night flight back to Oz,’ he tells me wearily.