Tea parties with Ghislaine Maxwell sound like something to avoid. Writer Christina Oxenberg recalls one when Jeffrey Epstein’s friend greeted guests wearing nothing more than her underwear.

‘She was wearing very pretty, white frilly things,’ Christina tells me.

‘She was also wearing a lot of jewellery, gold things and probably diamonds.

'It was hot and she kept fanning herself with a copy of Vogue. There were three other woman there who were very well dressed.’

Tea parties with Ghislaine Maxwell (pictured with Jeffrey Epstein in 2005) sound like something to avoid

Writer Christina Oxenberg (left) recalls one party when Jeffrey Epstein’s friend greeted guests wearing nothing more than her underwear

Christina, whose mother is Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, claims that Ghislaine mistreated her Yorkshire terrier puppy, Max.

‘She thought it was funny to throw this poor puppy across the room,’ adds Christina, who’s publishing her memoirs via the website Patreon.

‘That was my cue to leave. I thought, “These are not people I want to be friends with.”’

Succession laws were changed before Prince George’s birth so a daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would become Queen, had she been born first.

Among Prince William and Kate’s aristocratic friends, however, boys still inherit titles, however many older sisters they have.

So their pal Sir Henry Ropner is thrilled that his wife, Natasha, has just given birth to their first son, after having three girls.

‘Henry and Natasha are delighted,’ a friend tells me.

Sir Henry Ropner, friends with Prince William and Kate Middleton, is thrilled that his wife has given birth to their first son after three girls because he will inherit his baronetcy

James will inherit the baronetcy of the dashing shipping heir.

No doubt, he will eventually enjoy playing with one-year-old Prince Louis at the Ropners’ 1,000-acre estate in Yorkshire. Sir Henry’s family own a £33.7 million shipping management firm.

When William split up temporarily from the then Kate Middleton in 2007, Sir Henry provided a shoulder for her to cry on. The Edinburgh University graduate, 38, who attended Eton with William, married businessman’s daughter Natasha in 2012.

She had made headlines when she posed as Venus in Country Life magazine.

Sir Oliver Letwin, who was involved in a series of calamities while a Tory minister, is aiming to profit from doom now he’s left Parliament. He has written a book called Apocalypse How?

Speaking at the launch party for Tessa Keswick’s book The Colour Of The Sky After Rain, at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Knightsbridge, Sir Oliver tells me: ‘It’s about how our communications networks are all connected and catastrophe could result.’ Lawks . . .

Notoriety does not appear to be helping Veronica Lucan’s former home to sell. I hear that the Belgravia property, where the wife of the fugitive 7th Earl of Lucan lived until her death in 2017, has had its price slashed by £250,000 to just under £3 million and new estate agents appointed after it failed to attract an acceptable offer.

Its failure to sell is surprising as it underwent a £1 million transformation by its new owner, who bought the pad in a state of ‘complete disrepair’ for £1.5 million.

This will get the crockery flying: Turner Prize-winner Grayson Perry says his fellow artists take themselves too seriously.

‘A lot kid themselves that they’re deeply serious politicians, or activists,’ opines the cross-dressing potter.

This will get the crockery flying: Turner Prize-winner Grayson Perry says his fellow artists take themselves too seriously

‘But people go to art exhibitions on their day off. It’s a leisure activity for most people. You don’t go into a gallery to be hectored.’

Perry adds: ‘There’s a section [of the art world] that has over the years equated performative seriousness with worth. Gradually they’ve upped the obscurity of the language and the difficulty of the art.’

Sounds like a case of the pot calling the kettle black . . .