Lady Victoria Hervey has been outspoken in her support for Prince Andrew and his old friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in prison in the U.S. for enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls.

But as a result, Lady Victoria claims, she had to flee the United States — her home for two decades.

‘It all started getting scary when I got involved with a new documentary about Ghislaine,’ the Marquess of Bristol’s sister tells me. ‘I pretended to be on a whistleblower’s side to get evidence to support Ghislaine.

‘I have been working undercover and it’s dangerous. The powers that be over there know all about me, I even thought I was being followed. I was glad to get back to the UK. I just want this to be over and stop looking over my shoulder and get back to normal.’

The socialite adds: ‘I’ve been writing to Ghislaine in prison and am in touch with Prince Andrew, but I can’t discuss him, although the Palace is fully aware of what’s going on.

‘It is delicate, but I think there is hope for Ghislaine.’

Singer Robbie Williams seems determined to unsettle visitors at his home. I hear he’s bought an artwork emblazoned with: ‘Raising My Awareness, becoming a better person and trying not to punch you in the throat.’ 

The £9,000 work, called Mindfulness, is made by artist Mr. Controversial. ‘I like to create art that speaks to the inner you, the non-PC thoughts that you have but are afraid to say aloud,’ the London-born artist tells me at a private viewing of his latest collection at Old Sessions House in Clerkenwell in the capital.

 Apple stars in Cotswolds

It can sometimes feel a challenge getting through the Cotswolds without stumbling into Kate Moss, the Beckhams, Blur’s Alex James — or becoming entangled with Amanda Holden, Sir Patrick Stewart, or, of course, Jeremy Clarkson.

But now the rich and famous are setting up there in pairs. I hear that Sir Jony Ive, mastermind of so many Apple devices, and his friend Marc Newson, whose Lockheed Lounge chair sold for £2.4 million — a record for a work sold at auction by a living designer –— have snapped up houses in the same honey-stoned village. Ive, 56, who designed Charles’s Coronation emblem, has dipped into his £200 million fortune to pay for a gabled gem dating from 1590.

Newson has bought an even grander Jacobean pile. Sir Jony helped to create the iPhone and iPad. He hired Newson, 59, to work for Apple in 2014. Their company, LoveFrom, is collaborating with Ferrari as it prepares to launch its first electric model. Just the thing for humming over to Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm for a pint of ‘cow juice’.

New Kidd on the block to rival Stella’s range 

Stella McCartney released an organic beauty range last year with a serum costing £110.

But now the designer will have to compete with a new Kidd on the block. I hear model-turned-pub landlady Jodie Kidd is about to launch her own organic range.

‘Ours won’t be like Stella’s,’ Kidd tells me at a private view of Zara Muse’s artworks at the Grove Gallery in London’s Fitzrovia. ‘It will be very affordable. Her products’ design is very plain.’

As September ebbs away and winter beckons, artist Gail Lilley remains serene.

The secret, explains the wife of former Cabinet Minister Lord (Peter) Lilley, is transcendental meditation each morning for 15 minutes in the shower. ‘I started when we bought a house with a walk-in shower,’ says Gail, who adds that the practice yields ‘nice ideas’ as well as inducing a sense of calm — so much so that they have inspired her to create tapestries for an exhibition next year ‘on the theme of transcendental meditation’.

Alas, her husband, she says, becomes less serene.

‘It does,’ she concedes, ‘use a lot of hot water.’

The smart set’s talking about… Lady Violet’s bid to take on ‘woke’ National Trust 

Her younger sister’s one-time boyfriend Otis Ferry inveigled his way into the Commons to protest against a ban on hunting.

However, Lady Violet Manners, 30, eldest of the Duke of Rutland’s three daughters, prefers a more decorous approach to campaigning.

Bidding to help rid the National Trust (NT) of its ‘woke’ agenda, Lady Violet (left) is standing for election to its council, backed by Restore Trust, a group of members sickened by NT’s virtue-signalling. ‘I believe the Trust has become distracted by a political agenda that detracts from its mission,’ she says. Lady Violet adds that it should ‘not view its history through the political lens of today when conserving the past’. Very measured Manners indeed.

But that’s not all. Violet grew up at Belvoir Castle, in Leicestershire. ‘As a child, I worked at Belvoir’s gift shop and café on weekends and holidays,’ she recalls, and adds that listening to the castle’s visitors taught her about ‘the world’s love for the UK’s houses and landscapes’.

Glioblastoma is considered the most aggressive tumor that can form in the brain. Senator John McCain was diagnosed with one in July 2017.

Patients have a 10 per cent chance of surviving five years after their diagnosis, according to figures. The average lifespan is between 14 and 16 months.

Three adults per every 100,000 will be struck down with a glioblastoma, says The American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS).

It is most commonly found in men aged 50 to 60, and there is no link between developing glioblastoma and having a previous history with other cancers.

WHAT IS THE TUMOR MADE OF? 

The tumor is made up of a mass of cells growing quickly in the brain, and in most cases patients have no family history of the disease.

It won’t spread to other organs, however, once it is diagnosed, it is nearly impossible to target, surgeons claim.

Unlike other types of brain cancer which are more specifically located, glioblastoma can occur in any part of the brain. 

WHAT TREATMENT IS AVAILABLE? 

Because the tumor likely already spread deep into the brain by the time it is diagnosed, the cancerous tissue is incredibly difficult to remove. 

Surgeon will only ever remove the tumor, or part of the tumor, if it won’t do any damage to the surrounding brain tissue.

Dr Babcar Cisse, a neurosurgeon at the Weill Cornell Brain and Spine Center, told Daily Mail Online in July 2017: ‘By the time a glioblastoma is diagnosed, microfibers can spread to the rest of the brain which an MRI would not spot.

‘So even if the main tumor is removed and the patient receives radiation and chemotherapy, it will come back.’ 

GRADING A GLIOBLASTOMA

Brain tumors are graded from between one to four, depending on how fast they grow and how aggressive they are.

Malignant tumors are either given a high-grade three or four, while benign ones are given a lower grade one or two. 

Glioblastoma is often referred to as a grade four astrocytoma – another form of brain tumor, says the AANS.

SYMPTOMS

Patients typically complain of symptoms such as confused vision, trouble with memory, dizziness and headaches.

The symptoms are somewhat nonspecific, and vary from person to person, and may not persist. 

Some patients suffer from blindness if the tumour compresses their optic nerve, which connects the retina to the brain, resulting in vision loss.

The disease is therefore impossible to diagnose based on symptoms alone.

 

Hope for thousands with ADHD as scientists say new brain treatment can ‘transform’ lives of sufferers

• University of Surrey researchers recruited 23 unmedicated children with ADHD
• They took a two-week programme of brain stimulations and cognitive training
• More than half showed significant improvements in symptoms after the 2 weeks 

By Xantha Leatham Deputy Science Editor For The Daily Mail

Updated: 20:00 EDT, 1 August 2023

A pill filled with poo designed to boost gut health and prevent serious infections is being given to hundreds of Brits as part of a liver disease trial.

Researchers announced the results of an initial smaller study of 32 people who had undergone a faecal microbiota transplant at a conference in Vienna.

The patients with advanced liver cirrhosis had the ‘poo transplant’ delivered to their stomachs via a tube down their nose.

After three months, levels of good bacteria in the gut increased and the gut barrier was strengthened. Researchers also said the volunteers had less of the deadly toxin ammonia in their blood.

Now the same team at King’s College London have developed a ‘crapsule’ – a tablet containing freeze-dried stool donated from healthy volunteers to make it easier to take.

They are beginning the new larger five-year study, called PROMISE, to see if taking the tablets every three months for two years can reduce hospital admissions.

Chief investigator Professor Debbie Shawcross said patients with advanced cirrhosis were susceptible to nasty infections caused by ‘bad bacteria’ which put them in intensive care.

But this was replaced by ‘good’ bacteria from the donors in the old study, which was called PROFIT.

‘We wanted to see if we changed the gut microbiome of a small group of people with liver disease, could we improve outcomes, particularly their susceptibility to infection?’

The initial feasibility study was done partly to see if the treatment was acceptable to patients.

The scientist, who is professor of hepatology and chronic liver failure at King’s College London, added: ‘You can imagine there could be some potentially awful things that people might have in their mind. 

‘But everybody was very on board with it, and it generally made people feel a lot better.

‘We showed it was safe and feasible to do and that actually, that by changing the gut microbiome in patients with liver disease, we could potentially change the outlook and the outcomes for these patients.’

In many cases, the only treatment for cirrhosis patients is a liver transplant.

Professor Shawcross added: ‘The “crapsules”, which have none of the taste or smell as the name suggests, may offer new hope for patients with cirrhosis who are out of treatment options.’

The new research was revealed at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Congress 2023 taking place in Vienna. 

Professor Shawcross said 16 centres across England, Scotland and Wales, including Newcastle, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Plymouth and Portsmouth, were currently recruiting patients with liver cirrhosis for the study.

The poo therapy – known scientifically as a Faecal Microbiota Transplant – will also be studied to see if it has an effect on diabetes and obesity.

The FMT transplants are currently used in the NHS for treatment for hospital infection C.difficile which causes severe diarrhoea, but are being investigated in a number of conditions including arthritis, skin cancer and diabetes.

Her co-researcher Professor Lindsey Ann Edwards said it brought a renewed sense of hope for patients with advanced cirrhosis, offering a potential breakthrough in their treatment and survival.

The two women are working on the new trial, funded by the National Institute of Health Research UK (NIHR), with the British Liver Trust charity.

Cirrhosis — irreversible scarring of the liver, often caused by alcohol — is the third biggest cause of mortality and loss of working life in the UK.

Pamela Healy, chief executive of the British Liver Trust, said: ‘We are delighted to support this innovative research that could become a life-changing treatment for patients.

‘Not only can untreatable infections be serious themselves, but they can also trigger further serious complications.

‘The researchers have worked with the Trust to ensure that patients have been actively involved in all the stages of the study from its initial conception through to design and delivery.’

She said the PROMISE trial was a ‘critical endeavour’ that will shed further light on the advantages of this treatment for people with cirrhosis who develop drug-resistant infections.

The new research has wider implications to potentially tackle antimicrobial resistance, she added.

‘Finding new, effective ways to treat resistant bacteria is one of the most important challenges in global medicine and this could provide a solution that could save healthcare systems across the world, millions of pounds.’

Liver specialist Thomas Berg, professor of medicine at the University of Leipzig, Germany and EASL Secretary-General, told the conference that the British research was ‘exciting’.

Dr Berg added: ‘This study confirms the growing awareness in recent times of the link between gut health and liver disease and will be key to our scientific understanding around liver health for years to come.’

Dr Lindsey Edwards, from King’s College London, told the EASL press conference in Vienna that it was a ‘pretty crude’ process.

‘We take poop. We mash it up in a cocktail blender. We joke and say shaken not stirred – but you don’t drink it,’ she said.

‘It’s either administered by endoscopy or you can take it by capsules or we call them crapsules.

‘It restores all of your good bacteria. But the good thing in restoring those good bacteria is it restores all of those enzymes and it metabolically reprogrammes you, essentially.’

She explained that reducing infections for liver patients was vital. ‘Infections to liver patients are deadly for two reasons. They either die with the infection or they get delisted from transplant, which is a last resort.

‘So it’s really important to try and stop these patients from getting infections.’

She said it was also important as it means the vulnerable patients don’t fall victim to antibiotic resistance.

‘What we’re doing is bolstering your immune system so you don’t lead as many antibiotics. That’s also very important, because one of the largest global health problems alongside liver disease is antimicrobial resistance.’

Aleksander Krag, vice-secretary of EASL and a liver specialist in Denmark said it was a ‘beautiful example of how deeper understanding changes in technology can suddenly lead to whole new avenues of how we can understand and help patients in new ways.’

In the first trial the patients were given the FMT 30 days and in the second study they will be given the crapsules for three years then followed up for two years.

All the donors had a vegan or vegetarian diet – by chance not design – and were carefully screened for 26 illnesses including Covid-19.

Dr Edwards said: ‘They also undergo lots of different testing, lifestyle, questionnaires, all of that kind of thing. So make sure there is nothing that we’re transmitting across.’

For more information on the trial see https://www.fmt-trials.org/promise/faqs-2/

‘Very soft and very pliable’: Flexible robot offers hope of less painful bowel cancer checks to 900,000 Brits

By Xantha Leatham Deputy Science Editor For The Daily Mail

Updated: 20:51 EDT, 18 June 2023

Lila Moss, Vick Hope and Charli XCX were among the celebrity arrivals at the 2023 Royal Academy of Arts Summer Preview Party at Burlington House in London on Tuesday. 

The model daughter of Kate Moss, 20, kept it simple but elegant in a black slip dress, which showcased her slim physique as she posed for photographs outside the historic building.

Lila, who accessorised with delicate drop earrings, wore her long blonde tresses in a loose sleek style, while keeping her make-up to a minimum with a light coverage and a slick of nude lipstick.

Vick, 33, who looked incredible in a sequin checked print co-ord, showcased her toned midriff in the pretty bralet and matching maxi skirt, which featured red and yellow hues. 

The Radio 1 star added a selection of gold jewellery to the look, including a chain necklace, earrings, a bracelet and rings. 

Continuing the gold theme, Vick added a pair of towering gold platform heels. 

She was joined at the event by Charli XCX, 30, who made an edgy appearance in a black Givenchy dress and boots as she accompanied her celebrity cohorts at the arts party.

Charli showcased her sizzling physique in the form-fitting black dress which was covered in the trademark Givenchy logo and featured a sheer panel on the back.

The singer styled her look with a pair of the brand’s Shark Lock knee-high boots, which retail for £ 1,750. Charli also toted a pink bag from the fashion brand and a pair of trendy shades.

Elsewhere, Stanley Tucci and his wife Felicity Blunt were spotted arriving at the exclusive event.

The American actor, 62, looked dapper in a cream suit jacket, which he wore over a white shirt and grey tie with checked trousers and trousers.

Stanley accessorised with a pair of circular shades as he posed beside his wife Felicity, 42, who looked chic in a miliary jacket with silver buttons.

She styled the look with a black T-shirt and a pair of white linen trousers, finishing the outfit with a pair of cool platform trainers.

The literary agent wore her brunette locks in bouncy curls and opted for minimal make-up, highlighting her natural good locks. 

The reknowned Summer Exhibition is a glamorous evening of Champagne and canapés in the beautiful surroundings of the Royal Academy.

The purpose of the exbition, which was set up in 1768, is to raise funds to support the Royal Academy Schools, Britain’s first art school.

Individual tickets cost £525 and earns you entry to the party, a programme, bubbly and nibbles and 2023 Exhibition List of Works & Price Guide.

A VIP ticket, costing £850, comes with a special listing in the preview programme, early access to view artworks and the first opportunity to buy works.

These guests are also granted access to exclusive VIP Reception in the Royal Academy’s Fine Rooms.