I always thought Kate Middleton must have a troop of stylists and advisors telling her what to wear. She never makes a mistake. But a friend spotted Kate on Monday shopping in Oxford Street’s exclusive  Selfridges store and she was completely solo.
Not only was Kate solo, she also shunned personal shopping and my pal spotted her walking around the second and third floors with nothing but two minders shadowing her. Fellow shoppers couldn’t believe their eyes as Kate made shunned practically all the designer stands in order to spend an amount of time at Zara and Reiss picking out pieces she liked.
Nobody was helping her, nobody was advising her and Kate knew exactly what would work for her. Extraordinary. My pal told me: “She arrived unannounced and hit the shop floor. She spent a good half hour running around at speed and nobody batted an eyelid. They just didn’t think it was her.
“She had an excellent eye for the pieces she was picking out. She slipped into a dressing room, tried them on and left with her purchases. No fuss or bother – it was amazing to witness.”
The £69.99 high street dress she wore to the Prince’s Trust Gary Barlow gig on Monday was the result of this shopping trip. I’m told there were a number more bought. Ladies, get ready to make the stampede…

News reaches me that Katie Price is conquering the States in a big way this week. Not only has she been shopping a US version of her reality show for the US market, she’s also been locked in meetings regarding a film being made of her life.
I hear the star is close to sealing a deal with the E! Entertainment Television and that two big film companies are clambering over the rights to the film of her life.
My source reveals: “Katie didn’t expect the response to be so huge for her reality show. Demand has been crazy and she’s had eight different channels come back with serious offers. E! Is the top offer right now. It’s the channel Katie’s always wanted to be on.
“She also has two separate film offers on the table. All in all it has been a very successful trip.”
I also hear the star managed to bump into Justin Timberlake when she was in up market restaurant Cut at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. “She had her picture taken with him and just marched up to say hello,” says my mole. “He was polite and said hello and posed up. Can’t wait to see that snap!”

I’ve been going to Melanie C solo gigs since day one. You know, the days when she would pack out Shepherd’s Bush Empire and the other Spice Girls would pitch up to watch and create a huge stir.
In those days there’s no doubt she was riding the crest of a wave off the back of the band. But Northern Star was a strong debut from ‘the voice’ of the Spice World.
Still, cynics doubted her. She was a ‘fad’, a ‘flash in the pan’ and would leave within a few years to relative retirement or end up on some reality show.
People underestimated the fact Melanie’s a grafter. She wasn’t going anywhere.
She wasn’t in this music malarkey for a quick fix. Melanie was always about the long term goal at the end.
With her eagerly awaited fifth solo album The Sea we’ve seen her go back to basics. And it’s the nearest thing to Northern Star she’s released. It’s personal, well thought out and lyrically far superior to anything she’s done for years.
But most of all for me, having gotten to know her a little bit over the years, she’s full of integrity and that’s what I find so endearing about her.
Melanie left Virgin and set up Red Girl Records when they tried to shove her down a different route (making her release tracks like On The Horizon).
This is a woman who stuck to her guns, invested a load of her own money and wouldn’t be a part of a world that said they wanted one particular sound or voice.
This industry has obviously changed hugely since her debut.
Albums are failing to sell. You only have to look at the recent flops of Pixie Lott and The Saturdays to see that supposed mass popularity doesn’t always equal success with album sales.
To be a success now you need to be a live act. You need to write your own music and you need to be able to take music on the road and create a fanbase. And it’s a bloody hard slog, as Melanie has found out. But she’s still here – and more fulfilled in her life than she’s ever been both professionally and personally.
I stood on the balcony at Scala this week next to her man Tom Starr and we sang along to everything. He’s phenomenally proud of her and watching her on stage you could see why.
She’s not your typical popstar and she’s not the spring chicken she once was. But she’s evolved into a live performer with credibility.
If you go to a Melanie C concert you will have hits – but you also have an old school live act. A vast amount of work, sung completely live with no gimmicks. It’s about the music.
There’s no flashing a breast, grinding to a Calvin Harris backing track or singing some old toot a label forces you to do.
I feel a bit like I’m writing a manifesto for why Melanie C is relevant in today’s music scene – and I kind of am.
While many stars of the moment will slip away over the years, Melanie will still be here. The Sea has opened up a whole new chapter for her in my opinion. And if she carries on performing concerts like she has this week then she will guarantee her future in the music scene.
You can say what you like about the Spice Girls but when it comes to Melanie C you ought to get used to having around. Because she isn’t going anywhere.
Log onto www.melaniec.net for details of future live dates.

Peaches Geldof has big news to celebrate – she’s finally admitted she’s engaged to boyfriend Thomas Cohen.
The star confessed all to me this week when we hit the fabulous Gareth Pugh for MAC launch party at the University of Westminster. And she couldn’t help but gush about how her life has come around full circle of late.
“Yes I’m engaged,” the newly svelte star beamed. “It happened six months ago but we are only just making it public now. We don’t want to get married for a couple of years yet and I knew what people would say. We first met four years ago and we bumped into each other last Christmas on Portobello Road and started dating again and that’s where he asked me. It was very romantic and I’m really happy. We don’t want to get married for a couple of years yet though so don’t expect me in a wedding dress for a long time.”
After, it’s fair to say, a rocky few years she’s looking fantastic, is happier than ever before and has ditched the nightlife she craved so badly when she emerged as a wild child teen all those years ago. It must be a weight off father Sir Bob Geldof’s mind that peaches has changed her wild ways. She’s even bought a house with her boy Tom – who plays in a band called S.C.U.M.
“We’ve just bought a beautiful 3-bed Victorian house in London,” Peaches added. “I’ve spent the whole of today trying to sort getting a mortgage – it’s such a strange adult territory! And it’s been a real bitch getting it too. They nearly didn’t let me have it – maybe it’s probably because they recognised me. It’s the perfect place and size for me and my fiancé and we got it pretty cheap for what it should have cost.
“I can’t wait to start decorating it. I’m obsessed with buying vintage sofas off of Ebay for £200. I now have five of them! Tom came round my flat today which is tiny and you can barely move from all the sofas I’ve bought.”
I couldn’t be happier for Peaches and let’s hope this marriage is more successful than her first. Peach really had us all gasping in horror when she ran away to las Vegas with boyfriend Max Drummey in August 2008 and got hitched on a whim. She divorced Max, who still remains a friend, after just six months. But this time it seems like the real thing. “These days I just sit indoors and nest,” she laughed. “I’ve left all my crazy years behind me. I’m just a really happy girl looking towards a great future now.”  I’ll raise a glass to that.

Dita Von Teese oozes glamour so it’s no wonder that she tells me she would never slip in to Simon Cowell’s shoes and launch her own TV talent search for the next burlesque star.
Speaking to me at the VIP opening of the Cointreau Privé at 215 Piccadilly she said: “I’ve been approached so many times and if I had a dollar for everyone someone had that exact idea thinking they were the first one then I wouldn’t ever have to work again. It’s a really tricky thing because everyone thinks it’s such a great idea but for me my show is my heart and soul and everything I ever dreamed of so if someone was to sit me down and pick apart my show I would find that deeply personal and I feel that it would be the same for me to criticise someone’s personality and beauty. So I have a hard time imagining that a show like that could be really successful. If someone is up on stage taking their clothes off and being sexual how do you judge that? Being sexy is different to different people. I could never be Simon Cowell.”
And funnily enough another item Dita would never be seen dead in is Spanx pants. Grimacing she said: “I’ve never worn a pair of Spanx, no. I’d rather just work out and eat well, that’s how I feel. I get that people really love them but I love lingerie so much and the beauty of lingerie. Until they make glamorous Spanx then I’d rather just not.”
For Cointreau Privé tickets visit www.cointreauprive.co.uk

Leona Lewis is promising me her third album will be worth the wait. At a fundraising event for Hopefield Animal Sanctuary this week Le promised me it will be worth the wait.
“I’m like, come on already! But it takes to time as I want to make this album my best yet. I hope to have the album out towards the beginning of next year. I’m working with the amazing producer Fraser T Smith at the moment and it’s coming along really, really nicely. Then I’d love to do another tour at the end of next year and go to Europe and America. That’s my goal and where I’m heading towards but we haven’t made any plans just yet.”
And as for lyrical content it comes down to the old and new men in her life – ex Lou Al-Chamaa and new beau Dennis Jauch.
“I am in a very good place and that’s definitely inspired songs. I’m always inspired by the situations that I’ve in. Right now I’m happy and I’m good. But I want everyone to relate to the songs so I haven’t made any of them specific to Dennis. There is a lot of different content on the album – some is about love and some is about heartache. There’s a lot going on in there.”
Bunny lover Leona nearly showed anger talking about Lady GaGa wearing her infamous meat dress.
“That dress was so offensive,” Le added. “If I saw her wearing that I would laugh at first but I guess it’s her way of expressing her art and each to their own. Maybe I should start dressing as a carrot with a bunny under my arm to make my own point.” Erm, OK!

Meanwhile at the same event Alexandra Burke seemed to have lost her star credentials despite her recent X Factor stint. A private tour of the sanctuary with Leona was successfully auctioned off for £600 but when it came to bidding for a dress Alex had designed herself and donated alongside a signed note the lot finished at a grand sum of…£50. Ouch.

Anyone wishing to donate can visit www.hopefield.org.uk. Leona will be back at the Essex based sanctuary on December 18th to perform a Christmas Carol Concert.

Christine Bleakley tells me plans are underway for her wedding to footballer fiance Frank Lampard – but next year’s European Championships are causing hassle for the couple’s plans.
Speaking at the Sky Women In Film And Television Christine told me: “The wedding plans have started but ideally we would do it next summer but we have to assume, possibly, that Frank may be going to the Euro. But we don’t know that until the last minute.
“You kind of have to assume that he might which eats up into the whole of next summer unfortunately. It’s just timing really. We will get there, we have a few thoughts. I would just be happy to go off and just do it but then that’s a difficult thing to do as well. When people say they did it and it was just the two of them I’m like ‘How did you actually do it?’ Its really hard.”
But Christine – who last show on Daybreak is tomorrow – says she’s yet to find a dress.
“I haven’t tried any dresses on yet as I think the dress is very in keeping with where you get married,” she added. “We need to arrange a few other things first before I can start thinking about the dress. I did think that I would go and try stuff on but now I think I’ll hold off for a little bit. “I’ve never been a little girl who had the wedding plans from the age of three. I’m not really girly when it comes to it. I’ll wait until we figure out how and where and then those things will happen afterwards.”
And talking of dresses – the star is getting excited about her appearance on dancing on Ice from January. But don’t expect her to be flashing her cleavage ala Holly Willoughbooby. “Holly was pregnant last year so she had her big, long flowing gowns but I’m not Christine Bleakley boobie unfortunately,” she added. “I know the set might change this year so I would just like to wear something in keeping with that and with Phillip.” Sounds good.

When you think of Sir Cliff Richard things that automatically spring to mind are Mistletoe and Wine, Wimbledon and those cheesy annual calendars he does for his loyal fans.
The last thing you think of are his rock star credentials. And the man himself says he lived through the crazy rock star years of the sixties without once being tempted to trash a hotel room or have a 24-hour booze binge.
“I lived through the day and age when popstars liked chucking TV sets out window,” says Cliff, 71. “My band used to laugh at me saying I wasn’t cool enough. They would joke that I’d never throw a television out the window, instead I’d get into a hotel room and get the hoover out to leave it looking nice. And my generation hardly even owned a TV set – they couldn’t afford it. The last thing I’d do was throw one out a window.”
Cliff, who’s about to take his annual holiday in America and Barbados following the success of his Souliscious UK tour, says he’s glad he never got persuaded to turn to the dark side of fame when it came to booze and drugs.
“It’s sad that youngsters nowadays can’t hold it together,” bachelor boy Cliff, who has sold in excess of 250 million albums, says. “There’s always been drugs in our industry since the very beginning. I just don’t get why people do it.
‘Put it this way I realised quickly early on that the herbal cigarettes everyone around me was smoking wasn’t just a cigarette. I never smoked and would have my windows open wide. It’s a piece of good fortune that I never started smoking. I had an aversion to it – my father smoked heavily and I couldn’t stand it. He’d get me to pass an ashtray to him and when I did I’d have to leave the room and wash my hands.”
He sounds genuinely upset by the passing of Amy Winehouse due to her alcohol addiction.
“There is a self destruct button in the industry and when you think about the people that have died too young in our business like Amy Winehouse it’s just sad,” he says. “Too many young talented lives. Amy was too talented to have lost so quickly. Amy obviously didn’t deal with her drinking habit. Having never had a problem like that I don’t know what it takes to pull out of that situation. I do have friends who have been addicts and have stopped. It is possible to stop – I’m just lucky to have never gone down that road. Somebody told me once that you can be a lush but not an alcoholic – and that’s me.”
He shows no signs of slowing down yet. And you get the impression he’d be working a whole lot more if his music was reaching a larger audience.
Cliff’s miffed radio stations across the UK have blanket banned his recent recordings and without his tracks getting played to a mass audience sees
little point in slogging his guts out on new material.
“Radio play is where I suffer,” explains, the star, who has never married. “There’s a new station coming out and they’ve made a point of saying they’re not going to play me. That’s just unfair. Whether these radio stations like it or not they’re essentially lying to their public. Outside of America there was nobody until I did it. This was five years before the Beatles were even around and I’d sold millions of records.
But yet still I’m ignored? It’s ridiculous. Over the years of the chart I’ve outsold every single artist. I’ve sold more single records than The Beatles,
Elvis or Sinatra or Elton. I was the real deal. It’s depressing working on an album project and at the end of it not getting the music to the people.”
He goes as far as saying not being played on the radio makes him consider a full time retirement. He says: “Retirement says you’re going to stop forever. I prefer the word stop. I can stop eating chocolates for a while. But it doesn’t mean I won’t eat chocolates ever again. So in some ways I think I’d like to stop. And then just phone up when I have an urge to record or tour. I won’t retire yet. But not being played on the radio makes me want to retire.”
Cliff does however say the opportunity to judge on one of the UK’s top TV talent shows would be something he would have loved to have done – but he’s
never been approached.
He says deadpan: “I don’t understand why nobody has ever approached me about being involved in a show like X Factor – I would have loved to have done it.
It’s something I’d definitely consider. The American one is the big one these days isn’t it? But we do have a UK X Factor here, don’t we? I would have validity here – after all I was the first person who kicked off British music around the globe.”
People are obsessed with Sir Cliff’s extraordinary toned physique these days. Despite being in his seventies he posed topless in his last calendar for fans. He puts it down to good genes, a healthy diet and lots of tennis.
“But let’s face it,” he laughs. “I’m never going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Although it’s clear when it comes to using moisturiser and looking after his skin he’s definitely not shy. “I try every single moisturiser on the market,” he admits. “If I’m recommended a moisturiser then I immediately by an industrial lot of it and slather it on. I sit there for a show and a make-up artist recommends it and I buy a gallon and lash it on. Men have the same problem that women have with their skin. Men are out there in the wilderness being damaged all the time. I’ve got a feeling that if I wasn’t in this business I wouldn’t worry about my looks. I’d probably be incredibly fat with bad skin.”
There would be no topless shoots going on then!

Cliff’s Soulicious Tour, Live at the O2, DVD is out now