Denholm's widow: the last tragedy

To the uninitiated it was a tragic, but sadly routine house fire. An elderly victim dragged to safety from the flames engulfing her home only for her to succumb to her horrific injuries a day later.

But the death at 62 of Susan Elliott was the final chapter in a poignant story of love and betrayal. For she was the widow of veteran star Denholm Elliott who had once appeared to enjoy a gilded life with the actor and their children at a luxury retreat on Ibiza.

But that idyllic existence came to a shuddering halt when Susan discovered that Elliott, star of Trading Places and the Indiana Jones films, had not been a faithful husband.

For years he had been a promiscuous bisexual, indulging in love affairs and one-night stands with both sexes. From one encounter, he contracted HIV.

Susan vehemently denied that her famous husband was bisexual, but he died in 1992 at the age of 70 from Aids-related tuberculosis.

If that was not sufficient to traumatise Susan, she then had to cope with her daughter Jennifer’s heroin addiction.

This too ended in heartbreak four years ago when 37-year-old Jennifer hanged herself in Ibiza. Distressed by suggestions that she had somehow neglected her daughter, Susan left her beloved island and moved to London.

Apart from co-writing a biography of Elliott, she had been living quietly and in reduced circumstances in a rented one-bedroom flat in North London.

But the final act came last week. Mrs Elliott — now confined to a wheelchair — was trapped in a blaze in her fourth-floor rented flat in Hornsey. As firefighters raced to the scene, a neighbour, journalist Rob Lyons, heard her frantic screams for help.

He rushed into the corridor and broke down the door of her flat. He recalls: ‘The poor woman was naked and on fire. I assumed her clothes had been burned off her.

'I beat out the flames on her arms. She hadn’t been able to manoeuvre her wheelchair to get through the inward-opening door. She was in a very distressed state.’

Lyons carried the frail Susan from the blazing flat. He added: ‘I took her down to the street and held her until an ambulance arrived. She was very badly burned and in great pain.’

Despite his bravery, she died from her injuries 24 hours later.

Royal service turns into farce

It will be a chance to catch up on old times, but just who might be on the guest list for the Royal Victorian Order service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, next week?

Surely not Paul Burrell, whose memoir of his life as the Queen’s footman and Princess Diana’s butler dismayed his former royal employers.

With the once-every-four-years service falling only months before the tenth anniversary of Diana’s death, many linked to the Princess may attend.

But one medal recipient and a Kensington Palace neighbour of Diana tells me: ‘You were supposed to do a minimum

of ten years service before being eligible for a medal, but after the Princess’s death they were dished out like toffees — one person got one for a weekend’s work.

‘Apparently it was on the orders of Downing Street, who thought it would look good.’

Clare gets in racing shape

If BBC racing anchor Clare Balding seems half the woman she once was when she presents tomorrow’s Grand National, then do not adjust your sets.

For the accomplished broadcaster has shed 20lb ahead of this year’s steeplechase spectacular.

And to ensure she can be spotted in the Aintree crowd, Clare, the 36-year-old daughter of the Queen’s former trainer Ian Balding, has arranged a wardrobe makeover to match her new svelte figure.

She has turned to Laura Benjamin, the Knightsbridge-based royal designer who dressed the Countess of Wessex for her Easter appearance at Windsor on Sunday, for a new, brighter look.

‘Because of the huge number of racegoers, she wants to stand out a bit,’ says a friend.

For today’s Ladies’ Day meeting, Clare will be wearing a lightweight pistachio coat, while she will don a red coat dress for the coverage of the National.

Rachel keeps mum about Rod’s secrets

The amount of time that Rachel Hunter and Rod Stewart dithered over their divorce seemed to be longer than they actually spent together.

Now Rachel, 37, has succumbed to the entreaties of publishers and agreed to write her life story. But the hyper-sensitive Stewart, always touchy about references to his height, can breathe a little easier.

For the New Zealand-born model and mother of two of his seven children will not spill all the beans about the 62-year-old crooner’s life. She has agreed to pen a memoir without dwelling on her time with Rod.

She says: ‘I was asked to do an autobiography and I thought I might do a reflective book with photographs.

‘I don’t think my marriage would take much of a chapter. It could just be the wedding date and then “The End. Full Stop”.’

Boastful property figure Eddie Davenport, who took advantage of an African civil war to acquire a magnificent London mansion for a paltry £50,000, will flaunt his wealth on television next week.

Showing off his home, the former Sierra Leone High Commission in Portland Place, on ITV’s My Big Fat Property Fortune, the one-time party organiser says: ‘I bought the leasehold for £50,000 in 1997 and then I managed to get the freehold for £3 million.

'Now its estimated value is £20 million. I bought it when the Sierra Leone government was bankrupt and in exile.’

Davenport’s ‘gatecrasher balls’ empire crashed in 1989 with debts of almost £100,000 and he was jailed for VAT fraud.

Labour peer Baroness Whitaker has turned her attention from supporting ID cards to addressing the vexing issue of whether male members of the Reform Club should be obliged to continue to wear ties.

While accepting that female members of the Pall Mall watering hole are exempt, she urges the abolition of the rule. ‘Distinguished guests of mine have been turned away,’ she says in the club’s Reform Review.

‘Those who accepted the unwelcome loan of a tie had to put up with a much less elegant addition to their dress.’

She adds: ‘My husband and sons are unwilling to be my guests at the Club.’

Tony Blair is planning a fundraising swansong from Downing Street, I hear.

He is to host a £600-a-head dinner on May 14, which is expected to coincide with his announcement that he is finally standing down.

How appropriate that he will mark his ten years in government at an eye-wateringly expensive gala that will inevitably exclude the people his party is supposed to represent.

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