On a sunny spring day not long ago, a friend of mine clocked Andrew Parker Bowles in South Kensington. The ex-husband of the Queen was smartly turned out in a terrible coat, the sort that country gentlemen and the King like to wear. He was striding purposefully past the Tube station and had a twinkle in his eye.
“You know Hugh Grant’s opening scene in Bridget Jones,” my friend told me later, “when the lift doors open and his eyes dart left and right? And you know, right there, that this man is a charming disaster who’ll show you a good time? That was him.”
