Mother with iron will

CAROLE MIDDLETON, it seems, has competition. Lydia and Irene’s mother Aliai, 50 (pictured with them), met Forte when he was a 36-year-old playboy and she was just 16. Despite coming from (compared with him) a relatively humble background — her father was a neurologist and her mother a painter — it was Italian Aliai who proposed after four years of dating. She quickly morphed into what she describes as a ‘1,000 per cent dedicated’ stay-at-home mother at the family’s £8.5 million Chelsea townhouse. For three years, she made the 60-mile round-trip from the family’s home to Irene’s boarding school, rather than allowing her daughter to spend the night at school. Aliai went on to launch a high-end fashion business after her daughters reached adulthood.