Pick of the week’s Gossip

Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy is one of David Hockney’s most famous paintings. However, Celia Birtwell (Mrs Clark) has revealed that the artist took a few liberties with the scene. The portrait was based on a photo of her and Ossie Clark in their bedroom, but Hockney made it look like a living room, and “added the shagpile carpet because he couldn’t draw Ossie’s feet”, she told the London Evening Standard. What’s more, the cat wasn’t Percy. Its name was Blanche, but “David said Percy had a better ring to it. He was right.”

It has taken 47 years, but

Richard E. Grant has finally received a reply to a fan letter he wrote to Barbra Streisand when he was 14. The story began in 1971, when Grant read that Streisand had broken up with Ryan O’neal – and sought to console her by inviting her to come and stay with him and his family in Swaziland. “You don’t know me yet,” he wrote, before offering her “a two-week holiday... at our house, which is very beautiful with a pool and a magnificent view”. He assured the star she could enjoy the break in peace, and would not be “mobbed in the

street as your films only show in our cinema for three days, so not that many people know who you are”. She did not reply, but when he posted a copy of the letter on Twitter last week, Streisand tweeted back. He then posted a picture of himself, “overcome with emotion”, as her message was read out to him (pictured).

As an MP, George Osborne was criticised for going on an expensive skiing holiday as the guest of a wealthy financier. Now, he has splashed out on a chalet of his own, in Verbier. The three-storey property is said to have cost £3m.