Pick of the week’s Gossip

Mick Jagger knows the importance of a good night’s sleep, and takes no chances when on tour. “Mick always asks for a new mattress in his room, no matter how posh the hotel,” a source told The Mail on Sunday. “But he insists that the plastic stays on while someone else sleeps on the mattress to break it in. It’s an unusual request, but hey – he’s Mick Jagger. Why not?” Elton John (pictured) has sprung to the defence of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The couple have been accused of hypocrisy, for travelling by private jet first to Ibiza and then to the south of France, while urging ordinary people to do more to tackle climate change. But the rock star has now revealed that he had laid on the second jet, so that Harry and Meghan could be safely transported to his mansion near Nice – and that he had offset the carbon emissions. In a series of indignant tweets, he said he felt a duty to protect Harry from press intrusion as he had been close to his mother, Diana – and urged the media “to cease these relentless and untrue assassinations”.

Jeremy Clarkson took a while to find his feet as a TV presenter. In his first year with Top Gear, he earned just £180, for a single report. “I was a squeaky, very posh-voiced boy,” he says. “No idea what I was doing really.” Was he nervous? “Of course I was nervous, because my hands were marrows. Massive. All I could think, when I was talking, was, ‘My hands are enormous! They’re enormous!’”