Did Bill Cash’s son inspire writer’s ghastly snob?

BOTH blessed with financial surnames, writer Sophia MoneyCoutts and publisher William Cash should be great pals.

However, Sophia, whose family founded the Queen’s bank Coutts, has horrified the son of veteran Tory MP Sir Bill Cash by apparently basing ‘Peregrine’, a ghastly magazine editor, on him in her debut novel, The Plus One.

‘Peregrine was a 55year-old social climber who launched Posh! in the Nineties in an attempt to mix with the sort of people he thought should be his friends. Dukes, earls, lords,’ she writes. ‘He applied the same principal [sic] to his wives. First, an Italian jewellery heiress. Second, the daughter of a Venezuelan oil baron. He was currently married to a French stick insect who was, as Peregrine told anyone he ever met, a distant relation to the Monaco royals.’

William Cash is 51 and launched Spears Wealth Management Survey magazine in 2006. His first wife was jewellery heiress Ilaria Bulgari. His second, Venezuelan heiress Vanessa Neumann. His current wife is a slender aristocrat, Lady Laura Cathcart. Sophia insists: ‘Any similarities are entirely coincidental.’

However, Cash is not impressed, sniffing: ‘I had her down as the next Nancy Mitford — not the Jackie Collins of the aristocracy.

‘It’s clear that I’ve been used as part of the inspiration.’