James pushes the boat out with Pippa’s wedding gift

WHAT do you buy the woman who has everything? For the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister, Pippa Middleton, the answer is an antique wooden boat from the Thirties.

I can reveal that when the 35-year-old married hedge fund millionaire James Matthews last year, her brother James, 31, presented her with a vessel that he helped restore.

Craftsman George Winks, founder of Temper Studio, tells me: ‘James came to me with the boat and I

repaired the structure, but he restored the beautiful old engine himself. He has a real knack for that and he’s got a thing for old tractors.’ The boat is named Rafa, after the cocker spaniel James previously gave mother-of-one Pippa, and is now up in James Matthews’s Glen Affric family estate in Scotland.

‘They use it for messing about on the loch,’ adds Winks. ‘It was a bloody tough job, but I learned an awful lot.’

Labour of love: The boat before restoration that James, inset top, gave to Pippa and her new husband