Change drug law, demands grieving peer, says ADAM HELLIKER

The peer is backing former Conservative leader William Hague, who last week called on the Government to follow Canada in legalising cannabis for recreational use.

Lord Hague said the eventual approval by the Home Office for cannabis oil to be used to treat epileptic youngster Billy Caldwell was evidence that a hard-line stance on the drug had become “ineffective and utterly out of date”.

Nicholas Monson agrees and says what he has discovered about the chemistry of cannabis since his son’s death has shocked him into campaigning for reform of Britain’s drug laws.

He is to stand as a candidate in an election to fill a hereditary crossbench vacancy in the House of Lords, to raise awareness of the damage wrought by skunk, the strongest form of cannabis, which doctors state was the cause of the psychosis that drove Rupert to take his life.

Until they saw their son’s psychiatric notes, Monson and Rupert’s mother, Karen Green, knew nothing about skunk, to which around a half of new psychotic cases are attributed.

In the 18 months during which Rupert had been using the drug, he went from “a brilliant, artistic, athletic boy to a changed person inhabiting a nightmare”.

Nicholas, a writer who inherited his peerage in 2011, recalls: “When they switched off his life support machine, the doctor said resignedly ‘Yet another victim of skunk’.”

He hopes for skunk to be reclassified from a B to an A-category drug and believes the way to eradicate it is to regulate and tax the milder form of cannabis, and educate people on it in the same way that they are taught about alcohol and cigarettes.

“If young people can get the milder stuff legally then they’re going to steer clear of this pernicious alternative. Doctors have told me that 60,000 people in the UK have serious mental health issues as a result of skunk.

“A year ago, the Prime Minister wrote me a letter saying she shared my concern over skunk and relayed news that the Government was developing a cross-party drugs strategy. About time! Our drugs policy is a mess – hopeless 20th-century laws for a 21st -century blight.”

Rupert’s death was the second tragedy to befall Lord Monson. His eldest son Alexander died aged 28 while in a cell in Kenya after being arrested on suspicion of smoking cannabis.

Nicholas has since spent six years attempting to prove that his son was battered to death by a rogue policeman.

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The last time that Nancy Dell’Olio unleashed her libido in the Mediterranean it was with a young Italian hunk in Ibiza.

Now the seasoned seductress is on the hunt again but this time her search for a lover in Greece will be filmed for an ITV series, entitled My Shirley Valentine Summer.

The simmering saucepot will join a throng (or maybe that should be a thong) of huntresses including model Melinda Messenger, Chris Tarrant’s ex-wife Ingrid and weather forecaster Siân Lloyd as they “search for an epiphany” – and a pliant male with whom to share their massage oil.

The format of the show (which sounds like a cross between The Golden Girls and Love Island) is based on the 1989 film Shirley Valentine, which followed a middle-aged housewife (Pauline Collins) as she found romance with a taverna owner on holiday in Greece.

Nancy, 56, certainly has had plenty of amour in her life. She was married to lawyer Giancarlo Mazza before embarking on a 10-year relationship with the former England football manager SvenGöran Eriksson.

Other admirers have included theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn. The last time I discussed matters of the heart with the Italian firecracker she declared that she was ready once more to do what she does best – thrust herself into love but only, as she whispered to me breathily, with a man that “truly deserves” her, someone worthy of scaling those twin peaks of mind and body.

Indeed, like a praying mantis, she said she already had her elegant mandibles targeted towards another male, “an older man who does not know how I feel about him – yet”.

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As he limbers up for his 70th birthday, Jeremy Irons indulges in a satisfying rant about throwaway consumer culture and the carelessness with which some people discard others.

“We should value these things, old coats and old friends and old marriages. We should try to repair them before saying: if it doesn’t work, chuck it.”

The old smoothie has himself applied a rather flexible approach to his 41-year marriage to actress Sinéad Cusack, pictured with him, amid rumours of dalliances with a plethora of popsies.

The Sherborne-educated actor has described his relationship with his wife as “dysfunctional” and claimed that it was human nature “to have as many partners as possible”.

As wolfish as he might appear, Irons was hit badly when his first marriage to actress Julie Hallam ended after less than a year.

“I was in a bit of a state,” he says.

“So I took a horse for a week and just went riding around Dartmoor, staying at pubs. I remember riding along the ridge, seeing traffic bumper to bumper and I thought ‘Yeah. Freedom is always there for you. You can still find it’.”

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Might Stanley Johnson be worried that his erstwhile companion Georgia Toffolo, the blonde cutie with whom he bonded among the creepy crawlies in the Celebrity jungle, is writing a book about her life (albeit that she’s only 23)?

After all Stanley, who shares the same frisky nature as his priapic son Boris, has delighted in acting as the older man (he’s 77) in Georgia’s life as he escorts her around town.

But Torquay-born Toff, who has made a fortune as an online “influencer”, assures me that none of her admirers, least of all Stanley, should feel concerned that her opus will be some sort of kiss and tell.

“Yes, it’s autobiographical,” she twinkled at a Royal Ascot party held by the bloodstock agents Goffs.

“But it’s more a guide to being positive [hence its title, Always Smiling].

“It’s been emotional because I’ve thrown everything into it. The book covers every aspect of life so it’s sort of like therapy.”

Indeed, as Stanley would surely agree, who needs professional therapists when Toff can cheerfully smooth away all your troubles?

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Mariella Frostrup has been musing on the recent chatter about the Beckhams’ supposed plans to divorce – and her own one-time role in spreading “fake news” about showbusiness personalities.

“When my 12-year-old son announced that the Beckhams were getting divorced, my first reaction was to pop the bubbly and begin my own trial separation, so as to be available when the delectable David was free,” says flirtypants Mariella.

“But a day later the whole world knew that we’d been hostage to fake news. So I explained to my son that made-up stories have always existed, offering a mea culpa.

“As a music PR in the 1980s, I shamefully made up a few myself. My favourite piece of ‘creative’ writing being that Keren Woodward from Bananarama (my client) had been ‘bullied’ by a shark on a Caribbean holiday, which made a big story in the papers.

“So I apologise to all those readers who sent get-well-soon cards to Keren after her shark encounter.”

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The screenwriter Andrew Davies was upset when he heard that the BBC had decided to drop a drama he had created, The Nation’s Health, about the foundation of the NHS by the Labour politician Aneurin Bevan.

Davies dismissed the BBC’s claim that there was no room in its schedule for the 90-minute biopic as “a disgrace”, adding: “It’s a subject of huge historic significance that would help people to understand where the NHS came from.”

But Davies, who adapted War And Peace for the BBC, had hoped Channel 4 would take it over. Now that plan too has failed to come to fruition, with his agent saying: “The project is no longer active.”

A shame, as it would have explored not just Nye Bevan’s fight to create the NHS in the face of Tory opposition but also his fiery marriage to fellow Welsh socialist Jennie Lee.

“They would argue a lot,” says Davies.

“Jenny would always have the final word on political matters, last thing at night in bed.

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Among the guests toasting Peter Stringfellow at a party at his London club following his funeral on Thursday was Fiona Lafferty, who helped Stringy write his autobiography, King of Clubs.

Miss Lafferty disclosed that she and Peter had been working on updating the original book, which chronicled his life up to 1996, when he changed his Covent Garden premises from a disco to a lapdancing club.

“He found it frustrating that the book was out of print,” she says.

“Everywhere he went people would ask him where they could get a copy, because they wanted to read about his tales of the music scene in the 1960s when he promoted bands like the Beatles and the Kinks.

“He wanted the book to reflect the changes he made in the latter years. One of those was meeting the love of his life, his third wife Bella, and having two more children in his seventies.

He had never been faithful to any of his previous wives and girlfriends but he was to Bella. It was a first for him and he was very happy.”

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Hunky historian Dan Snow would seem to have it all, blessed with a breezy confidence and the rangy physique of an Oxbridge rower.

He has three children, a fine house in the New Forest and a lovely (and very rich) wife Lady Edwina Grosvenor.

But it was not always so, sighs the son of former news presenter Peter “Swingometer” Snow.

“As a 16-year-old I probably came across as arrogant,” he recalls.

“But I felt insecure and I couldn’t look people in the eye and I was very nervous in social situations.

“I went to a single-sex private school [Westminster] which also made meeting girls difficult. I hadn’t kissed a girl yet. My friends were telling me lots of stories about girls; I wish my 16-year-old self had known his friends were lying to him.

“I thought time was running out, that you were washed up by the time you got to 23. I thought I was a complete loser and everyone was much cooler, more successful. I was in a dark place.

“What I know now is that those are just practice years, real life begins much later.”

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The ceremony of Swan Upping (not a celebration of bestiality but the annual census of the swan population owned by the Queen on the River Thames) will be a happier occasion when it takes place next month.

In previous years the Queen’s Swan Marker, David Barber, has reported losses caused by shootings, dog attacks and avian flu.

But this year he will tell the sovereign that 132 cygnets have been born on the river. Swan Upping dates from the 12th century, when the Crown claimed ownership of the birds, which were used for banquets.

The Queen often watches the ceremony when they are counted, although HM does not dine on roast swan. Probably more the sort of fare for truly regal figures such as Princess Michael. Prince Charles can waffle on for ages about gardening but how much time does His Floral Highness actually spend getting his hands dirty amid the splendid vistas at Highgrove?

“Er well, he’s really more of an ideas man; he has a vision and then likes to see the team make it happen,” says my royal factotum with the green fingers (he really should wash more).

Charles does go as far as pulling up weeds when he sees them on his plant patrols. But then he places them carefully on the path for one of his 12 gardeners to remove.

“These weeds are his little signals to us that the area needs more attention; it’s the equivalent of a polite telling-off,” adds my man, tapping the soil from his crested trowel.

The Duchess of Cambridge’s naughty uncle Gary Goldsmith loves jokes, the cornier the better. Here’s one he told me the other day: “I went to a petrol station yesterday and became all emotional. For no reason at all I just started filling up.”