EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Heathcliff is 'too white' in Wuthering Heights

Jacob Elordi left friends of his co-star Margot Robbie 'frothing at the mouth' with lust when she invited 20 pals to a private screening of the new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, she revealed recently.

The casting of Elordi as tortured anti-hero Heathcliff by director Emerald Fennell has, however, been condemned by Anita Rani because the Australian actor is white.

The Celebrity Race Across The World star claims that Emily Bronte wrote Heathcliff as a non-white character in her 1847 gothic masterpiece.

'At the time, Britain was at the height of the colonial expansion,' says Yorkshire-born Rani. 'This tiny island was getting very rich from doing some very dark things around the world. Meanwhile in West Yorkshire, Emily and her two sisters were almost certainly not sitting around crocheting and dreaming of handsome princes.

'They knew all about this because they were educated, they were reading the papers, they were thinking, they were writing and they were raging, and it's in the characters in their books.

'They're women, they are independent, they're clever, they're passionate, they defy convention and they are questioning everything, particularly Victorian morality, which is why it's important that Heathcliff isn't white. It's on the page, and what it does it changes everything. Think about it.'

Heathcliff is described as 'dark-skinned' or 'gypsy in aspect', and as having 'black eyes' by Bronte, who also writes at one point that his 'face is as white as the wall behind him'.

Emerald, who won an Oscar for Promising Young Woman, has stressed that Wuthering Heights, which is released tomorrow, is her personal interpretation of how she imagined the novel as a teenager.

Days after being lined up to play his first theatre role in a decade, controversial actor-turned-activist Laurence Fox bitterly reveals he's been axed.

The former Lewis star, 47, has been persona non grata in many British acting circles since his outspoken performance on BBC Question Time in 2020. While declining to name the forthcoming role at Theatre Royal Winchester, Fox announces: 'I got cancelled from this job. I will confess I'm hurt. I just want to do what I love. I don't think that's a crime.'

Miriam Margolyes says she rejected the chance to compete on The Celebrity Traitors because she considers the hit BBC show to be unkind. The Harry Potter star, 84, says her friend Sir Stephen Fry encouraged her to sign up. 

'I won't do anything like that because I think it's cruel,' says Miriam, who stars in Oscar-nominated short film A Friend Of Dorothy. 'There is something nasty about it… When you eliminate somebody, I just don't like that, so I said 'No'.'

Gwynnie has her blood filtered to clear 'toxins'

Gwyneth Paltrow is taking her 'clean-living' lifestyle to costly new extremes.

The Oscar-winner and Goop founder, 53, reveals she has undergone a controversial 'detox' treatment called therapeutic plasma exchange to strip her body of toxins such as microplastics and mould.

'I'd been going through lots of health stuff with that kind of ambiguous chronic stuff that medicine normally has a harder time dealing with: chronic fatigue, brain fog,' she says.

'I was so interested in this idea that we could filter out things in our blood that were making us more sick.'

She's had five sessions at a clinic in Chicago that charges up to £36,500.

The treatment draws out blood, separates and discards the toxin-carrying liquid, and pumps fresh liquid back into the body.

The NHS uses it to treat specific autoimmune and neurological conditions, but its use for general detoxification remains divisive in the medical field.

'I felt amazing after,' insists Gwyneth. 'I felt this immediate unburdening and clarity and lightness.'

He passed the brutal selection process to become a member of the Special Boat Squadron, did two tours of duty in Afghanistan, scaled Everest – and munched his way through a foot-long rat while in the Ivory Coast.

But Ant Middleton, former chief instructor on TV's SAS: Who Dares Wins, bit off more than he could chew with his media company, Sway and Starting Ltd. Banned last March from being a director for four years, after it failed to pay £1million tax, Middleton, 45, has come up with just £300,000 in a final settlement – but £109,000 of that goes in fees to the liquidator.

It first enchanted a teenage King Charles – since then it's cast its spell over Princes William and Harry, and, more recently, William and Catherine's children.

But it will be a bittersweet moment when they next set foot on Tresco – 'Mustique without the mosquitoes', as this jewel in the Scilly Isles is known – following the death of Lucy Dorrien-Smith who, with her husband Robert, had welcomed the royals for the past 35 years.

Lucy, 65, died peacefully at the weekend, with Robert, 74, whose family first leased the island from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1834, at her side. 'Lucy was without doubt one of the best humans I have ever met,' reads one of innumerable tributes.

Keir peer's firm goes bust

Matthew Doyle, who was nominated for the Lords despite his past support for a convicted paedophile, and Dame Ann Limb, exposed for lying about having a PhD, are not Sir Keir Starmer's only interesting new peers.

Lord Nagaraju of Bloomsbury, 46, declared before the last general election, when he unsuccessfully contested North Bedfordshire: 'I have prioritised public service over a lucrative career. I could have gone to start-ups and made a lot of money.' 

However, I can disclose that one of his companies, AI Policy Labs, has assets of just £4,000 – marginally more than another, NFT Services Ltd, had when liquidated in 2017.

And obviously more than a third, Global Policy Insights, which had debts of £8,000 when Lord N put it into liquidation last month.

His lordship, who has never been elected to any public office, did not respond to requests for comment.