SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: JCB billionaire Anthony Bamford's daughter has son - but where's the daddy?

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AS ONE of the Tories’ biggest donors, JCB billionaire Anthony Bamford leads a very public life. But the peer’s colourful daughter Alice has kept a happy secret.

Alice, 39, whose mother Carole owns the Daylesford Organic empire beloved of the Cotswolds set and London yummy mummies, has just given birth to her first child, with many friends unaware she was even pregnant.

‘We are all thrilled,’ says Lady Bamford, who declines to disclose the identity of her new grandson’s father.

Alice, who set up a hip-hop record label called Emancipated, lives on an 11-acre California estate, One Gun Ranch, with Ann Eysenring, estate agent to the stars.

She has named her baby boy, who weighed 6lb 12oz, Anthony Otis Joseph. Anthony is in honour of her 69-year-old father, who has donated £4.1 million to the Tories.

Joseph is a tribute to her grandfather, who founded JCB after selling a trailer from a garage in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, in 1945.

Bohemian Alice and Ann wrote a book together called The Malibu Biodynamic Diet, about their biodynamic lifestyle, which involves harvesting organic crops at the ranch they own ‘based on the cycles of the moon and the natural elements’.

The pair, who have a menagerie of pets including dogs, horses and alpacas, are friends with famous names including Hollywood star Orlando Bloom, socialite Poppy Delevingne, and reality TV’s Khloe Kardashian.

The Bamfords are a strongly Roman Catholic family, with the peer and his wife said to take a socially conservative view on family matters. Alice’s father helped to fund Pope Benedict’s 2010 UK visit, and her late grandmother, Marjorie, was so devout that she refused to divorce Joseph, even after he moved to Switzerland with his lover.

Ann has previously disclosed that producers have encouraged her on a number of occasions to film a reality series based on her glamorous life.

‘I said, honestly, I would have to find an interesting approach. I have no interest in being on television at all,’ she revealed.

Shame. It could be most fascinating.

Move over Nigella, there’s a new domestic goddess in town — and this one has an even bigger kitchen.

Viscountess Weymouth, whose husband Ceawlin will inherit Longleat in Wiltshire, is writing a recipe book. ‘It’s inspired by the history of food at Longleat,’ says ex-model Emma. ‘It’s quite wholesome and will include things I can grow.

‘There will be lots of consommés — I’m going to make it trendy again.’

Blunt’s set for a blue blood baby

High-pitched warbler James Blunt is not to all tastes but let’s hope he’s good at lullabies.

The You’re Beautiful singer, 41, is to become a father as his wife, Sofia Wellesley, 32-year-old granddaughter of the 8th Duke of Wellington, is expecting their first child.

Former Life Guards officer Blunt confirmed the news Down Under, where he is appearing as a judge on X Factor Australia.

The Old Harrovian has previously described the possibility of fatherhood as an ‘amazing thing’.

Who'll get butler-bashing Lady Killearn's millions?

She was one of society’s most colourful — and controversial — figures, who was once accused of attacking her butler.

Now, Jacqueline, Lady Killearn (pictured) has died aged 105 — prompting speculation over what will happen to her fortune.

For the widow of Britain’s wartime ambassador to Cairo spent her final years locked in a bitter battle with her son and grandson over the sale of the family home.

She wanted to offload the 13-bedroom Jacobean mansion for £1.65 million to enable her to ‘live with dignity’ in her later years. But the sale was blocked at the High Court in 2011 by her son, the current Lord Killearn, and grandson, who said Haremere Hall in Etchingham, East Sussex, had been woefully undervalued.

The 17th-century home was eventually sold three months ago for £2.4 million, to a friend of Lady Killearn’s flamboyant property agent, Robert Hay, 68. Mr Hay also has her power of attorney — to the dismay of her family. He would not comment on her will yesterday, other than to say the matter was ‘settled’.

Lady Killearn, whose granddaughter is model Liberty Ross, rose to the pinnacle of society during World War II, entertaining Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Noel Coward, Evelyn Waugh, Roosevelt and King Farouk of Egypt while her husband was in Cairo.

In 2008, she became embroiled in a public spat with a former butler. Paolo Sclarandis took the dowager to a tribunal, accusing her of treating him like a ‘slave’, calling him names and throwing walking sticks at him.

The panel ruled in the butler’s favour but awarded him only £1,200 — he had claimed £217,000.

Lady Killearn — who also owned a townhouse in London, thought to be worth £10 million — deteriorated over the past ten days and died peacefully in her sleep at the weekend.

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