When, on Friday night, a healthy and happy-looking Kate Moss was spotted escorting her 28-year-old photographer boyfriend to a cinema near her home in north London, there was relief among her friends – and widespread sympathy, too.
These have been troubling times for the world’s most iconic supermodel, who has endured the painful and very public collapse of her marriage to Jamie Hince, a guitarist with little known ‘indie’ band The Kills.
Since Jamie was caught in a tender clinch with buxom lingerie model Jessica Stam in America just a few weeks ago, he has not returned home – and Kate has made numerous dishevelled appearances alone in London, culminating in her emergence from a taxi last month with what appeared to be white powder on her skirt.
Many, including her friends, have been tempted to portray Jamie as the man who broke the heart of the nation’s favourite doe-eyed model – the first man who took her down the aisle and the first, they claim, to truly break her heart.
But there is another, even less edifying, side to this story too. For Kate’s isn’t just ‘on the rebound’ with any old toyboy.
The truth is she has plumped for something of an upgrade in her choice of partner – and the decision was taken many months ago.
The Mail on Sunday has learned that he and Kate have just returned from a secret week-long break on the romantic private island of Mustique where, to prove to any doubters that she truly is committed to this new romance, she finally removed her wedding ring.
It now seems that it was Kate who grew tired of her settled life in the Cotswolds playing housewife for Jamie and it was she rather than her husband, say insiders, who pulled the marriage down upon both their heads.
Having returned from holiday with Nikolai, Kate is said to be sick of the sight of Jamie’s belongings, and has ordered him to move them all out.
She now plans to rent out their idyllic £2 million marital home in the Cotswolds, with a view to eventually selling it.
A close friend said last night: ‘Kate has now given Jamie an ultimatum. She told him, “come back to England and move out, or I’ll throw you out”.’
Perhaps it is little wonder that as soon as Jamie left the UK for an open-ended tour of America in July Kate seized on the opportunity to trade him in for such an appealing younger model.
In taking up with young Count Nikolai von Bismarck, she gained entrance into a social circle that cannot be bought with any amount of fame or wealth . . . the circle that is the British aristocracy.
Count Nikolai is one of the most eligible bachelors in England – and not just because he is the heir to a multi-million pound fortune and the great-great-grandson of Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of Germany.
He moves in royal circles thanks to his mother Debbie, who styled both Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice for the royal wedding. And he is a member of a fast set – his best friends, James and Nick Green, are both famous former members of Oxford University’s notorious Bullingdon Club.
He is considered a fashionista thanks to his family connections with the late style icon Isabella Blow, as well as photographers Mario Testino and Annie Leibovitz.
And while craggy Jamie, 46, was educated at the comprehensive Clere School in a quiet Newbury suburb, Nikolai grew up in his parents’ vast £10 million mansion in Gerald Road, one of the most prestigious addresses in Belgravia, and attended £36 000-a-year Harrow School.
Dashing Nikolai is now said to be living at the historic London mansion she shares with her daughter Lilah Grace, 13, whose father is magazine publisher Jefferson Hack.
But unlike Jamie, who has never had even a top 20 hit with his band The Kills, Nikolai hardly needs Kate to put a roof over his head.
Since leaving Harrow without an A-level to his name, Nikolai has been living on-and-off at his parents’ palatial Belgravia home. Its hallway boasts a life-sized portrait of Margaret Thatcher and he frequently throws all-night parties in its gilded living room – said to be popular among his friends because the bar area alone is bigger than many of their entire flats.
His fashion stylist mother Debbie –who is also a long-time friend of Kate’s – has been known to join the parties on occasion, and like Kate she finds it easy enough to keep up with the kids.
Though it may seem odd, friends say that what Kate finds most appealing about baby-faced Nikolai, who says his style hero is Bob Dylan, is the way Debbie has brought him up to be so bohemian. For though he could easily spend his weekends riding or shooting – he is skilled at both – Nikolai is far more interested in being a hippy.
He spent his gap year following the Inca trail in Peru and during a three-week camping trip in Ethiopia he drank cow’s blood for breakfast every day.
Needless to say, like most of Kate’s previous lovers, Nikolai can play several instruments.
His favourite singer is gloomy Leonard Cohen. But it is said Kate finds it refreshing that for once she has a boyfriend who has no plans to be in a band.
He is carving out a successful career as a photographer and is taken seriously by the art world, having left school at 17 to intern in America with Kate’s friend Testino – who also once photographed his mother. He then moved to Paris to study at the Parsons Art School before heading back to America where he assisted Annie Leibovitz and is said to have trained alongside the then Kate Middleton when she studied with the photographer.
Though there may be a 13-year age gap between them, Kate is said to believe that Nikolai is ‘an old soul’ thanks to his years spent growing up around her friends from the industry.
Six months ago she approved a decision by Debbie to hire a top PR firm to help him cope with the fame he will inevitably soon find thanks to their relationship. He is now on the roster of Bell Pottinger, who also looks after the Duchess of York and Naomi Campbell, Kate’s friend.
These odd social crossovers are said to be ‘of no concern’ to Debbie or her husband Count Leopold von Bismarck, known as Bolla.
But some of Kate’s Primrose Hill set, including Sadie Frost, are said to have told her that they are less comfortable with her dating the son of one of her friends. Some have advised her that the relationship is bound to appear ‘a little incestuous’ to outsiders.
And they have a point. Lady Mary Charteris, a socialite who has been linked to Jamie and who recently moved from London to Los Angeles with her husband Robbie Furze partly in order to see more of him, is one of Nikolai’s best friends.
Though Kate reportedly once pushed Mary into a pool for flirting with Jamie, it was Mary who encouraged Nikolai to ask Kate out. Mary knows Nikolai through his ex-girlfriend Theodora Richards, the daughter of Rolling Stone rocker Keith Richards – who is also a friend of Kate. To further complicate matters, Mary was ‘discovered’ by her family friend, the late Isabella Blow who gave Nikolai his first photography job at Tatler. Isabella was a close friend of Kate through Alexander McQueen.
The friend added: ‘It is definitely a complicated web that Jamie just wants out of, but Kate finds it all pretty amusing that Nikolai is so much younger than her friends and has known half of them since he was a kid. She has moved on and at the moment doesn’t regret a thing. In Kate’s world Jamie is old news and she hates to be out of fashion.’
For now, Jamie is refusing to respond to her demands that he return for his belongings. He wants to remain in America where he is slightly more famous and not simply known as ‘Kate’s husband’.
But thanks to Nikolai, he may well never be known by that particular moniker again.
Mail On Sunday