Thomas Markle’s stroke wrecks Lady C’s Jubilee plans. Eden Confidential,

AS IF travelling 5,500 miles to London for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee wasn’t a daunting enough prospect for Thomas Markle, I hear the Duchess of Sussex’s father was due to stay with Lady Colin Campbell.

Lady Colin, 72, who was criticised for her overbearing behaviour and caustic put-downs when she competed on I’m A Celebrity, had generously offered to put up Mr Markle, 77, at her West Sussex stately home, Castle Goring, which she bought for £700,000 in 2013.

He won’t now be coming after he was rushed to hospital in California earlier this week, suffering a suspected stroke.

‘She had made plans for Mr Markle,’ one of the royal biographer’s friends tells me. ‘She’d hired him a dinner jacket and was taking him to Royal Ascot. And she’d organised a black-tie dinner, so he could meet lots of interesting people.’

The former Georgie Ziadie — who has her title thanks to a year-long marriage to the Duke of Argyll’s younger son, Lord Colin Campbell in 1973 — established the connection to Mr Markle via his grandson, Tyler. Her two adopted sons, Michael and Dimitri, appeared with Tyler in an MTV reality show called The Royal World in 2018.

Tyler created a new strain of cannabis called Markle Sparkle ahead of Meghan’s 2018 wedding to Prince Harry. Speaking about Tyler, Lady Colin said: ‘We hit it off straight away. He’s a very nice boy.’ Lady Colin wrote a 2020 biography of Mr Markle’s daughter, Meghan and Harry:

The Real Story. Hiring, rather than buying, clothes for Mr Markle was a wise precaution on Lady Colin’s part. The Palace commissioned a £7,000 Savile Row suit for him to wear to Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding, only for him to fall ill and stay at home in Rosarito, Mexico.

Roly-poly racing PR man Johnno Spence was later spotted parading around Royal Ascot in the suit.

After also snapping up Thomas’s extra garments, including a summer suit and three shirts, Spence told me: ‘They were half price and there’s a bit of room for expansion.’