www.dailymail.co.uk – 14th February, 2014

He made his name as a seedy ne’er-do-well, but Richard E. Grant, star of Withnail & I, tells me he is to appear in four episodes of Downton Abbey, though he wouldn’t reveal what his role will be.

He was a footman in the 2001 film Gosford Park, which won Julian Fellowes an Oscar for the screenplay, so let’s hope he is going up in the world, possibly as a fragrant suitor to Lady Mary.

At the EE and Esquire pre-Bafta party, he rhapsodised about his unisex perfume, Jack.

His keen sense of smell, he said, led him to become a perfumer, and he chose all the ingredients himself.

Asked what the over-riding odour at the party was, Grant replied: “Champagne breath. It’s the worst smell in the world. It smells like dog’s a***.”