Diarmuid has designs on Harrods

Diarmuid Gavin

Barry Egan

Most of us got Christmas cards from relatives. Diarmuid Gavin got one from Prince Charles. To continue the regal connection, Diarmuid has just been asked to create the only gardens in London's smartest corner shop Harrods - which will be for the exclusive use of royal families. "I've already done the designs," Diarmuid told me. "It'll be finished in two months."

He, his wife Justine and their daughter Eppie must have felt like an Irish royal family over the festive period. They enjoyed a week in a centuries-old dwelling on a beach in Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas, swimming in the ocean that they seemed to have all to themselves, and quiet walks in the idyllic splendour all around them.

Prior to this Eden-like escape, they had spent another week in Key West, Florida, with family in a rented house by the sea.

To conclude their blissful sojourn in the sun, they stayed at the Art Deco Croydon Hotel in Miami for a night, taking in the sights of Miami Beach. Young Eppie even attended her first drag show at a hotel in South Beach. Last Sunday, they jetting back on American Airlines to Dublin - where Chaz's crimbo card awaited them in their Wicklow home.