The Edge: Beauty Noelle blown over by Boucher

The well-got grand dames of Dublin and beyond will know Blow, Noelle's chic establishments in the city, as the places they go because they are too posh to brush.

Perhaps Paul - who dated Siobhan Mahon for a time a few years ago and was married once upon a time to Irish supermodel Sheila Eustace - could make use of Blow himself as he sports a relatively famous, if a touch age- inappropriate, ponytail?

Ireland's officially most romantic couple (they were spotted all lovey-dovey in Marcel's on Merrion Row a few weeks ago) have been together for over a year. I commend them for it only leaking out now, but I digress.

I even hear from My Deep Throat that Paul and Noelle are planning on moving in together.

In any event, her well-known celebrity photographer brother Jerry told me: "My beautiful sister is a pure angel and I am glad that she has found happiness with Paul. The pair of them are very much an item and since I met Paul at the Mercury Engineering Irish Hospice Foundation Race day in Leopardstown almost a year ago, I have rarely seen them apart."

Glad to hear it. Indeed, Noelle herself told me that "life and business are very good at the moment. We recently re-branded and had a celebratory launch night in Blow on Leeson Street with Paul, of course, and Mary Harney and my good friends Morah Ryan and Gavin Lambe-Murphy in attendance. We have also just opened a new branch of Blow in Portobello."

Doubtless Noelle will make a good job of it. A cut above the rest, I'm sure. Just like the golden couple themselves. . .

Rosie and Wes loved-up in Wexford

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt, I always say. This applies double perchance next Sunday on this most commercial of days, St Valentine's.

Not that, I'd suspect, Rosanna Davison is especially familiar with chocolate. Or at least from the whippet-like figure on Chris de Burgh's aforementioned daughter, she doesn't look like a Mars bar ever passes her fulsome lips, unlike those of yours truly. Men Are from Mars bars - Women Are from Venus, anyone?

Rosie and her husband Wesley Quirke (who, similarly, has a figure that suggests he lives more in the gym than in the local sweet shop) will be spending Valentine's in the family cottage in Wexford.

No need to jet off to Paris, Venice or New York for a romantic weekend when you are as loved-up as Rosie 'n Wes. Sleepy little Wexford clearly beats the pants off those three so-called metropolises.

"It's quiet and relaxing," Rosie explained. "Walks in the fields with our dogs. This will be our 9th Valentine's Day together. So happy to keep it low-key."

When your diarist threw that Robert Browning line about "take away love and our Earth is a tomb" at the former Miss World, she replied: "That's a good one. Well, I think that love in its many different forms is what keeps us all going."

Apart from L'amour, what is keeping Rosie going at the moment is writing book number two, a follow-up to the controversial foodie tome of the summer, Eat Yourself Beautiful.

"I'm also planning the shoot for it as it is going to be released in September."

I need a box of choccies I'm so excited.

Go west, says Morah and mother

It’s official. Morah Ryan’s ageless beauty remains undiminished by the elements — even by the storms of life.

How do I know this? (Oh, purlease. How do I ever?) Because when I bumped into her the other day in Clontarf in the midst of some particularly stormy weather, Gerry’s widow still looked beautiful, albeit blustery, with a gale blowing around her.

The gorgeous gal, who grew up in Clontarf, told your diarist she was “hoping to get to west Cork for a few days during the mid-term — and hang out with the cows”.

“I always visit my mum’s old home when we visit,” said Morah, explaining that even though her mother now lives up the road from her in Clontarf “I’ll probably pop in on her later! she always travels with me to west Cork.”

Meanwhile, a tad farther south in Spoleto in Italy, the founding father of Celtic rock, Horslips’ Barry Devlin, took his wife Caroline Erskine and their three grown-up children, Kate, Jack, and Paul, away for a short break last week.

The sojourn in Italy was a much-needed break for Barry. The much-heralded play he wrote The Bloody Irish — a musical about the 1916 Easter Rising — opens on Broadway in New York in April.  It’s like Rebellion as if told from the dastardly British perspective, with singing, dancing and Fiachna O Braonain with a bloody preposterous moustache trembling on his upper lip. Expect plenty of the bloody Irish ligging in New York for th opening night.

Eat my shorts, says Leo . . . caked in mud

What do our beloved politicians do to warm themselves up for the General Election?

Enda possibly practises his selfies in the mirror at home. Gerry possibly counts ‘slabs’ when he can’t get to sleep at night, anxious about what Mary Lou might say next. Joan probably conjures up scenarios of Alan Kelly’s “obedience” to make her think of the electorate obediently voting for her. And as a metaphor for the big race, Leo took himself out last weekend.

“I did the Hell And Back run in Bray,” the Minister In Rude Health told me. (Hell And Back? A run? There was foolish me thinking it was a reference to the poor souls on hospital trolleys.) “I decided to do something to psych myself up for the campaign,” Leo said. He  finished the race in frighteningly fetching shorts (his PA kindly sent me a pic) in “three hours” because of the “very slippy, muddy” conditions.

The conditions were a little easier in the members’ restaurant of Leinster House last Tuesday, when Leo had dinner with his VBF Senator Catherine Noone. Did he have Mississippi Mud Pie for dessert to remind him of his exertions?

Daithi, a touch of the poet. . .

Rita Talty — avert  your eyes now! I can reveal the opening lines of the Valentine’s card your famous husband will give you next Sunday.  Daithi O Se — for it is he —  told me this when we met last Friday for lunch in Marco Pierre White’s Steakhouse on Dawson Street, Dublin 2 (followed by further sustenance in The Boar’s Head on Capel Street, then I Monelli, Portobello’s hippest restaurant.) Over steak and a glass of fine wine in Marco’s, the RTE superstar recited the opening lines in English, then Irish.

“The love of my life and a love that never fades. A living love forever! Is tu gra mo chroi le gra na imionn. Gra o deo agus gra a mhaireann!

“I’m going to make a Valentine card this year for Rita,” Daithi told me. “I don’t believe you have to buy expensive cards to show your love. I’d prefer to make it more personal, from the heart.”

Meanwhile, Liverpool football icon Ian Rush and his beautiful Irish girlfriend Carol Anthony flew over to catch the rugby game this afternoon as guests of Bank Of Ireland.  Next weekend, Ian will be whisking Carol to a swish castle in his native Wales for Valentine’s. No doubt he is hoping to score.

Mr Big jets in to boost D4 economy

Dublin 4 is the new Sex and the City. Everyone knows that - and not just because the recession seems to have gone quietly; though some would say that the recession never truly visited its horrors upon this part of our capital.

Indeed Mr Big himself, aka John James Preston from the aforesaid HBO series, was bang in the middle of Dublin 4 last weekend.

Or to be precise, the actor who played Mr Big in Sex and the City, Chris Noth, had dinner with five American friends in Bellucci's in Ballsbridge.

Naturally, his dreamboat presence created something of a frisson among the local Carrie Bradshaws in Robbie Fox's buzzing Italian eaterie.

Indeed it wasn't just the women who recognised the superstar in their midst. It was pretty much everyone in the restaurant last Friday night.

But, said my spy, "nobody bothered him". (Merely the women were just hot-and-bothered by him? Joke.) My source added that he came in at 8pm, left at 11pm, ordered hake and drank vodka ("with a twist" - his words), and was "generally an all-round nice guy".

More importantly, and helpful for the supply of money in the D4 economy, Mr Big left a big tip for all the staff who served him.