THE wife of a north Hampshire earl received a name-check in ITV’s Downton Abbey.

Lady Portsmouth, who lives with her husband the Earl of Portsmouth on the Farleigh Wallop Estate, was mentioned in the popular programme by Lady Mary Crawley, who claimed to be on a trip with Lady Portsmouth to explain her absence when she was actually away with Lord Gillingham.

Lady Portsmouth, a former BBC researcher who is friends with Downton Abbey writer Lord Julian Fellowes, was reported to have told her family that she imagined he would make the character “a complete rotter”.