Michael Gove set tongues wagging after he left a pub Christmas party with a star TV producer a year and a half after his divorce.
The Cabinet minister was spotted outside the event last week with Sam McAlister - an award-winner who booked Prince Andrew for the royal’s disastrous Newsnight interview.
A source close to former journalist Mr Gove insisted they were just friends, and he went on to a different dinner afterwards.
But another source close to the dad-of-two, who split from journalist Sarah Vine last summer, told The Sun: “His ex-wife will be furious he’s here with her.”
Someone who was at the event - TV host Piers Morgan’s annual Christmas party in Kensington, London - told the paper: “They were very close all evening and left together.
“[They] looked a bit sheepish when they realised they were being pictured and took a few steps apart quickly to try to play things down.”
Mr Gove was reappointed Levelling-Up Secretary under Rishi Sunak after being booted out of the Cabinet by Liz Truss.
The new bachelor has gained a reputation as a partygoer - at least by Westminster standards - after hitting the dance floor in Aberdeen last summer.
Now 55, he was seen raving to jungle and techno music in a suit at 2am on what appeared to be a solo night out in the Scottish city.
One onlooker claimed he tried to dodge paying the £5 entry fee by boasting he was the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - which a friend denied.
He was also pictured at a bar in the Ushuaïa Ibiza Beach Hotel, one of the Spanish holiday isle’s top dance venues.
Former barrister Sam McAlister has worked for 12 years on Newsnight, where she clinched the show’s infamous 2019 interview with Prince Andrew.
During the clash with host Emily Maitlis, the royal claimed he was medically unable to sweat, and did not meet a 17-year-old who accused him of sexual assault because he was in a Pizza Express in Woking.
Earlier this year Ms McAlister, who wrote a book on BBC scoops, told the Evening Standard she had succeeded because she “loved negotiation” and “pretty close to the top of that class” when she trained as a barrister.
The journalist, who left the BBC in 2021, added: “Trying to convince people to do something ... takes all of those kinds of skills that my granddad had in the fishmarket which I’ve carried on in a slightly different way.”
Mr Gove was signed up as a columnist for The Times - owned by the same parent company as Piers Morgan’s TalkTV - but terminated the contract when he was reappointed to government. He returned a £12,500 sign-up fee.
