Are Hugh and Jemima back together?

Hugh and Jemima

She's partying with eligible men. He's on edge -and chucking baked beans at the paparazzi. But whisper it, behind the scenes, Jemima and Hugh are seeing each other again...and it could even be serious...

That Hugh Grant can be grumpy and foul-mouthed is barely news, but even by these standards, his latest set-to with a photographer is undignified indeed.

Ian Whittaker, a paparazzo, was hanging around hoping to get a picture of Elizabeth Hurley last week when Grant showed up (he lives a few doors down from her in Chelsea).

Grant, as usual, was annoyed to be photographed in the street.

Whittaker says Grant started running towards him, kicked him and threw a tub of baked beans at him.

"He is a good shot because I ended up with a bean right in the middle of the lens," said Whittaker, ruefully.

What a ridiculous spectacle. Grant, 46 years old - a movie star and an intelligent man with the privileges of a private education and three years at Oxford University - chasing a photographer at ten in the morning.

One has to wonder what it was that elicited such an extreme reaction.

Whittaker told the Mail that he has not photographed the actor before, and only asked him if there was "any chance of a smile".

The answer, obviously, was "no" and Grant's petulant behaviour led to him being arrested. Charges and even a court case could follow.

So what has rattled Hugh's cage? Why didn't some small part of his mind tell him that this loss of self-control would be so damaging - and an embarrassing reminder of his 1995 arrest for lewd behaviour with Divine Brown.

Speaking to his friends this week, the impression one gets is that Grant is in an emotional tailspin because of the end of his relationship with heiress Jemima Khan, 33.

The pair announced in March that their three-year romance was over. Grant, it seems, had not been able to provide sufficient commitment.

Although he had proposed marriage and was all but living at her ￡18million townhouse in Fulham, in Jemima's view he had failed again and again to step up to the plate as a consort.

There were long separations, due to his filming commitments, which inevitably put certain stresses on the relationship. When they holidayed together, he preferred glumly to read a book or talk about golf rather than make proper conversation with her.

And he never wanted to accompany her to society and charity functions.

"What's the point?" she would exclaim in exasperation about the romance. It may be she was expecting too much.

Grant has led a fairly pampered life and always makes a point of how set he is in his bachelor ways. He likes golf, watching telly and takeaways. Joining a ready-made family, then, was always going to be quite a challenge for him.

Despite his own happy childhood, he has never longed to create a family of his own.

It is, though, perhaps significant that every male member of her circle contacted by the Mail this week described Jemima as "high maintenance" - one also added the epithet "nightmare".

Possibly she wasn't easy to please.

By all accounts she is very much the product of her curious and gilded upbringing: impulsive, headstrong and needy.

"When your father's always had mistresses and you then basically run away with your first boyfriend," said a source, referring to her marriage at 21 to Imran Khan, "you can end up a little prickly about romance."