Liz: no money from Bing

When I went to see Elizabeth Hurley in the Portland Hospital, a few days after her son Damian was born, my old friend was propped up in bed in black satin pyjamas, with her son cuddled in one arm, and a drip in the other. She radiated happiness, clearly being absolutely delighted at being a mother. Her vast suite had more flowers than a Kew Gardens hothouse, with messages pinned to a notice board from wellwishers, Hollywood studio heads and friends from all over the world.

Not one bunch was from Bing. Every few minutes her mobile phone would ring. Bing never called once. When her many friends, her sister Kate, who was present at the birth, and her mother had gone home for the night, she was left alone with Damian. Yet, despite the hurt all this must have caused, she still had the strength of character not to let it get in the way of the pleasure and pride she was getting out of being a parent.

The same cannot be said for Bing. Now that the DNA results have proved that he is indeed the father of Damian, as Hurley has always insisted, reports have claimed that Bing has come up with an offer of $7,000 per month to help with Damian's maintenance. Unfortunately, Bing seems to have seriously misjudged the character of Elizabeth Hurley. As her friends know, the truth is she is not interested in any of his money, never has been, and certainly doesn't need it.

What she is interested in at the moment, however, is being the best possible mother to Damian. When I called her up to ask her to dinner last week with a mutual friend, she said she couldn't make it because it was her nanny's night off. I know that she has mellowed considerably since giving birth. She loves being a mother and carries around a photograph of blue-eyed Damian in her handbag whenever she is not with him.

When I went round to see Elizabeth at her house in Chelsea shortly before Damian's birth, to drop off an Easter egg, new baby chair and magazines (she could not leave the house because of paparazzi camped outside), she was fretting - as she had been during her entire pregnancy - about whether she'd be a good mother. It's no secret that she did very little in the way of ante-natal classes and is not the sort who relishes the idea of taking nappy-changing lessons. But, according to friends, she has the most amazing bond with Damian, who apparently has the sweetest nature in the world. She can't stand to be away from him for more than a few hours.

I only hope that Bing now has the good sense to start thinking more about the future of his infant son than about his image in America. While Elizabeth has kept silent about matters which she thinks should be kept private, for Damian's sake, the father appears to have been orchestrating a carefully stage-managed PR offensive to make him look like a "swell" guy. The latest example is a Vanity Fair magazine article, written with Bing's close co-operation - the magazine journalist Vicky Ward had even been shown his "favourite possession", a framed note on Four Seasons hotel notepaper saying that Robert Mitchum would be joining him for tea. Hurley refused to have anything to do with the article, which apparently had to undergo some hasty rewriting once Bing's paternity was established. Of course, he should have known all along he was the father - Bing knew perfectly well that Elizabeth is far too intelligent to have gone live on the Today Show in America to restate that he was the father of her unborn child unless she was absolutely certain.

As a result of the unflattering publicity and his claims that the couple were in a nonexclusive relationship - making Elizabeth sound like a scheming gold-digger - Elizabeth has had to endure six months of unnecessary pain. It seems sad that the man whom she once adored (she still wears the gold Rolex he gave her, which she calls her "pimp's watch") has turned out to be her tormentor.

Friends say that what has been most upsetting for Elizabeth has been Bing's energetic attempt to soften his tawdry image - for example, having those in receipt of Bing's beneficence, such as John Ford, a senior figure at Stanford University (to which Bing has pledged $25 million) talk to journalists on his behalf, lavishing praise on him as the ultimate Billionaire Boys' Club role model. Meanwhile, other Hollywood pals, with or without his consent, were saying mean, scurrilous and untrue things about the mother of his son. Strangely, Bing seems to have enjoyed all the attention, a fact which sits badly with his previous stance as the shy, unassuming type who always avoids publicity. From what I hear in LA, where the lines between fame, infamy and notoriety are blurred to the point of irrelevance, he is actually relishing being the centre of attention at parties and being recognised in restaurants. When I once had dinner with Elizabeth and Bing in Madeo, a smart Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills, nobody seemed to have any idea who Bing was; all eyes were on his girlfriend. I have to say that I did like him when I met him that night: he was affable, charming and bright. He also had a vulnerability about him which I can imagine women might find attractive. But all that makes it harder to understand his behaviour since.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has simply been trying her hardest to be a good mother in a climate of unbelievable personal stress. She is now looking to the future. I know she is keen to get back into acting. She used to have scripts piled up on her bed in the Hollywood Hills house we once shared; the last time I lunched at her Chelsea home, shortly before Damian was born, she was lying on the sofa in a sexy pair of over-sized grey designer "sweat pants", reading through a similar pile of scripts she was being offered. A few days ago, I saw her again, at The Ivy with her friends Henry and Lili Dent-Brocklehurst. She was looking fabulous, relaxed and happy and was clearly back to her old self once again, drinking the odd glass of red wine (she stopped smoking and drinking while pregnant). Although she refused to talk about Bing, I know she is glad that the DNA result is out (Bing flew into Heathrow for the DNA sample test, which was conducted on the airport Tarmac, and then he flew straight back to LA), as people can now begin to make their own minds about the whole affair.

Elizabeth recently attended a gala charity dinner for Kids at the Grosvenor House Art and Antiques Fair. Shortly before she sat down at the VIP table, one of Britain's most distinguished Establishment grandees, also on the patron's VIP table (I was sitting several miles away in another corner of the room, I should add) took me aside and whispered into my ear: "Just tell me straight, William. Is Bing really the father?" That such an intelligent individual should still have held lingering doubts about the paternity of her baby frankly astonished me. If he had been thinking along such lines, then I can only imagine what most people in Hollywood or the rest of America were thinking.

But one of the great things about Elizabeth is that, although she can be a tough individual to cross (I wouldn't recommend the experience to anybody), there is always a point when she refuses to take any situation she finds herself in too seriously. She has refused to play the victim in what has turned into a ghoulish, Jerry Springer-like saga and, at least in public, always puts on a brave face. Elizabeth has so far refused thousands of opportunities to "put the record straight". And she has stood firm about mud-slinging at the father of her child, although I dare say - in fact, I know - she has a few choice shots up her sleeve if she should ever choose to chuck them.

As for the suggestion of a six-figure sum from Hello! or OK!, I cannot speculate whether she would do this. What I do know is that Elizabeth is appearing on the August cover of Harper's Bazaar in America, along with an interview about being Britain's most glamorous single mum. Whether she has anything to say about Bing, we shall have to wait and see.

The whole ordeal has been a testing time for Elizabeth, but she has had a change of priorities since becoming a mother. I know she was visibly moved by Kids charity chairman Rosa Monckton's speech about disabled children at the gala dinner the other night in a way that she could probably have never fully understood before.

She looks forward to spending as much time as possible with her son in the new nursery that has been built for him on the top floor of her Chelsea house - in Hugh's old upstairs study. Grant, as always, has been a rock of support, always being there as somebody she knows she can totally trust. Her many other friends have rallied around her, too. There have been helicopter rides from Sir Elton John's exuberantly decorated pad in Windsor to Henry Dent Brocklehurst's Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire at weekends; her loyal friend Lady Ashcombe also loaned Elizabeth her Spanish villa, where she recently celebrated her 37th birthday with a small group of friends - until the paparazzi made an uninvited intrusion and she had to leave.

The one question I've not been able to fully answer is what Elizabeth saw in Bing in the first place. She told me over a year ago that she was seriously in love with him. How could she have misjudged his character so badly? When I asked a mutual friend the same question, they said: "Who really knows why anybody falls in love with somebody else? It's a mystery and perhaps life would be very boring if we knew all the answers."