EXCLUSIVE – Matthew Steeples shares that “now is the time to drink” as Claude Bosi and Bibendum return to Brompton Cross in Chelsea in July after having been closed for a year
On Sunday 31st August last year, the acclaimed French chef Claude Bosi “permanently” closed his Bibendum and associated Oyster Bar restaurants on Brompton Cross citing that “despite our very best efforts, we were unable to reach a resolution with our partners and landlords that would allow Michelin House to move into its next chapter.” Bosi had run the restaurant since 2017 and had been preceded by Simon Hopkinson from 1987 until 1994.
Going further, in an interview for JancisRobinson.com a month later, Bosi cryptically commented: “The situation is complicated because the lease is held by members of the Conran and Hamlyn families and I do not want to jeopardise anything or antagonise anybody.”
Named after Michelin’s portly mascot ‘Monsieur Bibendum’ who, in turn, took his name from the latin phrase Nunc est Bibendum – “Now is the Time to Drink” – The Steeple Times can now exclusively reveal that the Bibendum restaurant will reopen with Claude Bosi at the helm in July.
Two Michelin starred Claude Bosi and his representatives were approached for comment, but had not replied by the time of publication. Meanwhile, the adjoining 31,750 square foot former Conran store remains shuttered and to let through agents Colliers. Whilst the rental figure for the space is not publicly available, the rateable value for the space alone is the astoundingly off-putting sum of £1 million per annum.
Now is indeed the time to drink. We join all raising a glass and say cheers to this truly great, rare piece of restaurant news.
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Of the restaurant premises, in September 2025, Claude Bosi told Nick Lander of JancisRobinson.com: “Although this is a building that looks wonderful from the outside and from the interior if you are a customer, what the restaurant trade refers to as ‘back of house’ was inadequate and getting worse. The kitchen staff needed a lot more space; the restaurant staff were having to store tables in the flower shop, and because it had originally been built as Michelin House, it included a tyre-fitting bay and a place where motorists could plan their journeys. The services [for a restaurant] were inadequate. The one downpipe for the lavatories and kitchen would overflow from time to time and the electricity supply was never sufficient. We tried to negotiate but sadly that failed and when it did I had no option but to close. It’s a beautiful building and one that needs to be looked after.” These problems will hopefully have been resolved prior to July 2026’s grand reopening.Designed by François Espinasse – who was also responsible for Michelin’s Paris headquarters – and built “as an ode to the glory of the tyre,” Grade II listed Michelin House, 61 Fulham Road, Chelsea, London, SW3 6RH stands at the northern end of Sloane Avenue and the start of the Fulham Road. It has a façade clad with green and white tiles and features stained glass windows based on the tyre manufacturer’s adverts of the time. The premises opened for business on 20th January 1911 and remained owned by Michelin until 1987 when it was acquired by Sir Terence Conran and Lord Hamlyn for £8 million. The pair redeveloped the site to provide retail, restaurant and office spaces and increased its size from 90,000 square foot to 118,000 square foot with the addition of a new steel and glass structure on the Sloane Avenue elevation.A tyre-fitting workshop within Michelin House, photographed circa 1912.The original Michelin Man mascot, introduced in 1898, was a slightly intimidating, mummy-like figure rather than the friendly marshmallow character known today. The design – also known as the ‘Michelin Tire Man’ or ‘Michelin Tyre Man’ and ‘Bib’ and ‘Bibelobis’ – reflected multiple stacked rings designed to resemble stacked rubber tyres. The ‘Michelin Guide’ itself was first issued in 1900 and awards up to three Michelin stars to a select few restaurants in certain geographic areas annually.‘The Steeple Times’ featured a party that was held at Bibendum on 7th June 2019 for a London to Monte Carlo car female only car rally that ironically sought to raise funds for victims of sex trafficking. The Cash & Rocket event in Michelin House was attended by heiresses including Paris Hilton and Chloe Green, but became infamous for being the last public sighting in the United Kingdom of the since convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell. The pension pot plundering ‘Bouncing Czech’s’ deviant daughter subsequently vanished before being located at the equally ironically named ‘Tucked Away’ on 2nd July 2020; she was then unceremoniously hurled into the clink and rightly remains there rotting.
“Very unkind” windbag writer Rachel Johnson, a sympathiser of convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, offers sympathies windbag ball and cat kicker Kurt Zouma
“Poundland muckspreader” and “associate of two dirty dildo floggers” Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge CBE has been deservedly slammed for not firing Kurt Zouma, an overpaid kicker of bags of wind for West Ham, after he giggled as he got his brother to film him kicking and slapping a cat in his kitchen.
Now, the Prime Minister’s somewhat off her merry rocker sister, windbag writer Rachel Johnson, has decided to stick her claws in and on her LBC radio show yesterday suggested:
“Listen, I mean I know, thank God it’s after the watershed. I am not a cat person… However, I do think we are in danger of overreacting and cancelling Kurt Zouma for one misguided kick in his kitchen which his silly brother posted on social media.”
“He’s 27, clearly he’s old enough to know better, but do we really want to live in a world where one silly mistake can lead to the end of somebody’s career? I think we don’t.”
“I think he’s taken his punishment, his cats are no longer in the house. I think he should apologise and move on. I think there are bigger issues at stake.”
As we said of Baroness Brady – who pathetically excused this animal abuser and even suggested he could “turn something negative into long-lasting positives” – yesterday and we repeat again to Rachel Johnson today: “Try telling that to the poor abused cat.”
Previously, in November 2021, ‘Rabid Rachel’ penned another ‘excuse article’ for The Spectator that was rightly condemned as “sickening.” In it, the daughter of Stanley Johnson – a man whose first wife declared: “He hit me many times, over many years… He broke my nose. He made me feel like I deserved it” – offered her thoughts on the trial of the since convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell and disgracefully declared:
“It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell – 500 days and counting in solitary confinement.”
“I intersected briefly with her at Oxford. As a fresher I wandered into Balliol JCR one day in search of its subsidised breakfast granola-and-Nescafé offering and found a shiny glamazon with naughty eyes holding court astride a table, a high-heeled boot resting on my brother Boris’s thigh.”
“She gave me a pitying glance but I did manage to snag an invite to her party in Headington Hill Hall – even though I wasn’t in the same college as her and Boris. I have a memory of her father, Bob, coming out in a towelling robe and telling us all to go home.”
“I’m sure fairweather friends would not reveal they went to a Ghislaine Maxwell party: as Barbara Amiel’s brilliant memoir Friends and Enemies proves, you only know who your real chums are when you’re in the gutter.”
Clearly Rachel Johnson – who believes being “called unkind… really cuts to the quick” – is a woman with a moral compass as warped as not only her buffoon brother Boris Johnson, but also a woman who’ll excuse the activities of both the abusers of animals and humans. Perhaps it is now time for this blonde bozo to reassess her recent remarks and realise that the cats and victims of a sick sex trafficker are the ones she’s most definitely been most unkind to.
Pictured top – West Ham’s cat abuser Kurt Zouma, convicted sexual abusers Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein and continually abusive of power and privilege siblings Rachel and Boris Johnson.
Rachel Johnson got her breasts out against Brexit in February 2019. The LBC presenter with her father and siblings.Karren Brady – another defender of cat abuser Kurt Zouma – got elevated to the House of Lords by her guffawing chum David Cameron in spite of claiming to “have no interest in politics.” She also likes bumping fists with Carrie Johnson’s puppet, Boris.
“Very Unkind” Rachel Johnson’s Most Ridiculous Remarks
On boozy lockdown breaking parties in Downing Street:
“I didn’t see much of the Prime Minister and his family during lockdown, but the times I did see him, he was completely compliant: he dotted every ‘I,’ he crossed every ‘T.’”
“If it was rule of six, there were six. And what I didn’t see were all the things you’ve been reading about.”
“To my mind, if he did go out into the Downing Street garden – and he’s told us he did – for him, that would have been work. He may have had a drink, I don’t know. Is that one of the key questions? But that would have been work.”
“For example, at his birthday, it was me, my three brothers, Carrie and Wilf. That was six people. And I have to tell you something about my brother’s character.”
“You’ve been seeing the front pages which couldn’t have been worse: suitcases of booze going into Downing Street from the Co-op.”
“I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that he has never once turned to me or any member of my family and said: ‘I tell you what, let’s have an office party’ or: ‘I tell you what, let’s have a party.’”
“If anything, he would say: ‘Let’s play reading,’ when we were growing up, or even in our twenties, or: ‘Let’s play, who can memorise the most poems from the Oxford book of verse’’ And, of course, it was always him.”
“Look, I’m just telling you what I saw over lockdown and what I know of my brother’s character.”
On her own character:
“Of course, I’m naughty.”
“Without my Johnson trademark mop of yellow hair, I think I would be nothing.”
On politicians:
“If you tell the truth you get into trouble and that’s why politicians are extremely dull.”
On the sex trafficker and daughter of a thieving murderer Ghislaine Maxwell:
“It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell.”
On food and coffee:
“In Germany, salads are assemblies of ham and mayonnaise.”
“I am a total coffee snob and bore. If anyone makes the mistake of offering me ‘a coffee’ they tend to regret it. I’m worse than Mariah Carey and the hot milk rider is completely non-negotiable.”
On her work:
“I used to sit at home in my tracksuit bottoms and the real excitement of my day would be going out to get a copy of Private Eye and a latte.”
“It’s often discouraging sitting working at home, wondering whether to put the heating on, answering the doorbell to the gas board, feeling it’s all utterly pointless.”
“The Lady [which she was the 9th editor of between 2009 and 2013] is a piddling little magazine that no one cares about or buys.”
On what others think of her:
“I’m worried about looking like a bad person… I don’t like the public image I’ve been dressed with and it worries me.”
“When I’m called unkind, that really cuts to the quick. You can say anything else that you like about me.”
“I don’t mind being called snobbish, a pain and a social climber, but being called unkind really hurts.”
1993 Aston Martin Virage converted to a shooting brake for ‘vacances’ to be sold at auction; one of seven examples, the other six were built for Prince Jefri of Brunei
One of just seven Aston Martin Virage saloons converted to a five-door shooting brake is to be sold in Paris this week.
Increased in length by 12-inches, subject to an engine upgrade from 5.3-litres to 6.3-litres and changed to left-hand-drive configuration, the car was built at the behest of a German Aston Martin collector named Dr Roland Müller. He named the car ‘Vacances’ as he used it for holidays, auctioneers Bonhams claim.
So pleasing was the Buckinghamshire Green vehicle to Prince Jefri, the brother of the Sultan of Brunei, when he visited the Aston Martin Works and saw it that he ordered six of them. Being a bit of an excessive sort and known for being someone whose extravagance knew no bounds, the royal had his examples stretched by a further by 16-inches.
Bonhams offer the V8 shooting brake – which now has a five-speed manual transmission and a folding bench in the trunk – at an estimate of £125,000 to £208,000 ($167,000 to $279,000, €150,000 to €250,000 or درهم614,000 to درهم1 million). They will auction it in Paris at The Grand Palais Éphémère on Thursday 3rd February.
The interior of the car is in good condition, but of it Bonhams state: “[This is] a wonderful opportunity to own and enjoy one of the rarest, and at the same time most practical, Aston Martins of the post-war era. This exceptionally rare and bespoke Aston Martin has been on static display for a number of years and may require recommissioning prior to road use.”There is plenty of room in the rear for three passengers whilst the boot beyond can accommodate plenty of luggage for those wishing to head off on tour in a grand style.From the front.And from the rear.
Aston Martin Shooting Brakes
Over the years, The Steeple Times has previously featured various other Aston Martin converted to shooting brakes. Amongst them have been:
Featured on our pages in December 2019, this 6-litre beast – complete with the registration ‘JET 2’ – was created for an adventurer and artist named Barry Weir as he wanted “good head clearance to stop his hair brushing the roof panel.” It came with a full-size clay rolling model – which gave the capability to build additional examples – and a not so insubstantial price tag of £1.25 million ($1.68 million, €1.50 million or درهم6.15 million). By August 2020, it had been reduced in price to £800,000 ($1.1 million, €962,000 or درهم3.9 million) and still now it remains on offer tagged with ‘Price On Application.’
Sold for £337,500 ($452,000, €406,000 or درهم1.7 million) in May 2017 by Bonhams at their Newport Pagnell, Aston Martin Works Service sale, this left-hand-drive example was ordered as one of a pair by a pair by two Swiss brothers. It was rebuilt by the factory in 1999 and then sold to a French art collector based in Monaco. Its most unusual extra was an inbuilt humidor.
Offered for just under £1 million ($1.3 million, €1.2 million or درهم4.9 million) in August 2020 by Bonhams at their Quail, California sale and one of only six examples ever built by Harold Radford, this shooting brake was commissioned by a “gentleman realtor” named Middleton ‘Middy’ Train whose passions included “duck hunting” and golf. It features not only a commodious boot, but also a “novelty” of a Webasto sun roof and a luggage rack on the roof.
Featured by us in August 2019 and sold by RM Sotheby’s at their Monterey, California sale that month, this upgraded 4.7-litre vehicle hammered down for £1.316 million ($1.765 million, €1.583 million or درهم6.482 million). Kept in Switzerland from new, the shooting brake was described at auction as “the ultimate gentleman’s express.”
