The Steeple Times

Category: PERSONALITIES

  • Luke Durbin

    Luke Durbin

    Luke Durbin from Hollesley, near Woodbridge went missing aged just 19 after a night out with friends in Ipswich. After after being unable to afford to pay for a taxi home at about 4am, this grocery store worker was last seen on CCTV wandering around the town centre in the early hours of the 12th May 2006.

     

    Durbin had left his new motorbike and personal belongings, including his mobile telephone, at his friend’s house and no trace of him has ever been found since. A silver or white Volvo 440 – possibly registration M206 LYE (which was “either registered to a false name and address or on false plates” according to the ‘Missing The Missing’ YouTube channel) – seen also on camera in the close vicinity of Durbin’s last location at the time of his last sighting has never been eliminated from enquiries. Suffolk Police have stated that they “sadly believe Luke was unlawfully killed,” and though a £20,000 reward was offered and multiple arrests made, no progress has been made in solving this disappearance.

     

    In subsequent years, Luke Durbin’s mother, Nicki Durbin, has tirelessly continued her efforts to find her son and taken a job working on the Missing People helpline to help others in similar situations. She also operates a Twitter account and an email address [email protected] highlighting the case and keeps alive the hope of one day solving what the Ipswich Star terms: “One of Suffolk’s most enduring mysteries.”

     

    Luke Durbin – Went missing in Ipswich, Suffolk in May 2006 aged 19 – Grocery store worker Luke Durbin went missing aged 19 in Ipswich, Suffolk in 2006. He has never been seen again and no trace of him found.
  • Steve Cotten (AKA ‘Britain’s Grumpiest Landlord’)

    Steve Cotten (AKA ‘Britain’s Grumpiest Landlord’)

    Alongside a cat (yes, a cat) named ‘(Frederick Albert) Hitler’ as his barman, the landlord of the “maddest pub in Britain” Steve Cotten is not known for being the most involved of hosts. On TripAdvisor, whilst one grumbler pointed out that his attitude to diners is: “If you want to eat, bring your own food… Or use the kitchen yourself,” Devon Live noted in February 2020 that Prince Harry and Damien Hirst are “fans” of the “off-grid,” Fawlty Towers-esque The Poltimore Arms in South Molton, Devon. The pub has no website, no television, no Wi-Fi, no fruit machines and no telephones and is powered by solar panels, but for lovers of craft ales and locally produced spirits, a woman going by the name ‘The Real Ale Girl’ operates a “secret weapon… emporium” selling such in a back room.

    Summing up his refreshingly no-nonsense approach to running his business, Steve Cotten once commented: “I just make it up as I go along.  I might not know how to run a pub but I know what’s wrong with every pub I’ve ever been in. There’s no landlord anywhere, nobody talks to each other.  I involve the whole community – everyone knows it’s not my pub, it’s everybody’s pub… We are a dark and cold and miserable boozer – and that’s what people like about it… They all know you can do what you want here, use it for what you want, come here on your own at any time of the day or night and help yourself to a tea or coffee. Everybody will talk to everybody… You can discuss any topic under the sun here, nothing is taboo… Everyone has a go serving behind the bar, we all have a laugh and everyone joins in… No one else talks to them like crap like I do.”

    Frankly, one is simply left asking: “Why aren’t there more places like this?” Cheers to Steve Cotten.

  • Alan Holmes (1943 – 1996)

    Alan Holmes (1943 – 1996)

    Attacked for just £1,000 in his own home in Parkway, Camden, NW1 on Christmas Day 1995, Derry born police mechanic Alan Holmes was left “tightly tied” to his bed, face down and fully clothed for ten days in a building where he was the last remaining tenant. Discovered only after he failed to show up for work on the 4th January 2006, he survived for one night more and was able to explain the appalling crime perpetrated upon him before dying as a result of “horrendous injuries,” blood clotting and dehydration at University College Hospital, Bloomsbury. In spite of a £20,000 reward and (sadly too grainy to be of much use) CCTV images of individuals using his bank cards being made public, Mr Holmes’ “cold and ruthless” murderers have never been apprehended. Of this generous “quiet soul” and multiple sclerosis sufferer, his sister, Mavis Yule, later remarked: “He was a friendly, gentle person. He loved poetry and should have been a writer. He was very kind and would have given you the shirt off his back. Living in London, he saw people begging and sleeping in doorways. He felt very sorry for these people. He may have given them money for soup or given them a blanket – but he would never have let anybody he did not know into his flat.” In 2016, Richard Osley, the deputy editor of the Camden New Journal, rightly asked: “Who killed Alan Holmes? We have to keep asking… As clichéd and contrived as it may sound, Alan Holmes, the police mechanic who was starved in his own home, is the ghost of NW1’s Christmas past… An appeal might seem like a token gesture, a shot in the dark, but it’d be something.”

     

    Watch ‘Crimewatch’s’ report on the case (aired Thursday 29th February 1996 at 10pm on BBC1), go to 5:20 minutes to start:

     

    Alan Holmes (1943 – 1996) – Tied up and left to die in his Camden home in 1995 – Attacked for just £1,000 in his own home in Camden, NW1 on Christmas Day 1995, police mechanic Alan Holmes was left tied up in the most cruel fashion. Discovered on 4th January 1996, he died 24 hours later as a result of the injuries caused by his thieving killers. His murderers have never been caught.
    The last known photograph of Alan Holmes, enjoying the company of friends on 25th December 1995 (as seen on the BBC’s ‘Crimewatch’).
  • Mike Posner

    Mike Posner

    Detroit born singer-songwriter Mike Posner became best known after the remixed version of I Took A Pill In Ibiza went viral. Whilst that single has been liked over 5.6 million times on YouTube, gathered over a billion streams on Spotify and peaked in the top 10 on the charts in 27 countries, Posner’s other claim to fame is that he walked 2,851 miles coast to coast across America in 2019. This Bernie Sanders supporting, Duke University graduate cites The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger as one of the books that has “impacted [his] life the most” and dyed his hair green when he joined a band named Mansionz; before he dies, he claims to want to work as a hospice chaplain, go to outer space and take his ‘mom’ to Namibia.

  • Alfie Diaper

    Alfie Diaper

    Showjumper, show rider and jockey Alfie Diaper was described as an “all-round horseman” by Horse & Hound in April 2019 aged just nine. Dorset born and home-schooled, this “little star” has had success at the Olympia Horse Show, the Liverpool International Horse Show and won the Shetland Pony Grand National at Plumpton. He survived a near-death experience on his bicycle in 2019 also, but immediately “came back fighting… [and] adamant he wanted to make the Royal Windsor.” Diaper raises funds for the Bob Champion Cancer Trust on his JustGiving page and of winning the Jones Brothers Shetland Pony Grand National in December 2019, amusingly quipped: “My dream was to win a rug… And now I have.”

     

    Alfie Diaper – Showjumper, show rider and “all-round horseman” – Aged just nine in 2019, “little star” Dorset born Alfie Diaper has had success at the Olympia Horse Show, the Liverpool International Horse Show.
    Alfie Diaper – Showjumper, show rider and “all-round horseman” – Aged just nine in 2019, “little star” Dorset born Alfie Diaper has had success at the Olympia Horse Show, the Liverpool International Horse Show.
  • The Rt. Hon. The Lord Sumption OBE, PC, FRHistS, FSA

    The Rt. Hon. The Lord Sumption OBE, PC, FRHistS, FSA

    Eton and Oxford educated former Supreme Court judge and historian Jonathan Sumption, as a barrister, successfully represented the billionaire Roman Abramovich against the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Formerly one of the highest paid legal eagles in Britain, this father of three termed his £1.6 million salary “puny” in 2001 in a letter to the Guardian and subsequently charged the extraordinary sum of £800,000 to successfully represent the UK government in what was then then the largest class actions against the state ever in 2005. The trial lasted just four weeks. Sumption speaks French and Italian fluently, owns a chateau in South West France and serves as a director of the English National Opera. He became an outspoken critic of the “hysteria” over the police reaction to coronavirus outbreak in the UK in March 2020. Of this “frightening opponent” with an “icy analytical instinct,” the Guardian’s Wendell Steavenson suggested: “Sumption is a man who cannot stop thinking” whilst the former Labour spinner Alastair Campbell more simply concluded: “Brain the size of a planet.”

  • Tommy Banks

    Tommy Banks

    Born in 1989, rising star Michelin Star winning chef  Tommy Banks’ establishment, The Black Swan at Oldstead in North Yorkshire, was voted the best restaurant in the world on TripAdvisor in 2017. A regular on the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, Banks is also the co-host and a judge on The Big Family Cooking Showdown and owns Roots in York as well. Of his food, the critic Giles Coren commented: “They gave me cheese custard for my bread! It was so, so good. Angels sang. Birds fell stone-dead from trees” whilst Tatler’s Annabel Sampson described it as “true unadulterated pleasure.”