The Steeple Times asks writer, broadcaster and entertainer Neil Hamilton: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
Christine.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
If you say so dear.
Their story is a modern day equivalent of that of Romeo and Juliet and Vanity Fair chronicled their deaths as The Golden Suicides. “Handsome” Blake, a digital artist and painter who worked with Malcolm McLaren and Fox Searchlight, and “sexy” Duncan, a writer, game designer and filmmaker best known for the “girl-centric” game Chop Suey, were the toast of New York but became obsessed with those they felt threatened them and their works. Personally wounded by a rejection from the post-modern rocker Beck to work with her on making a film out of one of her scripts, Duncan blamed his church, the Church of Scientology, and stated: “They are furious because he valued our way of life far more than Celebrity Center sex trash”. As more rejections came, this talented pair who “supported one another totally” became more and more irrational and in July 2007, a week apart, both committed suicide.
HMRC publish a list of tax evaders but neglect to mention any large corporations
The hotelier and real estate heiress Leona Helmsley stated: “Taxes are only for the little people” before being convicted of income tax evasion in 1989.
Yesterday, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs published a list of names and addresses of nine individuals and companies who they describe as tax defaulters. Amongst the names on the list are a grocer, a hairdresser and a coach operator and the amounts owed range from £29,111 to £447,904.
In response, Richard Murphy of Tax Research called the list of names: “Plain, straightforward hypocrisy”. He went on to state:
“The people named are easy targets. There are clearly different categories of tax crime, with small businesses who put cash in HMRC’s pockets named and shamed; but banks, wealthy lawyers and global corporations offered anonymity. It seems that only little people pay tax and only little people are named and shamed”.
Mr Murphy is quite right. Whilst these people may owe the taxman money, their activities are not in the league of the tax avoidance strategies of Starbucks, Google and Amazon.
If HMRC don’t want to be placed in the same category as Leona Helmsley, they’d do well to change their ways. Instead they’d do better to focus on the true “aggressors” that David Cameron highlighted this week but sadly, that would probably just be too logical a strategy for this monolithic organisation to follow.
View the HMRC list of 9 defaulters at: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/defaulters/defaulters-list.pdf
For a profile of Leona Helmsley, go to: http://thesteepletimes.com/tycoons/leona-helmsley-1920-2007/?position=14
Jilly Cooper’s state of the nation style summary strikes chords with Matthew Steeples
Best-selling bonkbuster author Jilly Cooper might be best known for novels such as Riders and Jump! but in the 1980s and 90s she was equally lauded as “one of the Conservative Party’s most ardent supporters.”
Cooper, born in 1937, showed she still has a grip on the nation’s pulse yesterday when she declared that the Conservative Party is “full of terrible people now” to The Spectator’s “Steerpike.”
Separately, in a comment to The Telegraph’s “Mandrake,” Mrs Cooper shared her thoughts on Pippa Middleton’s first book, Celebrate:
“[It] wasn’t a good idea. I don’t blame her – I think that she was ill-advised… All I can say is that I hope the British don’t demonise her because of it. She seems a lovely girl and her sister is wonderful.”
Ever the diplomat, Jilly Cooper, in these comments, shows herself as a truly brilliant wordsmith. She has tact and decency but at the same time doesn’t hold back when it comes to honesty.
Nigel Farage should put in a call. Mrs Cooper could be just the asset UKIP needs to transform them from a “bunch of loons” to electability.
This mouthpiece was born in Rettendon, Essex in 1958 and vents bile on all manner of subjects. Articles such as: “Why don’t more women moan like me?” and “Liz Jones’ baby craving drove her to steal husband’s sperm in ultimate deception” are frankly illustrative of why she’s so unpopular. After she got banned from the majority of fashion shows and her husband left her, she quit London for Somerset in 2007 to feed organic muesli to the rats in the barns of a 47-acre farm she purchased as her “rural idyll.” That misadventure came to a sticky end in November 2012 after she’d alienated the whole county by calling them, amongst other things, “smelly” and “faintly Amish.” Goodness knows whom she’ll choose to offend next. Phillip Schofield sums her up best: “She is inconsistent, bitter, nasty and unhinged.” Our advice: Just steer well clear of this acid tongued poison pen.
Matthew Steeples examines the truth behind Liz Jones giving up on her “rural idyll”
The Mail’s Liz Jones is a waspish woman who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Those who’ve paid even a moment’s attention to her bleating, will be familiar with lines such as: “Last week, my brand new £1,300 MacBook Pro broke” and “Phil Spencer wanted his £46,000 and he wanted it now!” She never stops talking about money and the size of what she both owns and owes.
In today’s Femail, Jones bores on about about how she feels “like a cross-dresser” trying out the Kardashian Kollection of clothing in a pointed attack on Kim Kardashian, but it was for her diatribe yesterday that she truly got the goat of the nation in “[bidding] a ferocious farewell” to life in the country in an article entitled “Goodbye… and good riddance!” 2,151 people have commented so far and most of them have been far from sympathetic.
When Upcott Farm at Brushford, near Dulverton in Somerset came up for sale in 2007 at a price of £1.6 million, it featured in an article by The Telegraph’s Caroline McGhie. The 5-bedroomed farmhouse came with a 2-bedroom annexe, a courtyard of barns and stables and 47 acres of land. McGhie waxed lyrical about the merits of moving to this location: “People come here for the peace and quiet, the night skies, the dramatic coastline, and they work from home,” she stated before adding: “You can find everything here, including butchers, bakers, afternoon tea and cake, fish and chips, an art gallery and a shop selling fishing tackle.” Of Upcott Farm itself, she concluded:
“This would suit a member of the new wave of buyers dubbed Droppies (Disillusioned Relatively Ordinary Professionals Preferring Independent Employment Situations).”
McGhie got it half right: Upcott Farm sold to someone who considers herself far from “relatively ordinary” and someone who is far from “professional.” The purchaser, however, was certainly someone who’d become “disillusioned” with what she’d bought and someone whose desire to be “independent” and create a “situation” just alienated all she encountered. The buyer, you’ve guessed it, was none other than Elizabeth Ann Jones.
Jones was born in Brentwood, Essex in 1958 and studied journalism at the London College of Printing. She became editor of Marie Claire in 1999 but was sacked, she herself suggests, for “listing in the magazine the freebies she had been offered in the previous month.” Here, it seems, began Jones’s obsession with all things material and here she also met an Indian BBC radio journalist named Nirpal Dhaliwal in 2000.
Jones married Dhaliwal but the union was to prove an “utter disaster” as he had affairs with women she terms “younger, dimmer [and] slimmer.” “I’m no racist” Jones was divorced in 2007 and said goodbye to her “3,000 square foot of Islington real estate” and “easy, if super-busy, London life” in favour of the green, green grass of Somerset.
Whoever’s side you see it from, five years of hell followed. Jones baited the locals and they grew to loathe her. She wrote columns and a book, The Exmoor Files, where she attacked them as “faintly Amish… feral, old and smelly” and another hack and neighbour, Jane Alexander of The Telegraph, responded: “Dulverton [was] positively fizzing with fury” after each and every publication.
Of the local restaurants, Jones stated:
“I have given up trying to eat out in restaurants here on Exmoor… It is still stuck in the Seventies, with only things in baskets and rum babas on the menu… If you tell the waiter you are vegetarian, you are stared at, incredulously, as if you are black.”
She whinged about her inability to find love:
”I will never, ever meet a man here in the middle of a moor, where even to be in possession of your own teeth is a bonus.”
And whined about fieldsports:
“I didn’t increase my popularity by being unable to pass a party of men and often children with guns, shooting rabbits and deer, without getting out of my BMW and saying: ‘Do you really have nothing better to do with your Saturday morning?’ The look of shock on their faces that I had the cheek to challenge them was priceless. I would stop, too, and shout at huntsmen on horses, galloping on tarmaced roads, one hand on the reins, the other clamping a mobile phone to their heads. ‘You will ruin your horses’ tendons!’ I would wail.”
Whilst Jones found little to like in her new community, they found nothing positive in her arrival either. Her dog was blamed for worrying lambs, and Jones’s inability to control it, locals say, was an indicator of the chasm between her life and theirs. In 2009, one neighbour went as far as to tell Danny Brierley of The Independent:
“We have got nothing in common with her, really. I think she may find it difficult to make any kind of life here now. She is not a very friendly person and we are all sick to death of talking about Liz Jones. A hatred has been building up for months. She is actually having a go at people and they are not going to tolerate that. She has feelings like all people, of course she has. But everyone wants her to leave and leave now. No one can make her, but we think she will go. I don’t see how you can live in such a small community with people who think that way about you.”
Matters came to a head when Jones’s precious black BMW convertible, “bought in 2005 for £26,000,” was pelted with eggs and teenagers fired shots at her letterbox with an air rifle. A local councilor even dressed up as her in the local carnival and yesterday Jones took revenge on those she blames for her “five-year prison sentence” and deprivation from Space NK, Cath Kidston and Illy coffee.
Instead, the article just shows the true reality of this bombastic harpy. The lines Jones penned speak for themselves. Country people don’t welcome someone who planned to “hack for miles across the open moorland in my Prada jodhpurs” anymore than the folk of Knightsbridge welcome Arabs treating their roads like racetracks. The gardener who had to endure Jones yelling “walk faster!” at him didn’t deserve such anymore than a bus driver in SW11 deserves abuse from his passengers. Jones concludes:
“I’m now a different person. I became so lonely. I would often get in my car, not just for the warmth, but for the kind voice of the satnav lady. I’ve learned that an amazing view and a pair of nesting grey herons are not enough to make me happy.”
Miss Jones bleats that she’s taken a £500,000 loss on Upcott Farm, which languished on the market at first at £1,900,000 and then £1,750,000 for three years. The “unexpected” sale of the property has given her the ability to “flee back to the city” but the locals and even the “Droopies” should be warned: there’s still 27 acres of the farm unsold and on the market at a price of £200,000. Halloween may have passed but the battleaxe in the Beemer could still call again.
Read yesterday’s “Goodbye… and good riddance!” article by Liz Jones for the Mail on Sunday at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2231033/Goodbye–good-riddance-During-catastrophic-years-country-Liz-Jones-greeted-gun-attack-relentless-abuse-Now-flees-city-bids-ferocious-farewell.html
To purchase Liz Jones’s book, The Exmoor Diaries, go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exmoor-Files-Husband-Found-Rural/dp/0297854437
For more information about the remaining 27 acres at Upcott Farm, contact Strutt & Parker on +44 (0) 1392 976005 or go to: http://www.primelocation.com/for-sale/details/18314693?search_identifier=71cbb8a2fb43a12182bfa7b79b5de0a3
“I don’t know what’s going to happen if my music career goes wrong,” states this Tottenham born singer. Having been named “one of the most influential people in the world” by TIME Magazine and broken the record for the longest number-1 album by a woman in Billboard history, she really need not worry. Adele’s still “Someone Like You,” except she’s now worth in excess of £23 million and is guaranteed a place amongst the music greats. Gordon Brown wrote to this Labour supporter to tell her that she’s a “light end of the tunnel” but we prefer the view of former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash. Of her, he proclaims: “She’s great. She’s a shot in the arm for this industry.”
This Texan born designer and film director turned around the fortunes of Gucci and YSL and had a huge success with A Single Man. A fixture at New York’s Studio 54, his designs are hugely influenced by the club’s disco-era glamour and his love of all things black and square. Ford met his journalist partner, Richard Buckley, at a fashion show in 1986. They share a love for smooth fox terriers and announced the birth of their son, Alexander Buckley Ford, in September 2012. Of being “gay,” he comments: “I hate that word” but declares that he’ll marry when same-sex marriage is legalised in California. Of Ford, his partner, Buckley, adds: “There’s only one Tom for me.”
The flexible £12.75 million former home of Tom Ford
Number 26 Gilston Road in London’s SW10 is a property that has been on and off the market repeatedly in recent years. On each and every occasion it has been promoted as the “former home of the fashion icon Tom Ford” and though he hasn’t lived there in years, it is still just as he left it.
Situated at the end of a terrace on the corner of Priory Walk, one can see why the house appealed to the Texan born designer credited with turning around the fortunes of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent. Hidden behind a high wall and hedging, 26 Gilston Road is private yet minutes from the restaurants of Old Brompton and Fulham Roads.
This 4-storey townhouse was sold in June 1997 for £2,250,000 and again marketed in 2009 for £8,500,000 through Aylesford. In the time since, it has been available to let at prices ranging from £5,500 to £7,500 per week, but is now back for sale at the extraordinary figure of £12,750,00 through Russell Simpson.
What explains such a rise during a period of economic downturn? Well, it’s because developers Equilibrium have gained permission to “de-Ford” the house. As is now the trend in London, they have planned a total redesign. Their illustrations incorporate a new sub-basement and as a result the gross internal area will increase from just over 3,700 square feet to just under 5,300 square feet.
Whilst the layout Tom Ford, himself a graduate in architecture from Parsons The New School of Design, created at 26 Gilston Road was ideal for A Single Man; the new floor plan with 4 bedrooms is much better suited to a family. Ford and his partner, Richard Buckley, announced the birth of their son, Alexander, in September. Perhaps they should put in a bid.
For more information about 26 Gilston Road, London, SW10 9SS, contact Russell Simpson, 5 Anderson Street, London, SW3 3LU. Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7225 0277. View a brochure for the property at: http://www.russellsimpson.co.uk/assets/12/06/15/5081/pdf_archive-1.pdf
View Equilibrium’s website at: http://www.equilibriumlondon.com
View Tom Ford’s website at: http://www.tomford.com
A £15 million mansion fit for a self-made tycoon or an upwardly mobile WAG
While the youth of the Kings Road and Loughton have featured in the reality shows Made in Chelsea and The Only Way is Essex, their counterparts in Cheshire have yet to undergo the same social experiment. Having come across a fair few of their number though, I can only imagine their antics would result in television of comparable car crash proportions.
Cheshire itself is a county of contrasts: there’s the farming and hunting set and then there’s the new money. From the 1950s onwards an invasion of nouveau riche footballers and self-made business people came to Alderley Edge and Wilmslow and it is said that there are more Rolls-Royces per square mile here than anywhere else in the UK.
Though today’s Coronation Street actresses and Man United players generally favour brand new homes in Prestbury, the new wealth have not just consigned themselves to such. The likes of Take That’s Gary Barlow, for a time, owned Delamere Manor at Cuddington but sold it in 2005 due to his ever-growing commitments elsewhere. Equally, Neil Hamilton, whilst MP for Tatton, lived at The Old Rectory at Nether Alderley with his formidable wife Christine but when their days in politics came to an end, they too moved on. For a time, David and Victoria Beckham were the undoubted glitterati of this manor, but of those footballers still resident Wayne and Coleen Rooney are definitely now the best known.
In a “grey area between old and new” sits Swettenham Hall at Swettenham near Congleton. This 12,590 square foot Georgian mansion dates to 1795 but since it was acquired by Brian Kennedy, a double glazing, home improvements and mobile telephone entrepreneur, the house has been given a total makeover. The colourful style he’s given the house can best be described as being akin to: “Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen meets Austin Powers.”
Swettenham Hall is most definitely a party palace and along with the addition of a leisure wing consisting of a swimming pool, Jacuzzi®, plunge pool, steam room and gymnasium in 2004, Kennedy has also constructed a 47ft by 44ft helicopter hangar complete with a retractable helicopter pad.
Standing in 100 acres of grounds, the house does seem a tad expensive at £15 million especially since that the adjoining former farm buildings were sold off and converted into eight homes in 1999. The driveway is partly shared with these homes and for those seeking the ultimate in privacy, this could indeed be an issue. It is perhaps why Swettenham Hall has yet to sell.
Brian Kennedy is someone I hadn’t heard of until I came across Swettenham Hall but here is a fascinating man whose meteoric rise is frankly very clearly linked to windows. The son of a window cleaner from Edinburgh, this self-made tycoon started his career as a trainee manager at the Royal Bank of Scotland. He subsequently briefly worked as a trainee accountant but left when offered the chance to become youngest branch manager of Moben Kitchens at the age of 20.
At around this time, Kennedy acquired a stake in Farouche Kitchens and with a Rochdale born property entrepreneur named David Russell, he was transformed from a door-to-door salesman to a pioneer in direct sales. In 1988, when Farouche was sold, Kennedy netted circa £1 million. From here, this entrepreneur returned to his family’s roots by venturing into double glazing with Weatherseal Windows and then home improvements with Space Kitchens & Bedrooms.
In 1999, with the help of funds raised by private equity investors 3i, Kennedy paid £42 million for the well known brand Everest but sold part of his stake to the management for £63 million in 2003. In due course he added to his shareholding and then sold 21.5% of the company to Hutton Collins in a deal which valued the company at £150 million in 2007.
Ever the empire builder, Kennedy paid £29 million for a conservatory manufacturer named Ultrafame in 2006 and then also added another double glazing brand, Zenith Staybrite, to his portfolio in 2008. Many other business ventures followed but not being afraid to diversify, Kennedy formed Patrick Properties, whose portfolio is now valued in excess of £100 million, in 2002 and Kennedy Renewables, which specialises in wind energy, in 2009.
In the technology sector, a chance conversation in a Knutsford wine bar in 1995 led to him venturing into the mobile telephone market with a company named Genesis Communications. The business was sold to Dixons in 2002 for £31 million.
In January 2012, Kennedy merged his main Latium Holdings business with Jim Rawson’s Epwin Group to form Epwin Holdings. The merger resulted in a company with more than 2,500 employees and brands numbering Spectus, Swish, CET and Kestrel.
Of his success, Kennedy states:
“Business is common sense [and] dealing with people is common sense. I don’t think I have any particular flair. I think it is about common sense, taking the opportunity when it comes and hard work.”
Brian Kennedy’s wealth has allowed him to indulge many of his passions. A period of semi-retirement “drove [him] and [his] kids nuts,” but this Scotsman’s love of rugby resulted in him acquiring the Sale Sharks Rugby Club in 1999. He is said to have set the “club on a sound financial footing” and turned it into “one of the leading rugby clubs in Britain.”
Philanthropy is something that Kennedy, a Jehovah’s Witness, has also dedicated his wealth to. Through his Brian Kennedy Trust, he has supported a number of charities and organisations but it is for his role as the main backer of Find Madeleine Fund that he has come to public attention. Of his reasoning for backing the missing child’s parents financially, he stated:
“In light of the quite literally incredible accusations against Gerry and Kate McCann, which are clearly exacerbating their emotional torture, I felt compelled to offer, along with other like-minded businessmen, financial support and the full logistical support of the Latium team. That support is principally our in-house lawyer Ed Smethurst and [official spokesman] Clarence Mitchell.”
Kennedy’s donation attracted much press attention in 2007 in the weeks following Madeleine McCann’s disappearance and he continues to support them to this day. A very public spat involving him, Gerry and Kate McCann and a campaigner named Tony Bennett, who also was involved in The Madeleine Foundation, has been the subject of various legal actions. In October 2011, Mr Bennett was forced to publicly apologise to Mr Kennedy and separately an August 2009 Evening Standard article by Mark Hollingsworth “investigat[ing] the investigators,” was pulled because for “legal and editorial reasons.” In it, “someone who worked closely with [Kennedy]” was quoted as saying:
“He was appalled by the Portuguese police, but he also had visions of flying in by helicopter to rescue Madeleine.”
Angelina Jolie, another avid aviator, once commented: “Wherever I am I find myself looking out of the window wishing I was somewhere else.” We do not know why Brian Kennedy is selling Swettenham Hall, but Jolie is indeed one of the few with the resources to take these particular windows off his hands.
For more information about Swettenham Hall, Swettenham, Congleton, Cheshire, CW12 2JZ, contact Edward Welton of Knight Frank on +44 (0) 20 7861 1114.
For more details about Brian Kennedy, go to: http://www.brian-kennedy.co.uk
For more details about the Find Madeleine Fund go to: http://www.findmadeleine.com and for information on The Madeleine Foundation: http://www.madeleinefoundation.org.uk/