A property developer extraordinaire with a “passion for deals”. He has been involved in deals involving many of London’s most expensive properties and founded the Marcus Cooper Group in 1991. Cooper purchased the capital’s second largest home, Witanhurst on Highgate Hill, for £32 million in 2007 and put it back on the market five weeks later for £75 million and acquired One Cornwall Terrace, designed by Decimus Burton, for £80 million in 2013. Other transactions have included the former QVC building in Battersea and 16 Grosvenor Estate properties in Belgravia and Mayfair.
Tag: BBC
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Marcus Cooper
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Jessica Fellowes: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times asks journalist and author Jessica Fellowes: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
To learn from history – in all senses of the word – but listen to the needs of the present.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
“No man lives by bread alone – he needs his bit of crumpet”.
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The truth about Mother’s Day
Travel writer Sarah Tucker shares her views on Mother’s Day
Happy Mother’s Day to all you wonderful women who have given birth to little gems. I feel a bit like a travel writer stating: “The people here are all very friendly” when I write that, because although it’s mostly true, it’s not always true.
As someone who has written about travelling with children for nearly fifteen years, really since I was pregnant with my son, and written about the politics of the playground, which is nothing to do with the kids at all, just the issues of the parents, I’m not sure if I actually like children.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my own, he is the centre of my universe, but over the years I’ve met children who I felt were going to make the most appalling adults. Those adages, “mine will be different”, and “they will grow out of it”, don’t happen. Yours turn out to be the same, and they get worse.
And, they always blame the mothers. That’s after they blame the media, the council worker, the government, the lack of nutrients in food, the teachers, the lack of discipline in the home, too much TV, too many computer games, violence, alcohol and celebrity culture. In fact, a whole melting pot of things are generally blamed for the awfulness of any child. This is unfair.
I recently produced a YouTube video of the top ten types of mums and I’ve done one for dads, but I had to tone it down because ‘they’ felt it might be too negative. It wasn’t. It was spot on. In fact, it was tamed down.
But dads are rarely, if ever, laid to blame for their own failures let alone that of their children. No one is to blame for their own failures and that’s the problem. No one takes responsibility. Actually no. Women usually tend to believe everything is their fault, and men tend to believe everything is everyone else’s fault, so I’m sure that’s why men and women get on as well and as long as they do. Men think their failures are everyone else’s fault – but mainly their mothers.
I’m sure Freud said as much somewhere but I’m not sure. These ones also tend to marry their mothers or ‘motherly’ types’, divorce when they’re not being mothered anymore – because their wives have given birth and have genuine children to look after and proceed to look for women who a) can’t have kids b) have grown up kids and c) are able and willing to dote on them the way their mothers never did… or did too much.
So, I say, Happy Mother’s Day, to all of those who have children and those who have children as partners.
Sarah Tucker is an award winning travel journalist, novelist, producer and broadcaster. She has edited, produced and presented her own radio and TV series as well as presenting reports for BBC Holiday Programme and anchored I Want That House on ITV. She is the author of best selling novels The Playground Mafia (short listed for the Good Housekeeping book of the year 2007) The Battle for Big School, The Last Year of Being Single, and The Control Freak Chronicles.
For more information about Sarah Tucker, go to: http://www.sarahtucker.info
Buy The Playground Mafia on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Playground-Mafia-Sarah-Tucker/dp/0099498456/ref=sr_1_7/202-9265101-5575054?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193856472&sr=1-7
Follow Sarah Tucker on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/madasatucker
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Neil Hamilton: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
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.
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Rachel Khoo
“Mademoiselle Khoo”, as she likes to be known, is a Paris based chef, writer and broadcaster. Bubbly and vivacious, she’s “seduced the French with Paris’ smallest restaurant” and charmed the Brits with her fresh and enthusiastic approach to all things edible. Watch out – her profile is rising faster than any soufflé. -
Michelle Dockery
This Golden Globe and Emmy nominated actress came to prominence as Downton Abbey’s Lady Mary Crawley in September 2010 and is now considered “one of the most chattered-about women on television”. Born in Romford, Essex, Dockery has also appeared in television series’ including Heartbeat and Dalziel and Pascoe and films such as Anna Karenina with Jude Law and Keira Knightley. Of her future ambitions, she states: “I love singing live, actually. And I’m dying to sing in a role, whether it’s in a musical or a biographical film about a singer. It’s always been one of my aspirations”. In the meantime, the nation will continue to celebrate watching this rising talent as she morphs into Downton’s merry widow. -
Alex Preston
This talented Oxford educated author is a former credit derivatives trader who is now regular on BBC2’s The Review Show. This Bleeding City, his first novel, was based on his own working experiences and analyses how the financial crash could be seen as “our subconscious revenge, our way of bringing down the system that had ensnared us”. His second, The Revelations, was described by A. N. Wilson as a “strange and compulsively readable tale of City slickers seduced by a promise of spiritual awakening”. He predicts a bleak future for financiers in suggesting that we are still in the midst of “a crisis that will take more than a few bankers paying back their bonuses to solve”. -
Petula Clark CBE
A singer, actress and composer who has been a star all her life. Brought up in Epsom, Surrey and best known for Downtown, Petula Clark surprisingly made her radio debut aged just 9 and appeared at the Royal Albert Hall when she was only 11. She now lives between Switzerland and Chelsea and can occasionally be spotted at La Brasserie in Brompton Cross. A lady of simple tastes, Clark modestly states: “The stretch limo with the blackout windows and the bodyguards are fun, but I prefer going out alone with just my bus fare in my pocket and catching a number 19 bus. The scenery’s the same whatever form of transport you’re using”. A Facebook page was created in 2012 as part of a campaign to make this legend a Dame. We back it with enthusiasm. -
Clare Balding
She’s been named the “most fascinating person in the public eye” by Tatler and a “21st century role model” by The Telegraph. This superb TV presenter and journalist is also a retired amateur jockey, has beaten thyroid cancer and is in a civil partnership with Alice Arnold, the BBC Radio 4 continuity announcer. -
Jimmy Savile: A man who kept himself very busy
The Metropolitan Police report into the Jimmy Savile scandal is published
We’ve written much about the Jimmy Savile scandal and received countless information about it and Operation Yewtree in general from our readers.
The late Jimmy Savile The majority, we’re glad to report, were shocked and appalled by this monster’s conduct. Though several of Savile’s friends bizarrely wrote protesting his innocence, today’s publication of a report into the matter confirms just what we all sadly thought.
The Metropolitan Police report reveals that Savile abused 214 people, many of them under 10 years old. It is shocking that the BBC and others allowed him to get away with this for so long and we would argue that a few more heads ought to roll.