Tag: BBC

Three of the Best – Things to Get You Through Lockdown

Matthew Steeples highlights three things that are keeping him going through coronavirus lockdown living (aside from not running out of gin)

Having found myself ensconced in East Anglia for five weeks now –never did I imagine myself staying in a rural place so long – and having not actually got into a car or visited a town in that period, I busy my days reading, writing and walking a bit. It’s been especially strange not to physically see friends and I can’t say I’ve fathomed ‘House Party,’ but my telephone device has certainly seen more Bob Hoskins-esque “It’s Good To Talk” action than ever before.

Whilst most people will tell you Netflix has been their best source of entertainment during this period and I will most certainly join them in commending ‘binge watching’ Ozark, I’ve found time to do things that I’ve always put-off such as clear out my iPhone’s address book and chuck out paperwork I’m never going to actually get round to dealing with. It’s been a time to read and reflect and an opportunity to listen to music a little more often and here follows a few other ‘lockdown discoveries’ of mine that you might find useful:

Harvey Nichols

Nobody would imagine that Patsy and Edina’s favourite shop, Harvey Nichols, would be the bargain food and drink store of the lockdown, but given they don’t charge for next-day delivery wherever you are in the UK and there’s no minimum spend, here is an unbeatable service. Unlike some greedy online booze retailers (some of whom have actually increased their prices and introduced preposterously high delivery charges to coincide with us all being stuck at home), you can get a bottle of the heather-hinted, 43% ABV Edinburgh Gin for just £32, a jar of highly addictive ginger and chilli jam for £3.95 or an utterly delicious asparagus and shrimp risotto that feeds two for just £5.95. Add half a glass of white wine and Bob’s Your Uncle and Fanny’s Your Aunt.

Podcasts and Radio Plays

I’ve become addicted to true crime podcasts such as Murder Mile (in spite of the most recent one I listened to being about the appalling murder of my late friend Robert Troyan in Mount Street Mayfair in 2013) in the last weeks. An especially gritty and somewhat grim example is The Clearing, an eight-episode serialisation based on the crimes of the American serial killer Ed Edwards (AKA ‘Wayne’ Edwards) that has been lauded by the Guardian as “an immense achievement.”

Equally gripping, if you haven’t heard it already (I’m listening to it for a second time), is BBC Radio 4’s rerun of GF Newman’s The Corrupted. Featuring a fictional dodgy MP interacting with real political figures from the past including Margaret Thatcher and Douglas Hurd, here is something for political geeks to get their teeth into before the ‘B-word’ again raises its ugly head once coronavirus fades into the background.

‘The Quiz’ on Facebook

Some of us were already playing before orders to stay indoors arrived, but the ‘Quiz Planet’ app on Facebook has proved a charming way to interact with friends from near and afar. Some of the questions do border on the inane and others have induced a Major Charles Ingram-esque cough on my part, but if you want to while away the hours, do sign up and if you want someone to thrash, try challenging me.

And Then… What’s Next?

Most of all, of course, what will really keep you going through all this is this: A day will soon come when you’ll again be eating, drinking and being merry with your nearest and dearest at your very favourite establishment. Whether you fancy fish and chips or a bottle of Chablis (or both), it’ll come and it’ll come not a moment too soon.

For now, do heed the words of the late Mr Hoskins: “What men call chatter, really does matter. It’s about being a friend. Having the time to listen. It’s what makes the world goes round.” Call a friend or, if you’re not a technophobe like me, ‘give’ them a Zoom.

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes and @M_Steeples

April 24, 2020
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 4^th 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 29^th February 1996 at 10pm on BBC1), go to 5:20 minutes to start:

The last known photograph of Alan Holmes, enjoying the company of friends on 25th December 1995 (as seen on the BBC’s ‘Crimewatch’).

April 18, 2020
Emily Bolton

A Shackleton Award winning campaigner who “fights miscarriages of justice and demands reform,” practicing solicitor Emily Bolton is married to Reprieve founder and one of “Britain’s most powerful civil rights lawyers,” Clive Stafford Smith. This Dorset born stonemason’s daughter, herself, founded the Centre for Criminal Appeals in the UK in 2011 after previously representing wrongfully convicted prisoners in the United States through the George Soros funded Innocence Project in New Orleans. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Tulane University and her work trying to highlight the flaws in the 2011 convictions of the ‘Freshwater Five’ fisherman is clearly illustrative of her tenacity and dedication. Bolton’s sterling efforts in this regard were quite correctly highlighted in an April 2020 in-depth analysis of this most likely bungled case in the Guardian and in 2017, she tellingly commented: “Human beings make mistakes, and no system has more human parts than the criminal justice system. If it can’t identify and rectify its mistakes, it is doomed to repeat them.”

April 18, 2020
Wally of the Week – Sir Cliff Richard

Creepy Christian crooner Sir Cliff Richard demands his music should be given “priority” play ahead of younger artists; he must be the centre of attention, as always, even during the coronavirus lockdown

He’s previously claimed his calendar sales “leave David Beckham standing” and make Kylie Minogue’s look “meagre,” but Sir Cliff Richard is back to his moaning ways and is bleating about what he considers “the fact” that radio stations are being “unfair” and “snubbing” his music.

According to the Mirror, Sir Cliff went on the ‘Greatest Music of All Time’ podcast and “blasted” the BBC for their “model of broadcasting music to niche audiences.” He also, in sage-like fashion, pointed out: “We’re all dying. Long-term fans may not be with us anymore.”

“Why will people download a record of mine if they don’t know it’s out?” complained the crackpot crooner before adding: “Those among us who have proved ourselves over and over and over again should be given a priority chance. That should happen even if it’s to say: ‘We’re going to play this record once a day for two weeks.’”

Speaking to The Steeple Times, a millennial remarked: “I can’t see why this pensioner’s beats should be played at all. He’s definitely held together with Botox and actually, I’m surprised he isn’t like his music – dead already.”

Rise Up, the 79-year-old’s 2019 car-wreck album, had “little or no airplay on most radio stations,” the Mirror concluded. Given how God-awful it is, that’s probably the real reason; now, Sir Cliff, please, get back to crying on your kitchen floor.

Pictured top: Sir Cliff Richard OBE with his ‘friend,’ the convicted paedophile Rolf Harris.

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes

April 9, 2020
Starmer & Savile

Matthew Steeples calls out fake news site ‘Politicalite’ for falsely blaming Sir Keir Starmer for failing to prosecute the paedophile Jimmy Savile

Anyone who tells you Sir Keir Starmer isn’t a vast improvement on Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Her Majesty’s official opposition has to be off their merry rocker. That’s a fact, but, naturally, the spin campaign against this Southwark born Leeds and Oxford graduate has already kicked in.

With the self-declared “hottest right-wing tabloid news outlet [who support] Brexit, Trump and Populism” (take that to mean: “trashy fake news rag”) that is Politicalite claiming that Sir Keir “helped [the] renowned paedophile [Sir Jimmy Savile] evade justice in 2009, three years before he died,” one can see evidence of both the hard-left Corbynistas seeking revenge and the far-right looking for a new ‘leftie’ enemy to pin shame on.

Sir Keir, to the contrary of what the moronic headbanger founder of Politicalite, Jordan James, declared as fact very clearly condemned the situation that led to Savile getting away with his crimes. In 2013, he told the BBC’s Panorama:

“Without a change in the law, there’ll be another Savile… I think this is a very real issue that has been with us for a very long time. You can go back to the 50s and probably earlier to find examples, but you can find many more recent examples, and it’s a very simple proposition: if you’re in a position of authority, and you have cause to believe that a child has been abused, you really ought to do something about it.”

Whilst Starmer also admitted that Savile needed to be a “watershed moment” and wakeup call for the CPS – which he headed between July 2008 and November 2013 – he subsequently acted to propose altering the tests used to assess complainants’ credibility in sexual violence cases. In October 2013, he even went as far as to state: “For too long, child sexual abuse cases have been plagued by myths about how ‘real’ victims behave which simply do not withstand scrutiny. The days of the model victim are over. From now on these cases will be investigated and prosecuted differently, whatever the vulnerabilities of the victim.”

Hatemongering Politicalite, on the other hand, is a ‘publication’ that deserves to be called out. It has promoted Tommy Robinson and given a platform to James Goddard, the ‘Yellow Vest’ convicted of harassing the ex-MP Anna Soubry in 2019. Here, indeed, is something that the nation should most truly be ashamed of.

Pictured top: Sir Keir Starmer with his wife, Victoria.

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes and @M_Steeples

April 9, 2020
Down With Dumb Diane

After retreating to the backbenches, can life get better for the thickest politician in history, Diane Abbott? She’s got the sentencing of her criminal son to look forward to for starters… And a few paid gigs at the Beeb no doubt too

Life is not so rosy for Diane Abbott right now. She had to “resign” from her Shadow Cabinet post (well, she’d never have accepted being inevitably “pushed” if she hadn’t gone willingly) and on Wednesday, she’ll see her degenerate son, James Abbott-Thompson, sentenced for biting a policeman and spitting at another.

Remembered in Tuesday’s Telegraph as having an “infelicity with words and numbers that made John Prescott look like JFK,” Abbott pathetically told Sky News in February: “I was a backbencher for a few years and there is an awful lot to do on the backbenches” (take that to mean: “I’ll keep causing trouble and making a berk of myself and dipping my grubby mitts in the till via gigs at the BBC and elsewhere”).

Calculator-less, “most abused of any Labour MP ever” Abbott – whom also claims she’s going to be singlehandedly able to stop Labour going into a “dead end” with a “swerve to the right on migration policy” – however, did find time to once again block The Steeple Times on Twitter. She also get one positive call out in the little-read Independent where the self-declared “fangirl of Naomi Campbell” and “she/her/I” Lola Oriowo accused anyone having a go at Jeremy Corbyn’s ex-sexual partner of being “institutional racists.”

A selection of the opinions of Twitter users about Miss Abbott’s departure follows below. This double left footer will certainly not be missed by many.

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes

Diane Abbott has busied herself by once again blocking ‘The Steeple Times’ since being demoted. Plainly she hasn’t got much else to do.

April 7, 2020
A Cockney Paradise in Chelsea

Art deco mansion block apartment in Chelsea that was once home to the “cheeky Cockney” actor Harry Fowler for sale

“Cheeky Cockney” actor Harry Fowler MBE (1926 – 2012) appeared in everything from Minder to Lawrence of Arabia. He was first discovered as “a near illiterate newspaper boy” making eight shillings a week and invited on the BBC on a radio programme about life in wartime London. He was an immediate hit and subsequently a film company executive offered this Lambeth born boy a “monumental 42 shillings a day” to play an evacuee in The Demi-Paradise – which starred Laurence Olivier and Penelope Ward.

Subsequently Fowler took on many “juvenile roles” and after serving in the RAF during the war, he appeared in films and television series including Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, Jackanory, In Sickness and in Health, The Bill and Casualty and was described by Terence Pettigrew as being “as English as suet pudding.” Going further, of him, the broadcaster added: “His characters were neither honest nor irretrievably delinquent, merely wise in the ways of the streets, surviving through a combination of wit and stealth. He had a certain arrogance, but there was an appealing vulnerability, too.”

Harry Fowler as a schoolboy named Albert in John Paddy Carstairs’ British comedy film. ‘Top of the Form’ (1953).

Married first to the Ealing Studios star Joan Dowling, whom tragically committed suicide in 1954 by gas poisoning, Fowler’s second wife was Catherine Palmer. The couple had no children and amongst where they lived was in a portered art deco mansion block called Chesil Court in Chelsea, London, SW3.

Now offered for £975,000 ($1.2 million, €1.1 million or درهم4.3 million), the one-bedroomed first floor flat in which the “everyman for every occasion” and his wife resided is appropriately decorated in authentic 1930s style. It has an original iron bath and original radiators and a Chesil Court clock even. In the bedroom, the wallpaper is a Parisienne print by Madeleine Castaing and in-keeping also are the peacock blue silk blackout curtains and silk leopard print curtains that can be found throughout, according to agents Strutt & Parker.

The 586 square foot apartment is small but perfectly formed and comes with a 35 square foot south facing balcony and it was no doubt there that this Labour supporter decided against a career in parliament. “I found there was little room for laughter in politics,” The Telegraph reported he concluded.

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes

The sitting room is furnished in appropriate 1930s style.

The dining area.

The kitchen is small but stylish.

The bedroom features rainforest patterned wallpaper.

The original 1930s bathroom.

The south facing balcony.

The entrance to Chesil Court, Chelsea Manor Street, Chelsea, London, SW3 5QS, United Kingdom.

A floor plan of the first floor apartment.

March 26, 2020
A Belgravian Yo-Yo

Nicky Haslam designed Belgravia house for sale for 33% less than in 2010 in spite of yoyo-ing up and down in price for ten years

Estate agents like to make things sound grander generally and often give a house a name rather than a number. In the case of ‘Orpheo House’ in Belgravia, they’ve done the opposite and even though technically it stands in Elizabeth Street, its listed address is the rather grander sounding ‘50a Eaton Square.’

Grosvenor Estate owned Eaton Square, developed from 1827 onwards, has variously been home to actors, politicians and statesmen. Amongst them have been Stanley Baldwin, Sean Connery, Rex Harrison, Vivien Leigh, Joachim von Ribbentrop, George Soros and Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and most recently in 2019, the square was used as a location in the hit BBC drama series The Capture.

50a Eaton Square has had a curious history. In 1992, it was listed as the final address of the fourth and last Baron of Southborough on his death and subsequently, in 2009, it was sold to a “British music executive” according to Financial News. In 2010, he commissioned the renowned interior designer Nicky Haslam to turn it into a “trophy home” and the “epitome of comfortable luxury.” It now includes not only air conditioning and underfloor heating, but also has “secret drawers for DVDs” and “display cabinets for watches and sunglasses.”

“Super-stylish… [and] whimsical… with a Parisienne theme” according to the Evening Standard in 2016, the three-storey property fronts Elizabeth Street, but can also be accessed from a side door into Eaton Mews West – a cobbled street that has been home to Belgravia Garage since 1930.

Plainly, being next to the busy garage and car wash has put off buyers given that the property has yoyo-ed on and off the market at prices as high as £4.5 million since 2010. The real problem, however, is that the remaining 26-year lease is not enfranchisable.

Extending to 2,253 square feet, 50a Eaton Square features a double reception room, an Italian black lacquer kitchen and a small bedroom suite on its ground floor, a 25-foot by 24-foot reception on its first floor whilst a “generous” bedroom suite with dressing room, bathroom and west facing roof terrace takes up the entire second floor. A spiral wine cellar is located on the lower ground floor and a parking space within the mews is also included.

Agents Rokstone now seek the very much reduced sum of £3 million for the property.

The Names & Numbers – Orpheo House, 50a Eaton Square, Belgravia, London, SW1W 9BE

March 2020 – Reduced in price to £3 million ($3.5 million, €3.3 million or درهم12.9 million) and still available through agents Rokstone.

November 2019 – Listed for sale on Zoopla.com for £3.45 million ($4 million, €3.7 million or درهم14.8 million).

June 2018 – Listed for sale in Square Mile magazine for £4.25 million ($5 million, €4.6 million or درهم18.3 million).

October 2016 – Featured in the Evening Standard’s ‘Homes & Property’ section at a price of £4.25 million ($5 million, €4.6 million or درهم18.3 million) with agents Rokstone.

July 2011 – Listed as the ‘House of the Day’ on the Financial News website at a price of £3.95 million ($4.6 million, €4.3 million or درهم17 million) through agents Savills.

January 2010 – Listed for sale in Square Mile magazine for £4.5 million ($5.3 million, €4.9 million or درهم19.4 million) with agents Aylesford.

2009 – Sold to a “British music executive” according to Financial News. They state: “He moved out last year while [Nicky] Haslam completely gutted the house, taking it back to bare brick and changing the ceiling heights.”

June 1992 – Described as the last address of Francis Michael Hopwood, Lord Southborough, whom died on 15^th June 1992 (born 1922). Given the fourth Baron of Southborough had no offspring, the title (which was created in 1917 by King George V) then became extinct.

June 1955 – Featured in The Gazette as the address of Ambrose Dasent, an engineer and relative of the Sir George Webbe Dasent (1817 – 1896), the renowned translator of Scandinavian literature and mythology.

February 1936 – Featured in The Times as having “been sold by Messrs.’ George Trollope and Sons before auction.

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes

The designer of the interior of 50a Eaton Square, Nicky Haslam (pictured with fellow socialite Paris Hilton).

The entrance hall and staircase.

The main reception room.

Viewed from another angle.

The room includes a bar and is opulent in its styling.

A second reception room, on the ground floor, features a sitting area within a bay window.

It is has a division.

With a dining area beyond.

The kitchen features a central island.

The main bedroom suite.

Another view of that suite’s bathroom.

The suite comes with its own roof terrace.

The second bedroom is situated on the ground floor.

A floor plan of the property.

March 25, 2020
Hero of the Hour – Laurence Fox

Actor Laurence Fox has most unjustifiably been condemned for calling out the ‘MegExit’ saga as “boring” and nothing to do with racism

Laurence Fox rightly dared to suggest that the whole ‘MegExit’ saga has nothing to do with “racism” and also suggested Labour should not choose its leader on the basis of what sex they are on the BBC’s Question Time last Thursday. He probably should have anticipated it, but the reaction that followed has been utterly preposterous.

Condemned by that nasty little harpy Lily Allen – a wastrel of a woman whom instead ought to live by the title of her 2014 song Wind Your Neck In – for “forcing his opinions” on “normal people” and “ranting about things you don’t know anything about,” Fox’s alleged “crime” went viral after a studio guest, a “researcher on race and ethnicity” named Rachel Boyle, labelled him a “white privileged male.”

In the days that have followed, Equity allowed its Twitter account to be used to describe Fox as a “disgrace to our industry” and one social media user announced: “You know what would be hilarious. If someone walked up to Laurence Fox and unloaded a couple [of] shotgun shells into his face. Ending his racist, miserable existence. I’d just laugh and laugh…”

Quite frankly, we join those saluting Laurence Fox. He responded reasonably to an overtly overly politically correct woman and called out the whole ‘MeGain’ saga for what it truly is: Self-absorbed nonsense. As the actor himself concluded: “It’s really starting to get boring now.”

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes

January 19, 2020
Anything But BIG

Pretentious number plate ‘BIG’ attracts attention in Knightsbridge

‘Mr Big’ in Sex and the City was considered a bit of player. He was the “big man on the campus” according to Carrie Bradshaw and he was an “intriguing character” in the eyes of Comcast.

Now, in Cadogan Square in London, someone has decided to pretend to be him. They’ve positioned their ego on a Porsche and installed on it a numberplate that reads ‘81G’ (or ‘BIG’ to the casual observer).

Plainly not all locals were as unimpressed as us: Someone named Tabrez left a note on the car asking to buy it. He announced: “I already hold other ‘BIG’ plates.”

Facebook: @TheSteepleTimes

Instagram: @TheSteepleTimes

Twitter: @SteepleTimes

Update – 14th April 2021 – ‘81G’ attracted the attention of Sam McAlister, the BBC “booker extraordinaire” of Prince Andrew for that now forever infamous ‘Newsnight’ interview. She shared an image of the Porsche with her 11,600 followers and remarked: “I bet it isn’t…” and attracted over 3,200 likes and 140 retweets.

Personalised number plates are very much something people either love or loathe. In London, they are ten-a-penny and frankly though some can be amusing, many are just ludicrous, tacky, stupid and common.

This motorist plainly thinks driving around emblazoned with a plate referencing the ‘G-spot’ makes them either witty or sexually appealing even. Frankly, unless the owner works in a sex clinic, what are they trying to achieve?

Another motorist with a bizarre or frankly warped sense of humour imagines this plate to be appealing. We’d argue, instead, that the owner of this car instead gets mocked and derided wherever they dare drive.

March 14, 2019