Tag: butler

Julian Sessé, ‘The Belgravia Butler’ (1906 – 1970, murdered by meat cleaver)
- A Belgian born butler to the bastion of business Lord Bernstein – chief of Granada Television – was brutally murdered in a mansion in Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, London just before Christmas in 1970.
- The closeted victim, Julian Sessé, was savagely slayed with a knife and a meat cleaver by a much younger bisexual gigolo, Mustapha Bassiane.
- Bassiane subsequently fled to Morocco and then got snared when he audaciously returned to Europe in 1972; he was sentenced to life in prison in 1973 and deported back to his homeland 11 years later.
- The ‘Scotland Yard Uncensored’ podcast recently covered this little known case, but failed to mention the strange fact that The National Archives have records on the case closed until January 2071; who is actually being protected here and why?
London’s Belgravia is renowned for its associations with power and privilege and as some might say, where there’s money there’s quite often muck, meddling, murkiness and murder.

Whilst the infamous 7^th November 1974 murder of Sandra Rivett – the nanny to the children of Lord and Lady Lucan – at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, SW1 has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons, a sadistic slaying four years earlier on 19^th December 1970 at another ritzy residence nearby is one that has been largely forgotten.

The victim in the particular case in question, it was noted in a recent Scotland Yard Confidential podcast by John Hopkins, was “a kind and generous man in life,” but one who was “shamed and shunned after his own brutal murder.” In this day and age, such a clear cancellation would quite rightly be called out as an utter outrage and especially at a time when the Metropolitan Police are so deservedly under fire for their appalling levels of misconduct.

On the tragic Saturday night in question in 1970 and just before London revelled in the arrival of a ‘White Christmas’ just six days later, 64-year-old Belgian butler Julian Louis George Sessé was senselessly beaten and brutally murdered with a kitchen knife and meat cleaver. Here was a crime that involved a butler to the rich and famous, but a crime also that was quite the opposite of those crimes orchestrated by the notorious ‘Killer Butler’ Archibald Hall. For those yet to know of him, Hall – who was also known as the ‘Monster Butler’ – mercilessly robbed and murdered in the same part of Belgravia later in the 1970s. Perhaps there could be something in the water of that part of SW1…

Unlike self-serving monster Hall, “dedicated” Sessé had worked at a 5-bedroomed mansion at 32 Wilton Crescent, just off Belgrave Square “for decades.” His end was to come that snowy evening when he was mercilessly slaughtered sometime after 11pm in a basement grace and favour flat that he occupied in the home of his very well-known employer Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein – the buccaneering bastion businessman and chairman of the Granada Group and Granada Television.

Described as “tall and distinguished” and always “neatly dressed in pinstriped trousers and black jackets,” neighbours argued this particular butler to be “the perfect servant.” Grey haired Sessé was lauded by the owner of the nearest ale house to 32 Wilton Crescent, The Grenadier, as “a quiet and respectable customer.” Here, indeed, was an example of someone who would not wanted to have brought any “shame or stigma” upon his master and mistress.

Alone that night in the vast and imposing 32 Wilton Crescent mansion whilst Lord and Lady Bernstein were away on holiday in the West Indies and with other staff having been given a “leave of absence,” homosexual Sessé most unfortunately decided to take advantage of something akin to “whilst the cat’s away, the butler might play.” He invited a “drifter-like” 26-year-old unemployed Moroccan nurse named Mustapha Bassaine to ‘visit’ his “cosy apartment” and clearly anticipated a night of fun and frollicks. The two clearly closeted – but for very different reasons – men had met prior and money had previously been exchanged for ‘companionship’ and sexual activities, it was later noted.

That night’s ‘pairing’ represented anything but a ‘relationship’ of equals and was one instead where the elder man expected intimacy with the former whilst the younger believed he could rinse the latter of as much money as possible. Given “pock marked” faced Bassaine was a dastardly deviant and diminutive desperado who’d been out drinking with his girlfriend prior, it was to be a meeting that was never going to end well.

Sessé was said to have been of the view that “money that exchanged hands be called a ‘gift,’” but was similarly described as not being under any delusions about what he gained from the “clandestine” encounters he had with various young men. He was a man with ‘friends’ with similar attractions, but in the wake of his death, his family and most associates clammed up and denied knowledge of such preferences. As loyal as the butler, relative and friend had been, it seemed that that was sadly never repaid by those he should have been able to have expected to have remained closest to him.

After a delivery driver and a part-time cleaner failed to find signs of life and several days of out-of-date newspapers on the doorstep of 32 Wilton Crescent on Monday 21^st December, the latter called Lord Bernstein’s secretary, a 24-year-old named Miss Hazelwood. She then opened up the property and discovered a scene that Hopkins described as having “shocked her to the core” in the basement. Naturally scared witless, the secretary dialled 999 and the police process began.

Blood was said to spattered everywhere. It was all over the living room and all over the kitchen, but it was in a bathroom – most bizarrely locked from the outside – that the body of Julian Sessé was discovered draped in an equally bloody bath towel. The poor unfortunate’s throat had been cut and aside from multiple stab wounds to his head and chest, his stomach had been slashed open. A knife and a meat cleaver were bizarrely located by officers in the bowl of a latrine and given the “high profile” of the house owner, the case was “quickly passed to Scotland Yard.” Scandal, after all, would be something that the likes of Lord and Lady Bernstein obviously would rather avoid.

Detective Superintendent John ‘Ginger’ Hensley – who had previously been involved in the investigation of the vicious 1966 Shepherd’s Bush policemen murders by Harry Roberts – took the case and the next item to be found just happened to be the bloodstained trousers of the man presumed to be the killer in a washing machine. They were clearly not the trousers of the much larger Sessé and with a wardrobe in his bedroom ajar, it was thus determined the murderer likely fled in a pair belonging to his victim.

Evidence of foul play was everywhere and no attempt had been made to clean up. It was noted by Hopkins that it “all seemed wild and confused” and with no sign of forced entry and letters that indicated Sessé’s ‘activities’ with other gay men including paying for sex, Hensley is said to have immediately surmised it a “crime of passion” rather than a simpler robbery gone wrong.

Shortly thereafter, a pathologist determined that Sessé had partaken in sexual intercourse not long prior to his demise and found the cause of his death to be shock and loss of blood following a frenzied attack with both the knife and the meat cleaver. His demise would have not been instant and wounds to the body suggested that this was a man whom most definitely courageously fought back.

As police inquiries proceeded, few friends and associates were willing to divulge information. This, after all, was an era where to be seen to be gay was still the ultimate taboo. Though one local vaguely cited a “foreign looking man” having been seen outside the house at the time of the murder most horrid, all leads had alibis and even Sessé’s very own family made it clear that they knew nothing of his sexuality. The family went as far as to add that that they simply “did not want to know.”

Given these factors, here was a case that initially seemed headed to join a long list of unsolved murders, but a breakthrough came just days later on Wednesday 23^rd December. On that date, police were contacted by an Irish waitress named Jean Fitzgerald from her home in Anson Road, Tufnell Park after she’d “spent days and nights wondering about the case.” The 22-year-old claimed to have met Sessé through her bisexual boyfriend and stated thatmhe had arranged to go to meet the butler at 32 Wilton Crescent after the couple had been for drinks in the West End late on the fateful night in question.

Allegedly, Bassaine had told his girlfriend that he would “visit Sessé to try and get some money off him.” She admitted to police she was “not a fan of her partner’s activities with other men,” but “understood that he usually got well paid for his ‘services.’” Hopkins went further and surmised that this “somewhat timid woman, but one with fire in her eyes” had an excuse for overlooking the ‘activities.’ That excuse was: “Besides, we always needed money.”

During questioning, Fitzgerald stated that she had gone home after being in the West End alone late on 19^th December as Bassaine had left her to head over to Belgravia at around 11pm. She further shared:

“We paid the rent on the apartment between the two of us. He got money in another way when he was unemployed. Sometimes he gave me money but I don’t know where he got it from. He said something about going out with ‘faggots,’ having drinks with them, and getting money from them. He showed me a picture of Mr Sessé and told me that the butler often gave him money.”

Bassiane did not return home that night, but instead called Fitzgerald the next afternoon. He asked her to come to Sessé’s apartment, but she declined. Of why, she subsequently reminisced:

“I thought it was very strange that he wanted me to go there. He wanted me to go for a drink [at 32 Wilton Crescent] and he got mad when I said no. I was afraid of Mustapha Bassaine because he was very depraved at times and I was afraid that he would beat me like he had done before.”

After his girlfriend’s refusal to attend, Bassiane himself returned to Anson Road drunk and cried as he told Fitzgerald that he had argued with his ‘friend.’ She noted that he was wearing clothes he had not worn before – including trousers and a jumper that were “too large for him” – and “assumed they belonged to Sessé.” Going further, aside from noting her boyfriend’s shoes were stained with blood and that he had scratches on his hands, she suggested that she was so scared of Bassiane’s mental state that she was fearful to go to bed. Instead, she sat up all night with him, she continued.

“He arrived with a bag full of drinks and fruit and showed me a watch, a camera and a ring that he told me were Christmas gifts that Julian had given him. On 22^nd December, he threw some clothes and some papers in the trash and told me that he had to go to Morocco immediately because his mother was sick. He bought an air ticket and went by plane. He had no difficulty paying for the ticket in cash even though he had no money when he went to Julian’s house over the weekend.”

Despite being supposedly penniless and potless only a couple of days earlier, Mustapha Bassaine flew to Casablanca on 23^rd December after having paid the then not insubstantial sum of £44 in cash for a one-way ticket. He also exchanged a further £50 in cash for Moroccan Dirhams and after giving Jean Fitzgerald his Moroccan familial address, requested she send any newspaper cuttings that mentioned his name there. Allegedly, according to the Irish waitress, he also mentioned having seen newspaper reports about the murder at 32 Wilton Crescent and added “he couldn’t understand how anyone could have done such a thing to a man as nice as Julian.”

Though police officers questioned whether Fitzgerald could just be another ‘spurned girlfriend,’ some of the details mentioned made Hensley take her more seriously than the many cranks who call in when crime occurs. A search of bins in the neighbourhood followed and resulted in the aforementioned bloodstained shoes and trousers being found.

Justifiably, Bassiane – who turned out to be the son of a high ranking official in the Moroccan Foreign Office – was either a man too stupid to dispose of the items of his crime or he was someone who had a plan and didn’t think he needed to be bothered about the consequences of the DNA on them. Meanwhile, fingerprints found in the couple’s Anson Road flat matched fingerprints found at 32 Wilton Crescent and thus here was a man who rose straight to number one on the list of suspects.

Ten days after the murder, police issued an international warrant being for Musapha Bassiane’s arrest, but there was a major problem for Scotland Yard as Britain had no extradition treaty with Morocco. It seemed, given the key suspect had already ‘flown the nest,’ as long as he stayed in his homeland, Bassiane was a safe fugitive from justice. This was a situation similar to that involving the billionaire playboy Farouk Abdulhak in the more recent 2008 ‘Murder in Mayfair’ of Martine Vik Magnussen; getting someone back from a country like Morocco then or Yemen now is, in fact, nigh on impossible.

In addition, in case Fitzgerald had either got it wrong about where her errant bisexual lover was travelling to, or was instead covering for him, a police watch was put on her Anson Road flat in case he decided to return. Of course, aware that this young Irish girl was of no further use to him, the grubby, grifter never, ever did revisit that address but found himself safely hidden away in his homeland.

Meanwhile, with their holidays over, Lord and Lady Bernstein returned from their tour of the West Indies – where they had visited either Barbados or Bermuda or perhaps even both (depending on which reports you believe) – shortly after Christmas. Funeral arrangements were made for Julian Sessé, but only a small number of people were said to have attended a service at St Mary’s Catholic church in Cadogan Street, Chelsea. The deceased’s place of burial remains presently unknown, but it is said that his clearly embarrassed family “refused” to attend the service in what can only be perceived as move most spineless.

Separately, on returning to 32 Wilton Crescent, though Lady Bernstein identified that a sum of £80 was missing from the desk in her bedroom, a search of the house discovered that no further familial property had been stolen. By now, however, it seemed that the aforementioned watch, camera and ring and perhaps further money taken by Bassiane to the Anson Road apartment had actually been stolen instead from his victim.

In spite of all of this relevant new information, the judicial process was opened and postponed no less than eight times. According to the person in charge of the criminal investigation, a Mr Gavin Ilurston, “the investigations were not finished.” The reasoning for such is definitely something worthy of question still to this day.

Hensley, however, knew exactly where Bassiane was in Morocco and “through Interpol asked other the police of all European countries in Europe countries to be prepared” in case the suspected killer appeared. Eighteen months later, he got again lucky when he and his colleague Detective Sergeant Bernard Davis were informed that the on-the-run deadbeat was planning a trip to Germany and the Netherlands.

“Handlebar moustached” dimwit Bassaine was arrested on 28^th June 1972 after police in Holland detained him for immigration offences in Rotterdam. Given the fugitive from justice had been on Interpol’s list as wanted for murder, if he’d simply stayed in Morocco, he would not have ever been caught, but here instead was a feckless fool clearly beyond arrogant who thought himself above the law.

By 10^th July 1972, with extradition paperwork complete, Mustapha Bassiane was transferred to the custody of Davis and shackled to him and flown to London. A flight attendant, Hopkins in the conclusions of his podcast shared, requested the shackles be removed for the duration of the journey, but Davis was most definitely not going to allow any opportunity his captive to escape for a second time. The unshackling was rejected and once in London, it was straight off to a remand prison until trial for the man suspected of the murder of Julian Sessé.

On 8^th February 1973, Bassiane’s trial began at London’s ‘Old Bailey’ Central Criminal Court. Akin to form, he pleaded not guilty and though admitting to having spent the evening with Sessé, argued that “the butler was in fine health when he left on the Sunday morning.”

Turning the cards on his by then ex-lover Fitzgerald, Bassiane told the court that she “flew into a wild jealous rage” and threatened to “harm the old man and hurt the old bastard… She threatened to smash his face.” He added that “the same day Jean Fitzgerald had gone out and he had not seen her until the afternoon. She was shaking and had told him she was sick.” His basic and somewhat bizarre line of defence – given the substantive forensic evidence against his own person – was that it was her and not him that had committed the ‘crime passionnel.’

Unsurprisingly, the jury did not believe this “fierce tempered” killer and Mustapha Bassiane found himself sentenced to life in prison on 12^th February 1973. He also received a concurrent sentence of two years for stealing £80 in cash from Lady Bernstein’s desk – a sum that was about equivalent to a month’s average wages at that time, but most definitely not a sum worth killing for.

Before sending him down, the judge in the case slammed Bassiane. Judge Forbes is said to have told the court: “This was a brutal murder. The sentence has been the product of evidence in which there is no doubt. Your attempt to place part of the blame on Miss Fitzgerald has received the treatment it deserves.”

It is unknown what became of this murdering monster after he was deported in 1984. Mustapha Bassiane had served just 11 years of his life sentence in the UK; a term that surely was far from long enough for such a brutal and evil murder and a crime committed in a country where young men who proclaim their innocence like Mark Alexander and Omar Benguit have rotted in prison for 13 years and 18 years respectively in spite of a clear lack of evidence against them.

Turning to other thoughts post-sentencing, Hopkins shared in his podcast that Hensley believed Bassaine had tried to blackmail the butler and killed him when he didn’t comply. He also suggested that “hapless” Fitzgerald could have been implicated if she had gone to the mansion that night and concluded “her distrust of his motives may have just saved her from a dark fate” at 32 Wilton Crescent. Would her lover have killed her there also or would he have set the place up to pin the blame on her? Thankfully, given she saw sense, no one will ever know.

If still alive in 2023, Mustapha Bassaine would be 79-years-old; Julian Sessé, on the other hand, would be long dead, but if he hadn’t met his noxious nemesis that night in December 1973, he’d probably have gotten to have enjoyed a long, happy and fulfilled retirement. The ‘Belgravia Butler’ perhaps should have been more careful, but he most definitely didn’t deserve such a sordid end.

Given also that a National Archive lockdown on documents relating to this case was orchestrated for 97 years on 1^st January 1973 with a record opening date of 1^st January 2071 and a review date of 2021 that changed nothing, is something still being hidden regarding this case? After all, this murder occurred in the home of Lord Bernstein, a very powerful Chagall collecting business titan with links to Sir Alfred Hitchcock and a man once part of the Ministry of Information. We join John Hopkins of Scotland Yard Confidential and wonder if “the real truth” of what happened to “kindly” Julian Sessé on 19^th December 1970 will ever actually be known.

Pictured top – No image of Julian Sessé can be found on the Internet (left); 32 Wilton Crescent (top centre) and the late Granada head honcho Lord Bernstein (lower centre); killer Mustapha Bassaine in the only known image available of him (right).

Listen to the ‘Scotland Yard Confidential’ episode about the slaying of ‘The Peer’s Butler’ by clicking here.

Editor’s note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.

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The story of the December 1970 slaying at 32 Wilton Crescent features in a 37:02-minute March 2023 episode of the excellent podcast ‘Scotland Yard Confidential’ – which can be listened to as ‘A Spotify Original.’ The description for the episode reads: “In December 1970, Julian Sessé, the long-serving butler to Granada TV Chairman, Lord Bernstein, was found brutally murdered in his basement flat in Belgravia. With little hope for a successful investigation, and two murder cases already on their books, local police quickly handed the case to Scotland Yard. Evidence gathered from the flat revealed that the elegant 65-year-old butler was in the habit of picking up younger men and entertaining them at his home. He was discreet and private in these affairs, and his personal acquaintances were equally secretive. Was his killer a stranger or a friend? And how would detectives trace him if no one was willing to talk? It fell to Detective Chief Superintendent John ‘Ginger’ Hensley to crack the case of the Peer’s Butler. Learn more about your ad choices.”

In an edition of ‘The News’ on 16th February 1973 that reported on Julian Bassaine receiving a life sentence for the slaying of Lord Bernstein’s butler, other articles included one about a Burton’s Court, Chelsea, SW3 resident having had £1,100 fur coat stolen “while she was having her hair done” and another listing TV licence fines awarded to residents of Draycott Place, Sloane Court West, Lyall Streeet, Margeretta Terrace, Sydney Street and Swan Court. A tragic story of a mother and baby found dead in a bedsit in Onslow Gardens, SW7 was referenced on the same page along with an ex-Grenadier Guardsmen being found dead after a fit in a ‘super loo’ at Victoria Station, SW1. A tale of a drunken man being fined after throwing a bottle through a Kings Road boutique, the Little-Big-Horn was one of the day’s more light-hearted pieces of coverage; Thomas Patrick Canon of Redburn Street, SW3 told the judge: “I am terribly sorry for what I have done, but had no recollection of it. All over the weekend I have asked myself what reason I had to do it and I can’t come up with any answer. I have been thinking it was a nightmare. I wouldn’t like it, neither [if that had been done to a shop I owned].”

The scene of a murder most horrid on the 19th December 1970 – 32 Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, London, SW1X 8RX. Beyond the then owner Sidney Bernstein (formally titled The Right Honourable The Lord Bernstein of Leigh in the County of Kent, 1899 – 1993), others who have have variously lived or have connections to the likely now worth upwards of £40 million residence have included Gilbert Heathcote, 9th Baronet (in 1941) and a lady named Sarina Abramovich (circa 2015 to 2016). Ms Abramovich was subsequently (in 2021) 432 Park Avenue, New York based and shares a surname with the former Chelsea Football Club owning, one-time Putin supporting billionaire Roman Abramovich, but it is unknown if they are related. A statue of Sir Robert Grosvenor KG stands just opposite 32 Wilton Crescent and others to have lived on this most tony of streets have included the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Lord Randolph Churchill, Quentin Crewe, the Grand Duchesss Charlotte of Luxembourgh and Demetri Marchessini.

Essex born and Jewish, Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein was lauded as “the dominant influence on the growth and development of commercial television” by the British Film Institute. Twice married and a father of three, his business interests included amongst other things a circuit of 60 cinemas and theatres, motorway services stations and a hugely profitable television rental business. He was a lifelong friend and partner of Sir Alfred Hitchcock in film production and turned Granada Television into a huge commercial success; he was portrayed by Steven Berkoff in the 2010 BBC one-off drama, ‘The Road to Coronation Street.’

Sarina Abramovich is listed as being connected with 32 Wilton Crescent in 2015 and 2016 in documents relating to imports and exports. Whether she has any connection with the property now is unknown and records relating to the building remain shrouded in mystery. The Heathcote family were connected with the house in the 1940s when Mark Heathcote, 10^th Baronet was born there in 1941.
July 18, 2023
Extravagance Knows No Bounds – £36m Mansion Previously Owned By Disgraced Tycoons Alan Bond And Conrad Black Again For Sale

Matthew Steeples takes a look at a £36 million Kensington mansion formerly owned by disgraced business tycoons Alan Bond and Lord Black; its former chatelaine was known for stating “I have an extravagance that know no bounds”

Sir Winston Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames once described the buccaneering businessman and media tycoon Lord Black of Crossharbour as “London’s biggest bore unhung” whilst his wife, Lady Black – better known as the author and journalist Barbara Amiel – was suggested to be just a “rich bitch” by Sarah Sands in a “case for the defence” article in the Independent in October 2006.

“Poster boy for the 80s” turned fraudster and jailbird Alan Bond (1938 – 2015) was an English-Australian businessman equally Marmite-like in being liked or loathed and now a Kensington mansion owned for a time by both subsequently disgraced businessmen is once again for sale.

14 Cottesmore Gardens, formerly known as 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens, was purchased by Alan Bond’s Satellite Group for £7 million in the 1980s and sold by administrators of that business to Conrad Black and his wife for the knockdown sum of just £3.5 million in 1992.

Plain old Mr and Mrs Black (as they then were) lavished further millions – some of which came from the company Hollinger International, Inc., which ultimately resulted in their downfall – on the double fronted 19^th century mansion and used it for entertaining on a lavish scale. Guests, including the likes of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Joan Collins, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, were said to flock to the parties they gave there, but in 2005 these gatherings of upto 400 people at a time came to an almighty end.

Forced to sell at a bargain basement price of just £13.1 million on an ask of £17.5 million as the Canadian born billionaire faced jail time in America, Lord and Lady Black’s tenure was over and the residence saw its “arriviste torch” passed to Juan and Adriana Villalonga, a couple described as “a Mexican telecom czar and his beauty-queen wife.” Of what came next, The Globe And Mail’s Paul Waldie pointedly penned in February 2007: “[They] quickly erased many of the features that the Blacks prized.”

Once again for sale as of April 2023, the value of 14 Cottesmore Gardens has again been deemed to have substantially risen. Knight Frank offer the 12,310 square foot, five-storey residence at a punchy price of £36 million and laud it as “imposing” and “presented in good order throughout.” They add that a “pre-planning consultation” has found that further accommodation could be added that would take the internal space to more than 15,000 square feet; business barons with deep pockets only need apply.

Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples.

Pictured Top – 54-foot wide 14 Cottesmore Gardens is described by selling agents Knight Frank as “offering lateral living so often requested but so hard to find in central London.” They neglect to mention that with its hedges cut back to the minimum, the place actually looks extremely forlorn.

Flamboyant Lord and Lady Black dressed as Cardinal Richelieu and Marie Antoinette for a party at Kensington Palace in 2000. For a time, the couple employed 17 butlers (if Tom Bower is to be believed) and had two private jets and homes – aside from the 19th Cottesmore Gardens mansion – in New York, Palm Beach and Toronto. “Guests packed into their parties at Cottesmore Gardens,” Bower remarked in his 2006 book the couple, adding: “Amiel was a big spender… Under the control of senior butler Andrew Lightwood, second butler Peter Wilson and a succession of third butlers, Amiel’s life in Kensington had become what her constantly changing staff called ‘bizarre.’ Each recruit was taken by Lightwood on an introductory tour of the house, ending on the roof. ‘Make sure the landing lights are on at all times,’ instructed Lightwood solemnly, ‘because Madame takes off from here on her broomstick looking for cats. She needs the lights to guide her return.’ His face would crack into a smile. ‘Most important, take care that she never sees you. She hates seeing any of us.’ Amiel’s eccentricity demanded that her staff hid whenever she approached, diving into cupboards if necessary, and never entered her quarters when she was present. Every day, all the bed linen was changed and subjected to ‘the penny test.’ A coin was dropped onto the sheets. If it failed to bounce they were not drawn sufficiently tight. Every cushion was arranged to a precise pre-ordained position, and each towel placed exactly as Amiel had predetermined. ‘Andrew!’ she screamed down the telephone on one memorable occasion, ‘the towels are in the wrong place!’ Lightwood, as Amiel knew, was in New York, but he was expected to telephone the staff in the house in London to rectify the error. ‘You f**king pillock!’ she yelled at another member of staff for reading her ‘Daily Mail’ before it was delivered to her.”

Barbara Amiel Black (or ‘Lady Black’ as she prefers to be known) in her drawing room at Cottesmore Gardens (pictured). Of her, Sarah Sands on Lord and Lady Black in the ‘Independent’ in October 2006 opined: “Conrad and Barbara in their monstrous, glamorous way, knew how to throw parties. The talk was of geo-politics and hemlines. Nowadays, we scorn their extravagance and doubt the source of their wealth with prune-faced hindsight. Meanwhile, everyone is sucking up to Russians…. Barbara would disingenuously begin her midnight calls to me by saying in her low, breathy voice: ‘I hope I am not disturbing you.’ She would then offer little glimpses of her own home life. I remember her mentioning that Conrad Black was upstairs playing with his fleet of toy gun ships in the bath… I remember her examining an exhibition of doll’s houses at the Chelsea Flower Show and sighing how restful it would be to live in this cosy little home. How she envied people in small houses. The burden of wealth was one of her more dangerous fantasies. At one of her Gatsby-style parties in Kensington, she flinched at the elaborate canapés on offer: ‘Really, all I want is a sausage,’ she said, piteously. Then, she ran a hand down her inconceivably expensive dress and whispered: ‘I hate these parties, I am so shy.’ Later, I was invited to her boudoir, where she lay on cushion surrounded by her women friends. She was Kensington’s Cleopatra, surrounded by maidens such as the designer and Forte daughter Olga Polizzi, the political thinker Tessa Keswick and the writer Miriam Gross.”

The very same drawing room at 14 Cottesmore Gardens today. The décor is now somewhat more modern and less ‘classical country house-ified.’ It’s certainly more Soho Farmhouse than Alberto Pinto in style; it is currently a space that the former Meghan Markle would feel more at home than say, perhaps, the likes of Lord and Lady Black’s chum Ghislaine Maxwell and her fellow noxious nonce Ponzi scheming paedophile boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein. Mr Pinto was responsible, it should be noted, for the designs of most of Epstein’s residences.

The front elevation of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens during the era it was owned by Lord and Lady Black.

Multiple entries for Lord and Lady Black during the time they owned 14 Cottesmore Gardens appeared in the ‘Little Black Book’ address book often attributed as being that of the friends and associates of Jeffrey Epstein, but that featured more of the contacts of Ghislaine Maxwell in fact. In October 2020, Barbara Amiel took revenge on the pension pot plunderer’s padeophile sex trafficker daughter by featuring her in her “score-settling” memoir ‘Friends & Enemies: A Life in Vogue, Prison, & Park Avenue.” Maxwell had “dumped” Lady Black when Lord Black was being investigated for fraud. She wrote of their last meeting: “We were friends – so putting on my ‘So good to see you’ face, I headed for her. She bolted. Turned that sharp tight little turn when you really want to get away. And that was it.”

Of the clear lover of plastic surgery Lady Black, in October 2020, Sarah Sands remarked in ‘The Mail on Sunday’: “She had a bohemian, almost masculine, view of opportunistic sex. She describes, for instance, accompanying an early love in his white Triumph sports car ‘in which once or twice I had performed fellatio to the fascination of passing truck drivers, all for fun.’”

After getting out of the clink in 2012, Lord and Lady Black decided to go back on the ‘razzle-dazzle’ and posed for photographers before heading back to London to party with friends. In May 2019, the rambunctious peer arrogantly announced he’d be returning to the House of Lords after President Donald Trump pardoned and praised him. Commenting, of this pardon, Lord Black declared: “I’m not bitter… Officially in the United States, I’ve never been charged and I won in the end. It was a war and there are casualties in wars. I lost the time, I lost a lot of money, but as you can see my standards of living isn’t bad… The truth is, these, last 15 years, I haven’t been as interested in British politics as I was before – in the Thatcher years. It could be quite interesting again, in fact it is as of right now – it’s very interesting… It’s my good fortune that at a time when it is feasible, it happens – by happy coincidence – that it is a time of great fermentation in British public affairs.” Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem to have turned up on occasions since.

The previous owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens, Alan Bond (1938 – 2015), will forever be remembered as “Australia’s most notorious corporate criminal.” Born in Hammersmith, London, Bond’s first crime occurred when he was charged with theft aged 14 in Fremantle in Australia and whilst he is remembered for bankrolling the successful challenge for the 1983 America’s Cup, it is for causing the then biggest corporate collapse in Australian history that he will be go down in history.

Former Miss Mexico Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros (at the time Adriana Villalonga) bought the house in 2005. She divorced the Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga in 2009 and married the French businessman Emmanuel Schreder in Ibiza in June 2013. In August 2014, the magazine ‘Quién’ featured the model and television presenter on its cover and at that time she described her new husband as “the love of my life.”

Madrid born Juan Villalonga became the joint owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens with his then wife Adriana Abascal – the couple were married between 2000 and 2009 – in 2005. He is listed on Companies House as being a director of the now dissolved Medikidz Foundation at the address between August 2009 and November 2013. Married since 2011 to a photographer named Vanessa Von Zitewitz, Mr Villalonga was a partner at McKinsey & Company in the 1980s, CEO for Credit Suisse First Boston and Bankers Trust in Spain in the early 1990s and CEO of Telefónica from 1996 to 2000. He was named as one of the best performing chief executive officers in the world by ‘Harvard Business Review’ in 2010 and is also linked to addresses in Monaco.

The Names & Numbers – 14 Cottesmore Gardens (formerly known as ’12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens’), Kensington, London, W8 5PR, United Kingdom

April 2023 – Offered for sale for £36 million ($44.4 million, €40.9 million or درهم163.2 million) through Knight Frank. Valued on Homipi at an upper sum of £28.558 million ($35.250 million, €32.440 million or درهم129.456 million).

2009 – Mr and Mrs Villalonga divorce and subsequently Adriana Abascal married Emmanuel Schreder, a French businessman, in Ibiza in June 2013.

2005 – Sold by Lord and Lady Black for £13.1 million ($16.2 million, €14.9 million or درهم59.4 million) to Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga Navarro and Mexican model, Miss Mexico winner and television presenter Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros Villalonga.

October 2004 – Placed for sale for £17.5 million ($21.6 million, €19.9 million or درهم79.3 million) according to NZ Herald.

January 2004 – Valued at £14 million ($17.3 million, €15.9 million or درهم63.5 million) according to The Globe And Mail. At the time, the “mansion” in “the upscale Kensington neighbourhood” was described as having “10 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms and a swimming pool.”

Featured also in The Guardian in an article by Chris Tryhorn. Quoting Lord Black, he shared: “At a certain price, anything is for sale. [It has] been shown to people in the not-too-distant-past.”

Going further, Tryhorn added: “Artwork from the 18^th and 19^th centuries lines the walls, and there is plenty of storage space for the extensive wardrobe and shoe collection of Lord Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, who famously declared once that her ‘extravagence knows no bounds.’ … It was originally two homes and one of the two original front doors is now a ‘deliveries’ entrance. He has used it in the past to host dinners with butler and maid service that was part-paid by Hollinger.”

Also in 2004, in a profile in The Spectator, Peter Oborne wrote:

“Every year the Blacks threw two parties, one at Christmas and one summer event, at their double-fronted 11-bedroom mansion in Cottesmore Gardens. Everybody who mattered at the time went: Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, royalty, the playwright Tom Stoppard.”

“Some of these, injudiciously as it turned out, agreed to join the main Hollinger board. The luckier ones – Peter Carrington, Robert Salisbury – got away with being made directors of The Telegraph. As the Tories faded out, Labour ministers started to arrive, the indefatigable Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett and other ministers eager to ingratiate themselves with the Tory press. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent were assiduous in attendance. In London, the Nineties belonged to the Blacks. They were London’s most glamorous power couple.”

“There had been a time when both Blacks had kept their feet on the ground. This ceased to be the case. One evening Barbara Black rang Charles Moore panic-stricken from her Kensington home. There had been a last-minute drop-out from one of the famous Black dinner parties. ‘I’m short of a woman,’ she told Moore. Moore surveyed the newsroom. His gaze alighted on the journalist Eleanor Mills, by chance the stepdaughter of the Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell.”

“An hour later, hastily groomed, made-up and brushed, Mills was sipping pre-dinner drinks in Cottesmore Gardens. Then disaster struck. A male guest, Max Fisher, dropped out. Mills was approached by Conrad Black. ‘Finish your drink and skedaddle,’ he told her. Barbara Black then told her to go to the kitchen and out through the servants’ door, where the driver would pick her up and take her home.”

2001 – Conrad Black is elevated to a life peerage in the United Kingdom at the suggestion of Tony Blair. He sat on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords until 2007 as The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG, but took a “leave of absence” between 2012 and 2019.

28^th May 1996 – The Royal Borough of Kensington And Chelsea ordered that 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens “shall be known and described” simply instead as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.

Mid 1990s – The Blacks set about renovating 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens with the help of J. E. Evans Associates. Of the work in October 2006, The Sunday Times shared a segment of Tom Bower’s 2006 hatchet job Conrad and Lady Black that read: “Amiel vowed to create a palace that would attract celebrity worshipers of a power couple. Part of the first floor was to be removed to create a huge ground floor reception area.”

1992 – 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens sold by the administrators of the affairs of Alan Bond through estate agents Savills to media tycoon Conrad Black and his Watford born journalist wife Barbara Amiel Black for “well under the asking price” for a sum of £3.5 million ($4.3 million, €4 million or درهم15.9 million).

Mr Bond had been granted mortgages valued at £16.2 million ($20 million, €18.4 million or درهم73.5 million) on the property by Bell Satellite Services on the property along with two others at 4 and 16 Belgrave Mews in London, SW1 previously according to a report published by Financial Review in March 1990.

1991 – Rented to an American businessman for £6,000 per week ($7,400, €6,800 or درهم27,200 per week).

1990 – Placed in the hands of administrators of Mr Bond’s and placed for sale through Savills for a bargain basement sum of £3.8 million ($4.7 million, €4.3 million or درهم17.2 million) according to Financial Review.

1980s – Sold to Alan Bond’s Bell Satellite Group for £7 million ($8.6 million, €8 million or درهم31.7 million).

Circa 1905 – Walter Tapper is said to have “designed a library with handsome Arts and Crafts plasterwork (now removed) at the rear of the building.”

1903 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens registered as the home of a Mrs Benson according to the Muster Roll of Angus: South African War, 1899 – 1902.

1869 – In their current marketing blurb, Knight Frank suggest: “There has been a house on the site of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens since at least 1869. The current house has been altered, extended and most notably joined over the subsequent century and a half. With the local planning department strongly opposed to further amalgamation of homes, opportunities to acquire a house of this width will be rarer still in the future.”

1850s to 1860s – Built “under the direction of David Howell, of Serjeants Inn, Fleet Street.” Mr Howell was described in 1853 as an “articled clerk to a solicitor, lately carrying on business as a solicitor.” The architecture was lauded as: “Designed in a bold classical manner, with rather fleshy consoles and modillions… and bands of Vitruvian scroll between the bases of the ground-floor windows.”

More photographs of the £36 million mansion…

An entrance hall where power and privilege have most certainly mingled previously.

The 54-foot wide drawing is lauded by selling realtors Knight Frank as “arguably the best room in the house” and “double aspect.” They add: “[It has] six windows overlooking the street and additional views over the private garden to the rear.”

The columns where Barbara Amiel Black once posed for photographs remain, but the subsequent owners eliminated much of the 1990s ‘brash’ that had been installed by a Watford born woman whose excess clearly offended so many.

This dining room, where Conrad Black hosted presidents and prime ministers, is now somewhat diminished. The table for eight looks completely out of place and a future owner would do well to install something a little grander.

A double height entertaining space was installed at the insistence of the loftier-than-lofty Lady Black in the 1990s and it remains today. However, it is now currently being used for more casual affairs such as Netflix viewing rather than being the scene of something that you’d more likely find in the ‘House of Cards’ in fact.

A new owner might reinstate the grandeur of the past; sadly, however, this seems unlikely and the purchaser is more likely to be a footballer or Internet tycoon than a super-connected business tycoon.

This currently very dark and very depressing study would most certainly not appeal to the very clearly very, very bright yet very, very pompous The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG – a man who is said to count Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte as “his military heroes.” Of him in July 1997, Mark Honigsbaum in the ‘Independent’ remarked: “Although Black’s grandfather had briefly been a business partner of Harold Harmsworth, the original Viscount Rothermere, it was from his father, George Montegu Black Jr, that Black learned the art of corporate warfare, the importance of historical perspective and that gambling provides a disappointing rate of return compared to the Dow Jones index… The young Conrad was precocious. At the age of eight he sank his life savings of $60 into a single share of General Motors. He also became obsessed with Napoleon, and would astound his father’s friends by reeling off details of campaigns. Another story has him washing dollar bills and hanging them out to dry on a line outside his father’s home in Toronto. The last is apocryphal – Black says he slipped in the mud and was cleaning his change – but the image of the young capitalist, wise beyond his years, is accurate. His childhood tutor, the historian Laurier LaPierre, once asked Black why he always seemed to have the air of someone waiting for something to happen… A few years ago, for instance, the rumour went round Fleet Street that Black had bought Napoleon’s preserved penis at an auction. Black denied it, but many remain convinced that Bonaparte’s body part sits in Black’s collection of military curios… Black is no philanderer and is devoted to his second wife, the former ‘Sunday Times’ columnist Barbara Amiel. They are said to be intellectual soul mates and the parties at their four-storey mansion in Kensington are famous for bringing together a cross-section of the great and good.”

One could not imagine the likes of the late great Baroness Thatcher, for example, liking the idea of sitting in this extremely depressing and dark waiting area. A new owner would do well to obliterate a décor scheme that could have only been favoured by a completely colour blind banker.

A room currently described as a ‘cinema room’ measures 28’6” by 21’6” and is situated at the rear of the house. One can imagine Conrad Black having sat here for hour upon hour watching historical dramas about Napoleon with the likes of chums such as the acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts, the gambling tycoon John Aspinall and the politician and diarist Alan Clark, but a new owner will be more likely next showing episodes of ‘Succession’ – based on ‘The Telegraph’ tycoon’s rival Rupert Murdoch – than viewing historical works one most definitely suspects.

Dining whilst the staff cook would NEVER have been on the agenda in the era that pomposity reigned whilst Lady Black was chatelaine of 14 Cottesmore Gardens.

A 2,000 square foot entire floor fit for a tycoon… The master bedroom suite of the house takes up the entirety of the second floor of the building. It incorporates not only the principal bedroom, but also a “his” dressing room and a “her” dressing room as well as a sitting area, a bathroom, a shower room and storage rooms. It has direct lift access and is bigger than the average Brit’s entire house.

A dressing room in the house where Barbara Black opened up to ‘Vogue’ and displayed “closets overflowing with dazzling evening gowns, designer handbags and 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes. ‘I have an extravagance that knows no bounds,’ she famously declared. Unfortunately for Lady Black, the article was closely perused at investment company Tweedy, Browne, a Hollinger International shareholder.”

This playroom certainly did not exist in the era that Lord and Lady Black owned the property. It would be more likely crammed with books or stuffed with Manolo Blahnik shoes than toys from Toys ‘R Us. A new owner may likely reinstate it as an additional bedroom or office or games room perhaps.

The pool room measures 43’9” by 26’9” and is no doubt where Lady Black spent many an hour relaxing.

The garden to the rear was where Lord and Lady Black hosted their annual summer party (with guests “spilling” into their drawing room also). In surprisingly Tardis-like fashion, the duo were able to supposedly squeeze in upto 400 guests at such occasions. Amongst those said to have enjoyed hospitality there were Joan Collins and of such, magazine publisher Nicholas Coleridge wrote: “If you get a kick out of milling about with present and former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, minor royals, dukes, editors, vastly rich Americans, distinguished historians, gossip columnists, playboys and lots of pretty ‘it’ girls, then this was the place to be.”

The existing floor plan of the property illustrates the vast scale of the building offered. A buyer, Knight Frank observe, has additional options and “a pre-planning consultation has been carried out with RBKC by leading architects Studio Indigo.” They add: “[It] would completely reconfigure the house adding an additional basement floor and taking the internal space to more than 15,000 square foot. The resulting house would have a 40-foot by 41-foot south-facing rear garden.”

A plan of the site as presented in 1996 when 12 and 14 became known just as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.

April 2, 2023
A Corona Getaway in London

For those looking to self-isolate in luxury in London, taking a ‘residence’ at The Milestone Hotel in Kensington could be the perfect option (if you’ve got £7,700 per week to spare)

If you’re rich, want to self-isolate during the coronavirus outbreak in London and don’t even want to go out to do shopping, you could do worse than move into a ‘residence’ within The Milestone Hotel overlooking Kensington Gardens and Kensington Palace in W8.

Though the Red Carnation Collection hotel, on its own website, is described as “temporarily closed due to current travel restrictions,” serviced apartments within the property are still being advertised online as available.

Listed on OnTheMarket.com for £7,700 per week ($9,600, €8,600 or درهم35,200 per week) or the equivalent of £550 per room per night ($685, €615 or درهم2,515 per room per night), a 743 square foot single-level, third floor apartment includes a reception room, two bedroom suites and a kitchen.

It is described by Harrods Estates as “beautiful” and “sumptuous” and having the “warm sense of being in your own private home.” Featuring a “vibrant and sophisticated” decoration scheme designed by Bea Tollman, the hotel’s founder, the agents laud the “contemporary polish that so cleverly blends with balancing the traditional features.”

‘Characteristics’ available to those taking the space include full 24-hour hotel service, access to the hotel’s health club, daily housekeeping services, 24-hour butler and room service and a full grocery shopping service.

The neo-Gothic former private home in which this ‘residence’ is situated became a hotel in 1922 and has been known as The Milestone since 1986. It has 43 guest bedrooms, 13 suites and 6 long-stay apartments and in 2019 unveiled a leopard print carpeted suite in honour of the Duchess of Sussex named the ‘Meghan Suite.’ A blessing or a bonus, depending on your view of the wayward on-off royal, is that the likelihood of the former Miss Markle popping in for tea at this time of lockdown is as likely as the Queen riding by on Shergar the racehorse.

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The exterior of The Milestone Hotel, 1 Kensington Court, Kensington, London, W8 5DL, United Kingdom.

The main bedroom.

The second of the bedrooms.

The kitchen of the apartment has a look of something from the 1990s, but is perfectly functional.

A floor plan of Apartment 6, the ‘residence’ offered.

March 28, 2020
A $20k Gobble

New York hotel offers a Thanksgiving dinner complete with gold-flaked turkeys and bottomless champagne for £15,100

Late last week Guest of a Guest reported that a New York hotel is to offer a Thanksgiving dinner with a difference.

Priced at £15,100 ($20,000, €17,000 or درهم73,500), HGU New York at 34 East 32^nd Street’s “luxurious holiday dinner experience” includes the services of a personal event planner, butler service, a 5-piece jazz band, and two king hotel suites. Two gold-flaked turkeys, liquid gold hot chocolate and bottomless champagne form part of a “curated meal” by executive chef Keith Geter also.

Those with pockets deep enough to book should email [email protected]

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November 20, 2017
A Con and A Cabriolet

One-off 1971 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI cabriolet to be auctioned; originally commissioned by a British playboy turned jailbird with connections to Princess Margaret but only actually completed in 1993

A 1971 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI all-weather cabriolet with bodywork by the renowned Italian automotive stylist Frua is to be auctioned this month.

Offered with an estimate of £308,000 to £462,000 ($400,000 to $600,000, €340,000 to €511,000 or درهم1.5 million to درهم2.2 million), this truly unique, one-of-one design was amazingly the final Rolls-Royce Phantom VI completed in spite of the model remaining in production until 1991. This mammoth beast of a car, surprisingly, however, has just 72 miles on its clock and is thus described as “as brand new.”

The car’s first owner, Robert ‘Bobby’ Buchanan-Michaelson, was a bit of a playboy but sadly he never got to actually drive or be driven in it. A “member of Princess Margaret’s inner circle of friends,” this Cambridge graduate was a member of the “Mayfair mammas’ lists of the season’s most eligible bachelors” until “exchanging his Edwardian hacking jacket for prison grey” in 1954 after being jailed for 12 months for an import/export fraud according to a report in Sydney’s World’s News in August that year.

Some years after being freed, ex-con Buchanan-Michaelson took part in the 10,000 mile 1968 London to Sydney Marathon in a Mercedes-Benz 280SE. In a book about the adventure he was described as both a “successful and wealthy businessman, employing a cook, a butler, a maid and a chauffeur” and as an “accomplished sportsman.” Also listed as a lavish spender, Buchannan-Michaelson was later bankrupted in November 1977 – though at the time he lived in grandeur at both at Churchbury Manor at Fairford, Gloucestershire and 26 The Vale, in Chelsea, London, SW3.

In 1970, in the period between the international car race and his bankruptcy, Buchanan-Michaelson commissioned Rolls-Royce to build him a Phantom VI. After delivery to Jack Barclay Ltd. In June 1971, the vehicle’s chassis was sent to Frua of Torino, Italy to have bodywork fitted but for some reason work stopped and it was not until 1977 – and by now with a new American owner, James Leake, and new drawings of its eventual form – that the project continued.

With Pietro Frua (1913 – 1983) retiring soon thereafter and Mr Leake’s death in 1983, the chassis passed to new ownership and it was only eventually completed as a finished motor vehicle in 1993.

That year, the four-door ‘state cabriolet’ was displayed at the Geneva Motor Show and its boxy look must have surely either have wowed or horrified visitors. It is described as having “an elaborate multi-position convertible top allows the car to be configured as a sedanca de ville, landaulet or fully open convertible.” The interior is trimmed in burled walnut with sterling silver inlays and amongst other luxuries are front and rear heating, air-conditioning, fresh-air ventilation systems, a television, a video player, a radio and a cocktail cabinet. Underneath the seats is a portable Davidoff cigar humidor and even a matching silk-lined ladies’ vanity case. What more could anyone ever need?

RM Sotheby’s will sell the Frua Phantom VI at their Monterey sale in California on 19^th August and term it: “The last word in modern opulence.”

August 8, 2017
81 Miles From New

1996 Mercedes-Benz SL500 that has been driven just 81 miles and stored in a Knightsbridge garage since new to be auctioned for 1,000% more than a normal example of its age

A Mercedes-Benz with a difference is to be auctioned on its twenty-first birthday on 12^th April. The car to be offered is an SL500 that effectively has covered an average of just 3.9 miles per year during its lifetime and it is presented in “virtually new condition”.

Offered by Coys of Kensington, the Imperial Red with Mushroom leather two-seat roadster was bought from Normand of Mayfair and was only recently recommissioned after spending the vast majority of its life locked in a Knightsbridge garage.

Of the time warp car, Chris Routledge, CEO of Coys of Kensington, remarked:

“This is a car with a fantastic story. Purchased as a birthday present and driven only 81 miles before the [female] owner lost the keys and never drove it again. It even comes with a letter written by the owner’s butler verifying its mileage and its provenance”.

“Had she not lost the keys and used it regularly, we estimate it would now be worth between £5,000 to £7,000 ($6,200 to $8,700, €5,900 to €8,200 or درهم22,800 to درهم31,900), but the fact that it has kept such a low mileage and has not been driven in more than twenty years makes it worth between £45,000 and £55,000 ($56,000 to $68,000, €53,000 to €64,000 or درهم205,000 to درهم251,000)”.

“What happened with the keys remains a mystery but the car comes with new keys for the new owner”.

April 10, 2017
Blabbermouth Burrell

Butler-turned-blabbermouth Paul Burrell sinks to a new low; he should retreat to Siberia and live out his days privately

Cat-like Paul Burrell again and again reinvents himself. Somehow, in spite of already having undeservedly exhausted more than nine lives, this ghastly individual is back in the press and this time he’s milking the story of his marriage to a corporate lawyer he met on a train.

“Diana’s rock”, as the traitorous butler-turned-blabbermouth likes to call himself, chose not to keep his wedding to Graham Cooper private but instead bared the story of his union with his “soulmate” to various media outlets.

Mr Burrell, in spite of being born in Derbyshire wore a kilt to the ceremony (in a bizarre pattern of tartan he’d, of course, commissioned himself in 2006) at the Linthwaite House Hotel in the Lake District and in comments to the Mail Online remarked:

“There’s no more hiding my unbridled happiness now. Life is about being true to who you are and, for the first time ever, I’m able to stand proudly beside my husband and say: ‘This is who I am’”.

Burrell also told the newspaper of how he walked into the ceremony to Barbara Streisand’s Some Enchanted Evening and “danced out of [it] to Kylie Minogue’s Better the Devil You Know” and disrespectfully remarked on references to his late employer, Diana, Princess of Wales, being made during the ceremony. He again showed himself to be a master of the kiss-and-tell and even, in case anyone cared, shared the menu for his “three course wedding dinner”. It consisted of: “A starter of ham hock terrine, egg and chipped potatoes followed by pot-roasted breast of Goosnargh chicken served with Pommes Anna and wild mushroom fricassee and finished with a dessert of apple Tarte Tatin with a Calvados caramel and vanilla ice cream”.

An anything but credible individual according to Lord Justice Scott Baker, Burrell – a man prone to crying on a whim – was severely criticised by Princes William and Harry in 2003. In a statement, at the time, they remarked:

“We cannot believe that Paul who was entrusted with so much could abuse his position in such a cold and overt betrayal”.

“It is not only deeply painful for the two of us but also for everyone else affected and it would mortify our mother if she were alive today and, if we might say so, we feel we are more able to speak for our mother than Paul”.

“We ask Paul please to bring these revelations to an end”.

Burrell plainly paid no attention to this request and now, fourteen years later, it is again time to urge this self-serving toad to do the decent thing: May Paul Burrell please stop peddling tat and may he please retreat to Siberia.

April 4, 2017
Cooking-Up a Cock-Up

As Donald Trump is criticised for dousing over-cooked steak in ketchup, we take a look at Theresa May’s preference for dining at the favourite restaurant of a paedophile and her lack of interest in the “absolutely meticulously” recipes of Delia Smith

In 2008, Theresa May told The Guardian: “I’ve knocked on Rolf Harris’s door and asked for his vote” and in the very same article the now Prime Minister also cited the since jailed paedophile’s favourite restaurant, Maliks Tandoori House in Cookham, Berkshire, as her own hangout of choice too.

The dining habits of top-drawer politicians came under scrutiny again earlier this week when Town & Country’s Sam Dangremond analysed Donald Trump’s preference for eating well-done steaks topped with ketchup. The 45^th POTUS supposedly likes his meat to “rock on the plate” (according to his former butler) but in Britain, our somewhat clueless leader’s food choices are a little more specific.

Aside from loving Indian cuisine and her eponymous “red, white and blue Brexit”, Mrs May is a woman with a preference for a no doubt red, white (but not so blue) Kit Kat and recipes from the cookbooks of the throttled ex-wife of Charles Saatchi, ‘Highgella’ Lawson. In 2008, she remarked: “The other day I did a Nigella recipe for a mustard-and-caper sauce on purple-sprouting broccoli”.

The vicar’s daughter, it transpires, does not have Delia Smith’s books in her kitchen, however. Why? Not because the cook-turned-football-club-chairwoman is generally utterly smashed most of the time, but due to the fact she’s “absolutely meticulous”. The character of the government of Mrs May, thus, could be revealed in a cookbook; its title would no doubt be A Total & Utterly Unmeticulous Cock-Up.

Malik Ahmed with Theresa May

Rolf Harris with Alwyn Hughes and Malik Ahmed

A cartoon by Rolf Harris for Maliks restaurant

Donald Trump eating

March 16, 2017
An apartment with extras

£60 million New York condo offered with extras including a pair of Rolls Royce Phantoms and a yacht (more…)

March 14, 2016
His Excellency Nunzio Alfredo D’Angieri and sons Stefan and Teava

This dandy dynasty of diplomats and collectors of motoring marvels are renowned on the international jet set. Diplomat H.E. Nunzio Alfredo D’Angieri was once termed “Arafats’s banker” (more…)

September 6, 2015