The Steeple Times asks “Made in Chelsea’s” Jane Felstead: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
My conscience.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
Revenge is a dish best served cold. (more…)
The Steeple Times asks restaurateur Russell Norman: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom”. What’s your guiding force?
I am guided by the usual human forces, but my permanent motivation is work.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow, but learn as if you were to live forever”. Also: “Don’t fuck it up”.
The sale of the home of a circus heir and the revival of Billy Smart’s Circus
Billy Smart, Sr. (1894 – 1966), a travelling showman and father of 10 children (he was himself one of 23), bought a circus in 1946 and quickly became known as an extraordinary entertainer. One of his son’s, Billy Smart, Jr. (1934 – 2005), made his debut at the age of 12 as an assistant ringmaster in Billy Smart’s New World Circus and performed with ponies, horses and eventually elephants. (more…)
Sarah Tucker explains the types of mother she thinks exist in the school playground
In a short video for Netmums, best selling author Sarah Tucker educates viewers about the ten types of mums she believes frequent school playgrounds. Her insights are both amusing and revealing.
What’s your view? We look forward to receiving your comments below.
Watch the video on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FnW0pz1XeA&list=UU43QDbPR1s23wM4utg03ZGg&index
Buy The Playground Mafia by Sarah Tucker on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Playground-Mafia-Sarah-Tucker/dp/0099498456
The Steeple Times asks “super-tutor” Topes Calland: “What’s on your mantelpiece?”
The Steeple Times shares “wit and wisdom.” What’s your guiding force?
The mantra I use with my students is: “clarity, confidence, creativity”.
“Don’t get even, get medieval” is, in our humble opinion, a great motto. What’s yours?
“Neither here nor there”, because I’m generally not.
Kerry Katona was considered unacceptable in 2007. Who or what is unacceptable in 2013?
Kerry Katona.
Tony Blair misses being Prime Minister. What do you miss most in your life?
The freedom to stay in one place for any length of time.
What might you swap all your wealth for?
I’d be lucky if I could convince someone to swap my wealth for a family-sized packet of Revels.
Donald Trump was once a case of: “If you owe the bank a thousand, they close you down; but if you owe the bank a billion, you own the bank.” What’s your view on the banking crisis?
Cash is King.
What phrase or word do you most loathe?
Crampon.
In the UK, some people consider charity to “begin at home.” What’s your view and what causes do you personally support?
Charity should, and inevitably does, begin at home. I’m a keen supporter of educational charities, or any charity that involves giving people a second chance.
The judge in Law Abiding Citizen states: “I can pretty much do whatever I want” before being blown up whilst answering her mobile phone. What’s your view on the appropriate use of such devices?
My ‘phone is one step up from two cups and a piece of string. I like to be able to call, and be called, in an emergency. Everything else can wait.
If you could fill a carriage on The Orient Express, who would be your fellow passengers?
A random sample of people from the Argos on High Street Ken. I went there a few weeks ago looking for multi-coloured Christmas lights and it really does contain the most disparate cross-section of society.
If you were unfortunate enough to end up on death row, what would be your last meal and where would you eat it?
Anything based around egg-fried rice. I bloody love it. So long as I have my rice, I don’t much mind where I eat it.
What time is it acceptable to consume the first drink of the day?
It rarely occurs to me to drink anything much stronger than Um Bongo, so I’m tickled pink any time have a craving for a tipple; it makes me feel like a real grown-up.
A Negroni, a martini or a cup of tea?
See above.
Whose parties do you enjoy the most and why?
Any party that doesn’t involve fancy dress. I don’t care if I sound miserable; I get slight acid reflux on my back molars just thinking about it.
Who is the most positive person you know?
I try to avoid people who are too inanely positive. I prefer ‘quietly optimistic’.
What’s your most guilty pleasure?
Channel 4’s Coach Trip. In fact, I’m not even particularly guilty about it. Scrap my answer to the ‘Orient Express’ question; I’d much rather go with the contestants from any given season of Coach Trip.
If a tattoo were to sum you up, what would it be of?
I’m a bit of a baby when it comes to needles, so something small and essential… preferably on somebody else.
If you were a car, what marque would you be?
Probably a Ford Mondeo, or something equally unintimidating.
Cilla Black presented “Surprise, Surprise.” Tell us the most surprising thing about you.
I hate surprises. I was a much bigger fan of Blind Date which is why I’m enjoying this interview so much.
What’s currently sitting on your mantelpiece?
I don’t have a mantelpiece but if I did, I’d sit on it, just because I could.
Topes Calland is an Oxford graduate and the co-founder of Howard Calland Education Consultants. He has become well known for tutoring the children of rock stars and royalty.
For more information, go to: http://www.howardcalland.com
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 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.
A marine residence with a history tied to the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy, the Special Operations Executive and Babycham
The House on the Shore on Thorns Beach at Beaulieu in Hampshire is a home that wouldn’t look out of place in the Hamptons or Rhode Island. Dramatically situated next to the Solent waters to the north of the Isle of Wight, this suitably named building wouldn’t have been out of place in the 1980s BBC series Howards’ Way. It could. Indeed, have been an ideal home for Gerald and Polly Urquhart. (more…)
Another rumoured sale of “Beckingham Palace” is reported
November 2012: In March this year, the blog that preceded The Steeple Times looked into reports that David and Victoria Beckham would be selling their Hertfordshire home, Rowneybury House (better known as “Beckingham Palace”). For all the talk of that sale, as far as we are aware, it still remains in their possession. In recent days another media source has reported that the house is indeed on the market and that the Beckham family are now moving to New York. This has now become a story akin to that of “the boy who cried wolf” and it’s one that we’ll only believe to be true when the removal vans actually pull up.
March 2013: In a further update, the story has resurfaced but the supposed price is allegedly now just £10 million. That’s quite a reduction.
Whenever there’s a quiet news day, British newspapers like to put out claims that David and Victoria Beckham are to sell their Hertfordshire mansion, Rowneybury House. Such a sale has never followed but that the Mail Online chose to run this as a lead article is indeed interesting in view of the footballer’s recent return to LA Galaxy.
Similar stories, for example, ran in the Mirror in April 2007 and again in September 2010. In the latter piece, an unnamed spokesman stated:
“We can confirm David and Victoria have had their UK home valued.”
Strangely all of these stories share a lack of credited sources and are written in the same vein on each occasion. Though Rowneybury House has certainly not come to the open market to date, today’s suggestion that the couple are selling as they think it “wasteful to hold on to when they never visit” would appear a sensible course of action.
Rowneybury House itself was built in the 1930s and used as a council owned orphanage. Bought by the Beckhams in October 1999 for £2,500,000, the couple vastly altered and enlarged the Grade II listed house to include 7-bedrooms, a recording studio, gym, pool room and indoor and outdoor pools. They even added a 52ft garden pavilion complete with a huge barbecue reputed to have cost £70,000.
In the grounds, which extend to some 24 acres, the Beckhams have added a petting zoo for their children as well as a soccer pitch, two full size golf holes, a floodlit tennis court and a helicopter landing pad. Three gazebos, one “romantic,” one “lakeside” and another “ornamental” were also constructed.
The sum total for all of this work is, for some reason, always quoted in the mainstream press at £18,000,000. Though it is obvious that vast expense has indeed been spent on Rowneybury House by the couple, the figure does seem a little exaggerated. Equally ludicrous is the suggestion that they will sell at a loss.
The Beckhams’ time at Rowneybury House has not been without drama. In 2002, police foiled an Eastern European gang who planned to kidnap them from the house and on occasions intruders were caught in the grounds. Further drama ensued in 2008 when the pair’s housekeepers, Eric and June Emmett, were arrested after being accused of stealing items of memorabilia.
I myself found myself involved in a story about the house when, in 2004, I worked for a PR firm who were representing an estate agent selling an adjoining property. The owners Mick and Lynda Allen, who I believe eventually sold their home, Rowneybury Bungalow, to the Beckhams, used the surrounding publicity to attempt to launch the pop career of their daughter Nikki. I am not certain how she subsequently fared.
The Beckhams, who are worth some £160,000,000, now spend the majority of their time in America and are said to prefer it there. When in the UK, they opt mainly to stay at either Claridge’s or The Savoy as both are more convenient for Mrs Beckham’s meetings at her design studio in Battersea.
Both the Mail Online and the Mirror suggest that Victoria Beckham has recently been looking at apartments “next to Hyde Park” so that she can maintain a smaller base in the UK. Perhaps a move to the £7,000 per square foot One Hyde Park development could be on the cards.
If this news is indeed finally true, it’ll certainly be the end of an era for the pad dubbed “Beckingham Palace” as a portmanteau of “Beckham” and “Buckingham Palace.”
Read Kimberley Dadds’s Mail Online piece at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2119709/David-Victoria-Beckham-sell-Beckingham-Palace.html
Read Lara Gould’s Mail Online piece at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2301669/Beckingham-Palace-goes-sale-David-Victoria-eye-London-life–wont-allow-developers-buy-it.html
She owns a controlling interest in the world’s third largest brewer and is married to the child star of Lawrence of Arabia, Michel de Carvalho. They live together in London with their five children, are said to be worth £5.5 billion but live “quite modestly.” Of meeting his wife, de Carvalho commented: “I met the girl of my dreams, complete with free beer. I didn’t realise then that marriage is not just about free beer.”
Edward Kay takes a look at a yacht that forms part of the legacy of Steve Jobs
In a bittersweet moment, Steve Jobs’s yacht was launched on 29th October from the Feadship’s de Vries yard in Aalsmeer, The Netherlands with his wife and three children aboard. The Jobs family gave the members of the yard iPod’s inscribed with the name of the yacht to show their appreciation for the six-year build.
The unusual 256-foot yacht has been christened “Venus” after the Roman goddess of love and features huge floor to ceiling windows and teak decks.
The minimalist Phillipe Starck designed aluminium vessel has been described as looking like an iPhone resting on an iPad resting on a MacBook Air and there are indeed seven 27-inch Mac screens clearly visible on the bridge deck.
Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson: “I know it’s possible I will die and leave Laurene [his wife] with a half built boat. But I have to keep going on it. If I don’t, it’s an admission that I’m about to die.”
Of the boat itself, Starck adds:
“The idea for the boat was very simple. It was mainly philosophical. It is not like a lot of mega yachts showing the vulgarity of money. It’s a boat showing the elegance of intelligence.”
Indeed, when Jobs saw the designs, he is said to have stated: “My God, it’s better than I could have dreamt.” I quite agree. Venus is a spectacular bequest.
Remembering Steve Jobs: http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/
To view more examples of the works of Feadship, go to: http://www.feadship.nl