As man-pestering Mark Menzies, the MP they have supported since 2008, is exposed for yet more sordid sexual shenanigans, the Fylde Conservative Association yet again prove themselves a bunch of nutty nincompoops by sharing tweets about “vile degenerates” making “sexually explicit” comments
The Fylde Conservative Association clearly didn’t give two hoots when the MP they have repeatedly supported since his selection as a candidate in 2008, Mark Menzies, got accused of shady sexual shenanigans with a 19-year-old Brazilian male hooker named Rogerio Santos in 2014.
At that time, when Santos alleged pugnacious politician Menzies asked him to “buy ‘the poor man’s cocaine’ methedrone” and “have sex with him,” then Councillor Brenda Ackers brazenly barracked: “He has the total support of myself and two other members of the management team, they both support Mark also. [Members will be] very upset, both on Mark’s behalf and the fact that we like things to run smoothly in Fylde.”
This very same gaggle of gaga grannies that Ackers headed also didn’t give two hoots when this Scottish born Roman Catholic faced a police investigation for allegedly getting a dog pissed-off-its-skull in 2015. Equally, they didn’t give two hoots that this menace-to-men also faced further police questioning for “brawling” with a friend in 2015.
Later that year, the very same membership of the Fylde Conservative Association – when Menzies was subsequently proven “just” to have stood on and taken pictures whilst yet another of his so-called “friends” getting the aforementioned pooch pissed to the point of “poisoned” and “intoxicated” – clearly chose to show not an ounce of moral backbone. They again selected this raging rotten-to-his-core ratbag in 2017 and 2019.
Now, as mucky Menzies faces allegations that he misused party funds to “pay some bad people” in yet another sexual scandal involving multiple men, the Fylde Conservative Association have yet again swept the issue-in-hand under the carpet. On Tuesday, on their Twitter feed, this bunch of brazen buffoons reposted a tweet by Rishi Sunak.
It read: “This government is cracking down on the vile degenerates who make sexually explicit ‘deepfakes.’ We’re introducing a new law to ban the creation of these distressing and abusing images… Making a sexually explicit ‘deepfake’ image without consent is to become a new offence, with those convicted facing a criminal record and an unlimited fine.”
According to The Guardian: “The source said Menzies had gone to the man’s flat, before going with another man to a second address, where he continued drinking. People at the address falsely claimed he had been sick and demanded £5,000 for cleaning up and other expenses, according to this account.”
“The source close to Menzies told The Times he paid the money because he was afraid of what would happen if he refused, but had insufficient funds in his own savings. They claimed he offered to repay the sum, but that local Tories who controlled the campaign funds said he did not need to.”
Whatever next for the Fylde Conservative Association? A party fundraiser for ‘Not-So-Dishy-Rishi’ down the local male brothel in Lytham St Annes?
The Fylde Conservative Association (FCA) showed no sense of shame for their support since 2008 of Mark Menzies – a mouse not a man capable of waking old ladies at 3.15am to demand help in paying off “bad people” he’d supposedly hooked up with via gay dating websites. Instead, on the very day Menzies was exposed by ‘The Times’ – and after they clearly would have been approached for comment – they opted to retweet a missive about Rishi Sunak’s government “cracking down on the vile degenerates who make sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’” and which mentioned a “new law to ban the creation of these distressing and offensive images.” Perhaps, the concept of those in glass houses and stones had passed the gaga grannies and grandpas of Fylde that form the FCA by, but maybe they should have dealt with their own local degenerate, Mark Menzies, at an earlier date given his previous form with Brazilian rent boys, photographing friends poisoning dogs and getting them drunk and “brawling” with supposed friends.Forced to resign the Conservative whip on 17th April 2024, Mark Menzies has previous form having been the subject of front page about his activities with young men on several occasions. One is left asking: “What on earth was it about this scandal prone scrounger that made the Fylde Conservative Association to continue to select him as their parliamentary candidate four times from 2008 onwards? Could they really not find someone with more decency and dignity than this degenerate deadbeat?”Mucky menace and former Marks & Spencer employee Menzies tweeted on the 12th April about “concerns” about St Annes beach. He failed to address the fact there have bene far more significant “concerns” about his personal behaviour for months. In an “exclusive” in which she “broke her silence” on Thursday 18th April 2024, the ‘Mirror’ reported that Katie Fieldhouse, 78, a former Lady of Mayoress of Fylde, said she received a call from Menzies at 3.15am on 1st December 2023, “in which he allegedly asked for £5,000 as he was locked in a flat with some ‘bad people’ … and branded his behaviour unacceptable.” Ms Fieldhouse claimed she “refused and called his office manager who later stumped up the sum, which had risen to £6,500. She was later reimbursed from a campaign fund paid for by donors, the paper reported… Ms Fieldhouse told the ‘Mirror’ that she later contacted the Tory party, in January to express her ‘concerns’ about Mr Menzies. ‘I spoke to the chief whip on the 3rd of January and told him my concerns’ she said. ‘All the things that had happened accumulated in my head. I came to the conclusion that something had to be done about it because I have a great fondness for my constituency. Ms Fieldhouse would not comment when asked if she thought the MP should resign. But she said: ‘I put my faith in the Conservative Party to deal with Mr Menzies.’ She continued: ‘I am a devout Conservative, all my life, and also a devout Christian, and I cannot accept his behaviour. It is very upsetting.’ Ms Fieldhouse said she was approached by ‘The Times’ after speaking to the chief whip. And she added: ‘I have read the article in ‘The Times.’ Everything in it is true.’” Ms Fieldhouse had previously not been named in ‘The Times’ article by senior investigations reporter Billy Kenber whilst Menzies responded: “I strongly dispute the allegations put to me. I have fully complied with all the rules for declarations. As there is an investigation ongoing I will not be commenting further.”Brenda Ackers – who defended her chum Mark Menzies in 2015 by stating: “He has the total support of myself and two other members of the management team, they both support Mark also. [Members will be] very upset, both on Mark’s behalf and the fact that we like things to run smoothly in Fylde” – herself has form. In September 2013, according to Blackpool rag ‘The Gazette,’ Ms Ackers was “reprimanded by the mayor” for refusing to apologise for making “disrespectful remarks.” Speaking to the paper, she raged: “I don’t know why the mayor interrupted me because nothing that I said was in any way objectionable.” In turn “rebuking her,” another councillor stated: “When the mayor stands, the councillor sits down” as she was “greeted with heckles of ‘sit down, shut up.”The Twitter handle of the repeatedly disgraced MP’s former constituency association has not even updated to reflect the fact that he is no longer a Conservative Member of Parliament.
As the queue-jumping puppet master of Gordon The Gopher Phillip Schofield quits ‘This Morning’, Matthew Steeples asks: “Will further scandal follow for this flogger of plughole-fit-only plonk?”
This morning, The Observer asked: “Will the Phil and Holly saga put an end to the absurd notion of the TV couple?” and aside from examining the storm-in-a-teacup of the end-of-the-road being reached for the dastardly queue-jumping duo, referenced the likes of the ‘washed-up old soak’ Judy Finnigan and her ‘modern day Dorian Gray-esque’ husband, Richard Madeley.
Whilst the married telly box duo of the alleged shoplifter Madeley – he still claims to have been falsely accused and even once pointed this out to President Bill Clinton – and his ‘mummy-like’ wife Finnigan remain together, “the silver soufflé” Phillip Schofield’s ‘sofa based’ relationship with Holly Willoughby is now finally toast.
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.
This morning on Twitter, Matthew Steeples polled his 10,600 personal followers of @M_Steeples. He asked: “Will further shocking stories about bitter bore Phillip Schofield emerge in wake of his departure from ITV1’s ‘This Morning’?” By 11:30am on Sunday 21st May 2023, the very clear majority of the 1,000 plus respondents took the view: “Yes; more scandals on the way.”
Twitter reacts to Matthew Steeples’s poll…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7mzqB6oQe8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPTahhXUxPw
Twitter delights in the disappearance of Phillip Schofield from ITV1’s daytime screens…
Wacky and weird Phillip Schofield’s worst moments…
On himself (in spite of being condemned by everyone from Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford to Nadine Dorries MP):
“I am only about 26 in my head.”
“If I was a pig to work with, I wouldn’t get asked back.”
“My dad was the archetypal charming man. If I’ve inherited even a small bit of what he had, that would be enough for me.”
“I’m incredibly sentimental, although I’m not one of those people who doesn’t chuck anything out; I don’t keep used tea bags, just special mementos.”
To his one-time ‘friend’ turned ‘runner’ (for a time) on This Morning, Matthew McGreevy (whom he met when the young whippersnapper was just 12 or 13 years old) asking him about what they might end up doing in three years:
“Well, if I’m still getting away with it, I’ll be a happy man.”
On the world in general:
“We live in a world that has very sharp edges. It can be very bitter.”
On Holly Willoughby (who subsequently has distanced herself from the crying cretin):
“Holly is my rock.”
On being gay (in spite of hidden such for years):
“I thought maybe I was bisexual.”
“If you ask anyone who is gay, they know, there is no confusion.”
“You never know what is going on someone’s head when they think they are leading the perfect life.”
As he cut off invited guests on ‘This Morning’ who he believed misgendered LGBTQX+ sorts:
“We’ll get back to the show and we’ll get back to 2017 and not get back to medieval Britain in just a moment.”
On his now ex-wife’s keenness to be rid of him:
“My wife Steph never tells me to take on less work; she’s just glad to have me out of the house.”
On birthdays:
“I hate birthdays.”
On putting wine ahead of family:
“Wine is the biggest passion of my life without question.”
“I don’t do anything by halves and wine is an expensive passion.”
On preferring to travel alone:
“In general, I’d say that I need to be with the right people in the right place, although one of the best holidays I ever had was alone.”
On quitting Twitter:
“I have another secret Twitter account.”
“There’s nothing that winds me up more on Twitter than people who are stupid and who say the most ridiculous things.”
On the people he’s interviewed:
“I’m not being arrogant or blasé, but I got a bigger buzz sitting opposite Jean-Bernard Delmas at Château Haut-Brion than I did from interviewing Elton John, Liza Minelli or Whitney Houston.”
“You can tell when you look at someone and think: ‘He’s on the brink of fainting’ or that certainly something’s not right.”
On offending people:
“I love the fact we do break taboos.”
Asked why he and Holly Willoughby skipped the 13-hour queue to attend the lying-in-state of the late Queen Elizabeth II:
“Have you got nothing better to do with your time? … Why should I apologise?”
On ghosts and his past life:
“[I have] a rule about never borrowing money… [I was] ‘murdered’ in a past life over a debt… I opened the door to silence and felt horror wash over me. Three steps in, and I saw them – two murdered bodies on the floor. knew they were my wife and small child. Horror turned to fury. I knew why they were dead. I owed money to two brothers who worked at the end of the street in a sawmill. The brother [then] found me, dragged me outside, punched me to the ground and, as my head hit the mud, he repeatedly stamped on it until I was dead!”
“Our back garden is allegedly haunted by a ghost called the Grey Lady. When one of my daughters was three, she said she’d been speaking to a lady in the garden and we went running around trying to find this woman. There was no one there.”
On refusing to go near churches:
“Going into a church reminds of the terrifying vision of [past life] death… [I am] not willing to take the risk again.”
To a flower pot that he felt got in his way on television:
“Go back to where you were, go back to where you were… Only I can see them.”
To Lady Colin Campbell (whom he was interviewing about her latest book on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex):
“For someone who allegedly moves in aristocratic circles, isn’t it all a bit tawdry and undignified? … Paul Burrell, who’d have thought we’d quote him, said of one of your previous books on the Queen: ‘You can only be a true, reliable witness to history if you are there. Lady Colin Campbell was none of these things.’ … You are a gossip. Well, you’re a gossip, but only when it suits you.”
Whilst interviewing television personality Kim Woodburn (who responded by slamming his rudeness):
“I know why people reacted in the way that they reacted to you. It’s because of the way you make me feel sitting on that sofa. You are already making me feel controversial. [You are] confrontational… We’re just asking you a question.”
On dealing with problems (in spite of being the creator of many himself):
“I’m a very good clearer-upper.”
Whilst shockingly sharing a list of ‘names’ of Conservative politicians live on-air with then Prime Minister David Cameron of those he believed might be abusers (he was subsequently forced to apologise and pay £125,000 to Lord McAlpine, an innocent man):
“I have those names there. Those are the names on a piece of paper. You know the names on that piece of paper. Will you be speaking to those people?”
On the ‘work’ he has done:
“I’m not a workaholic.”
“I do have a rule about how much I will take on. The last thing you want is to be on TV too much and for people to be sick of you.”
On being on television:
“I am very conscious of the fact I am in peoples’ living rooms every day and they feel like they know me.”
“I meet people who are so sniffy about daytime TV… Ghastly.”
“I don’t want people turning on the telly and going: ‘Dear God, not him again.’”
‘Schofe’s’ extremely curious history… “What’ll come next for this raging ratbag?” is indeed the question…
Gordon The Gopher (also known as ‘Gordon T. Gopher’) was Phillip Schofield’s puppet ‘friend’ on ‘Children’s BBBC’ (‘CBBC’) between 1985 and 1987. The yellow puppet gopher with red pads – which were said to “represent lobster claws” – is amongst the many that the now former ITV ‘This Morning’ presenter turned upon. Of the puppet, Schofield once told ‘Heat’ magazine: “Gordon the Gopher is in rehab. It’s all gone horribly wrong for him. It’s a shame. I’ve got a restraining order against him and we don’t speak. He’s quite bitter and he has been ever since I got my role in ‘Doctor Dolittle’ in the West End and he didn’t get offered the part. It was the straw that broke the gopher’s back.”Phillip Schofield claims not to check Twitter anymore; he has also said he has a ‘secret account’ so most likely does monitor the many thousands of messages slamming his utterly reprehensible antics.Phillip Schofield with his now convicted and now jailed criminal 54-year-old paedophile brother Timothy Schofield in happier times. After the verdict earlier in April – in a case where the television presenter’s civilian police officer sibling was convicted of three counts of causing a child to watch sexual activity and three counts of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child – in a statement released by his lawyer, Phillip Schofield remarked: “My overwhelming concern is and has always been for the wellbeing of the victim and his family. I hope that their privacy will now be respected. If any crime had ever been confessed to me by my brother, I would have acted immediately to protect the victim and their family. These are despicable crimes and I welcome the guilty verdicts. As far as I am concerned, I no longer have a brother.” Timothy Schofield was also found guilty of three counts of causing a child to engage in sexual activity and two of sexual activity with a child at Exter Crown Court and had told the television presenter that he’d “had time together” (including watching porn and masturbating) with a child whilst the ‘This Morning’ host was doing the washing up in his very own kitchen.On 8th November 2012, Schofield handed the then Prime Minister David Cameron a list of names of alleged sex offenders in the Conservative Party which he had found through research on the Internet. That list was partially visible to ‘This Morning’s’ millions of viewers and as a result one person on it, Lord McAlpine, sued. Subsequently, the broadcaster was quite rightly forced to issue and unreserved apology and a statement that read: “ITV and Phillip Schofield have now reached agreement with Lord McAlpine to settle his libel claim, made in relation to the This Morning programme broadcast… ITV and Phillip Schofield apologise unreservedly to Lord McAlpine, have agreed the terms of a statement to be made in open court, and have agreed to pay him damages of £125,000 and his legal costs.” According to ‘International Business,’ “the ITV settlement [was] reportedly less than McAlpine was seeking. However, the peer’s lawyer, Andrew Reid, said he was ‘pleased’ with ITV’s admission that it was wrong and called the settlement ‘pragmatic.’ … Reid told the BBC: ‘The Schofield stunt added fuel to the fire that was already there and we had to take that into account.”Now former ITV1 ‘This Morning’ co-host Phillip Schofield cringed and looked as if he was about to snap when approached outside his West London home by GB News presenter Ben Leo in November 2022 about the ‘Queuegate’ scandal that utterly disgraced him. Here is a mouse-not-a-man who wrongly assumes that he’s some kind of national treasure worthy of not a jot of criticism.Instead of skipping queues and upsetting the nation on multiple occasions, the all-round-angry man and now ex ‘This Morning’ host and ex-sidekick of Gordon the Gopher should now focus on improving his deservedly slammed boxed wines (right). He thought his red “perfect with olives” whilst the public decided it “better poured down the plughole.” Alternatively, he could put some effort into ‘making up’ with his missing from our screens for quite some time now former close friend, Matthew McGreevy.The television presenter and all-round plonker with his supposed ‘former friend’ Matt McGreevy on another occasion.On one occasion, Matthew McGreevy – who has allegedly since been made to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) – was paraded around on an episode of ‘This Morning’ in a just a pair of swimming trunks. Ruth Langsford looked on sheepishly whilst ‘Princess Tippy Toes’ swung into action and covered skinny McGreevy in sun tan lotion. Phillip Schofield’s role in orchestrating this puff piece remains unknown.In recent days, Schofield has supposedly come to rely on a man named Simon Schofield (who is not a relation, but whom the ‘Daily Mail’ this week most tellingly described as like “a rock” to the now ex ‘This Morning’ presenter). Here, the latter is pictured with the pair’s ‘friend’ Matthew McGreevy.The ‘This Morning’ host is known for being a very angry and bitter man. Like Ferne McCann (pictured right), a fellow presenter on ITV1 with a reputation for being an utter rotter and for having had a child with a monster who threw acid over innocent people in a London nightclub, he is also known for being incapable of owning his own mistakes.
A year-to-the-day on Matthew Steeples asks: “Whatever became of the libel suit of gobby Jack Monroe v gobby Lee Anderson MP?”
Exactly a year ago to the day, on the 16th May 2022, the nauseatingly noxious ‘food poverty campaigner’ Jack Monroe promised to sue the nauseatingly noxious Tory twerp ‘30p Lee’ Lee Anderson MP for libel.
In the time since, using crowdfunding platforms and most likely the ‘tip jar’ ‘she/it’ continually bangs on about, Monroe has supposedly raked in funds to ‘support’ such an action. In one way, that would be understandable as Anderson – now quite ridiculously elevated to the position of deputy chairman of the Conservative Party – is quite frankly one of the deservedly most hated politicians in Britain; in another way, it most definitely isn’t given Monroe is equally grating and grim. Here is a case where, most definitely, both sides deserve to lose.
As she trended this morning on Twitter, I asked: “Exactly a year ago, gobby campaigner Jack Monroe promised legal against gobby Tory MP ‘30p Lee’ Lee Anderson. She supposedly crowdfunded to aid her in this ‘endeavour’ but no filing appears to have been made. Should she come clean and return funds raised?” By 11:30am on Tuesday 16th May 2023, the very, very clear majority of the 536 responses to date, 65.1% in fact, were unsurprisingly: “Yes; outrageous behaviour.” Another 25.7% took the view: “Yes; it was just a stunt.”
I’m left with just one question: “Isn’t it time Jack Monroe explained herself and isn’t it time ‘she/it’ explained what has happened to money given in good faith towards a libel action against Lee Anderson that has still failed to materialise?”
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.
Exactly a year ago, gobby campaigner Jack Monroe promised legal against gobby Tory MP '30p Lee' Lee Anderson. She supposedly crowdfunded to aid her in this 'endeavour' but no filing appears to have been made. Should she come clean and return funds raised? https://t.co/5Olbmwq2PS
This morning on Twitter, Matthew Steeples asked: “Exactly a year ago, gobby campaigner Jack Monroe promised legal against gobby Tory MP ‘30p Lee’ Lee Anderson. She supposedly crowdfunded to aid her in this ‘endeavour’ but no filing appears to have been made. Should she come clean and return funds raised?” By 11:30am on Tuesday 16th May 2023, the very, very clear majority of responses were unsurprisingly: “Yes; outrageous behaviour.”
In a video uploaded to YouTube on 20th May 2022 by the media outlet ‘Tortoise’ featuring an interview with her, Monroe enthusiastically declared: “I have instructed libel proceedings. I am limited to what I can say in public about that whole situation now… It is on the record… I am, I am sending a legal letter letting him know that what he said was libelous and defamatory and has contributed to the downfall of what I have, what I have of a ‘reputation.’ And that he might want to reconsider his stance publicly and to all the agitators and instigators of that… I have instructed lawyers and we are in touch. Unfortunately, my lawyer decided to go off and get married this week; it’s a bit rude. Yeah, it’s been being planned for a few years, but he could have timed it better.”Social media users reacted to the threat of the libel action issued during the ‘Tortoise’ interview by making comments that included: “So, Jack Monroe has initiated legal action against Anderson and Daubney? (11 min) Yet they confirm receiving no letter before action. She’s a complete fraud and should run out of the charitable sector, as well as the media.” Others added: “What a charlatan” and “I hope Lee Anderson wipes the floor with her.”Yesterday, ‘GB News’ presenter Martin Daubney stated: “Jack now needs to answer questions about the missing funds for her non-existent legal case against us.” Within two minutes, Monroe had responded: “They’re not missing; they’re exactly where they’ve always been, and I’m doing exactly what I said I’d do with it. (I’m quiet because I have a very full and pleasant life outside of Twitter!)Is there anyone Monroe doesn’t want to have a pop at? Her own family even are ‘fair game’ for her bile, it seems. In July 2020, ‘she’ declared: “My brother was in the RAF last time we spoke, a couple of Christmases ago, when he described Iain Duncan Smith as the best thing to happen to this country and told me I had chosen to have a baby outside of marriage so deserved everything I got. It’s fair to describe us as ‘estranged’ these days” in a bizarre rant about potatoes and their link to suicide.In August last year, a Monroe recipe that involved rinsing canned spaghetti hoops of their accompanying tomato sauce, microwaving, microwaving a bit more and adding butter, oil, cheese and a pinch of pepper trended on Twitter. It was hardly revolutionary, helpful or intelligently thought out and though the mouth of the south thought it amusing to call it the work of a ‘Tin Can Cook,’ all it did was make her look like a buffoon and a berk.Michael Portillo very effectively shut down the ‘Thrifty Kitchen’ author in May 2019 when he forced her to step down from supporting ‘milkshaking’ right-wing politicians by asking if she’d do the same to centrist and left-wing figures. She had to pathetically concede: “Oh, OK… I condemn it.”‘Thrifty Kitchen’ was torn to shreds when it was published in January 2023 and mocked as “complete drivel.” Ideas for using fluff and water from tumble dryers – devices that anyone cutting back on costs would have already have stopped using during the cost-of-living crisis given how expensive they are to operate – were slammed as were Monroe’s thoughts on towels. To save money, the whack job stated: “Both me and my son can dry our entire bodies after a shower with a hand towel and a bit of vigorous application.” She laughably then added: “I have actually already perfected this down to the humble flannel.” Quite frankly, this nonsense was called out for the gibberish it truly was and will forever remain.“Cooks cook” Jamie Oliver has done more to help those struggling to feed their families than most. That he has been repeatedly attacked by a self-declared acid tongued “freelance food-and-politics-gob” who once crassly had a pop at David Cameron after the death of his son – she shockingly claimed “he uses stories about his dead son as misty-eyed rhetoric to legitimise selling our NHS to his friends” – is indicative of the lowbrow tendencies of the person making such attacks.If the Southend-on-Sea born daughter of David Hadjicostas MBE and Evelyn Hadjicostas wanted people to like her a bit more, why doesn’t she adopt the humour of the late, great council house estate born Keith Floyd. Here was a legend – from the very same humble beginnings she claims to be from – who enjoyed life to the full and who cooked simple yet delicious food that brought joy to millions. Some positivity and joie de vivre might actually get her somewhere.Equally, the late, great Julia Child could also inspire better things of Monroe. This Pasadena, California born ex-Office of Strategic Services worker once stated: “I believe in cooking with wine, sometimes I even put it in the food.” Reading the works of a true cooking legend like this might provide the Moaning Minnie former call handler for Essex County Fire and Rescue Services with something to actually enthuse about. If the author of ‘A Girl Called Jack’ would only pay attention to the words of the wonderful young man that is Big Zuu, she might be more widely appreciated. In 2020, this rapper turned inspirational cooking sensation remarked: “’Big Zuu’s Big Eats’ is the show for people who don’t live near a Waitrose or who can’t afford to go to one. I’m a massive fan of all cooking programmes, but I think this show stands out as we’re sourcing the food from local shops rather than big chains. I’m hoping it proves to people, especially in my generation, that cooking can be a fun and affordable experience. A lot of people I know can’t be bothered to cook and think it costs too much so they’d rather just get fast food. Hopefully, ‘BZBE’s’ can change that for some people.”
Jack Monroe likes to pick fights; amongst those she’s had a pop at are…
When ‘she’s’ not living-it-up with I’m A Celebrity bestie of Stanley Johnson, Georgia Toffolo, aside from myself, Jack Monroe has variously kept herself busy launching warbling words of war against:
Lee Anderson MP.
The Right Honourable David Cameron and his deceased child.
The Conservative Party – with their members in Bath being particularly high up on her list of ire.
Germaine Greer.
Katie Hopkins.
The Labour Party.
Jamie Oliver.
Michael Portillo.
The late The Right Honourable The Baroness Thatcher LG OM DStJ PC FRS HonFRSC.
The Right Honourable Liz Truss MP.
And many members of the Twitterati… And many, many others elsewhere.
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 19th 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 18th and 19th 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 TheTelegraph. 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.
28th 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.”
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.
Matthew Steeples suggests Jim Davidson should admit he got it wrong in suggesting returned to jail paedophile Gary Glitter was a “remorseful’ man who “looked ready to start a new life”
This morning, the washed-up wazzock and all-round scumbag that is Jim Davidson OBE was trending on Twitter after an interview with the ‘Mouth of the Sewer’ that is GB News’ Dan Wootton last night.
Whilst Davidson – a foul-mouthed ‘5×3’ (five kids by three of his five wives) – used the interview to bang on about “smug” Gary Lineker and how he “never particularly felt welcome” at the BBC, he neglected to comment on his thoughts on the real trending news, that of the filthy paedophile Gary Glitter being returned to jail after just 38 days in a bail hostel after breaching his licence terms.
Glitter – who was caught and photographed by another bail hostel resident using a smartphone to access the ‘Dark Web’ via something called ‘The Onion’ to attempt to snare further victims – had been visited by Davidson at the Isle of Wight prison where he was then housed by the former supermarket shelf-stacker Davidson in 2019.
Afterwards, in June 2021, Davidson shockingly and rather casually shared of his child abusing ‘chum’:
“I spoke to Paul [Gadd, AKA ‘Gary Glitter’] when I visited The Verne [prison] two years. He’s remorseful and he looked ready to start a new life.”
Instead of remarking on this very, very clear ‘error of judgment,’ speaking to Dan Wootton on GB News yesterday regarding the BBC’s #GaryGate debacle, Davidson raged:
“My political interest was cast upon me way before at Thames Television when I had The Jim Davidson Show and a man called John Howard Davis, who was a BBC producer, turned up and got rid of me and Benny Hill overnight.”
“And then, about a year later, I got a little cassette, a VHS, dropped on my desk by my manager and it [sic] said: ‘The BBC want you.’”
“I said: ‘What’s that?’ They [sic] said: ‘They want you to do this, it’s some rotten show about snooker, so me and John Virgo went and did that show and I never particularly felt welcome there.”
“I was a smell under peoples’ noses and then one day Bruce Forsyth went sick and I stepped in and did The Generation Game. I replaced him just for a day and I wasn’t particularly good, but it made Bruce get better very quick.”
“When he went to do his new deal, they said: ‘No, we’ve got Jim Davidson’ and I did The Generation Game for seven years. I did The Big Break for twelve seasons and seven seasons of The Generation Game.”
“Now look at the BBC. I’m totally erased; I am the statue that’s thrown into Bristol Docks… They gave me a million quid to go away. I had a contract with a million quid’s worth of wages and they said: ‘We’ll give you a million quid if you go away; please don’t tell anyone,” but I told you ‘Danny Boy’ [Dan Wootton].”
“I was worse [than anything else] because I was a working-class Tory. I was a traitor and I like to mess about and have a laugh and be rude and stuff on the rehearsals and it was all pretty much frowned upon.”
“They’re more concerned in being woke and ticking boxes. You know, ticking boxes; the man said to me: ‘We have to have 8.9% ethnic minorities on every show’ and so if you couldn’t get anybody that wanted to come on Big Break who was of non-white persuasion, you had to go out and kidnap some poor bugger and throw him in.”
“You know, err, it was daft and do you know what I learnt there, and I’ve been in the business forty-seven years… I’m nearly one-hundred… So, you learn a thing or two about the BBC and it’s full of people that don’t know how to make programmes. I had to tick a box and I had to be silly.”
“Now, I wouldn’t have thrown Lineker off like that and having a boss called Tim. Now come on, how scary is a Tim?”
“Now, anyway, you wouldn’t throw someone off; just turn them off. I can understand that it’s taxpayers’ money and I hate the BBC with a passion. It’s a toss-up between them and the NHS who I hate the most, but I, you know, I wouldn’t have got rid of him because now Tim’s shown himself as lily livered.”
“[Lineker] can now say what he wants, can’t he? He’s won and he’s going to be even smugger. Smug, smugger.”
“It’s upto Tim and all those silly people [what the BBC does next] and now they want to get rid of the chairman ‘cos he arranged some loan or helped Boris [Johnson]. Now, everyone’s just picking on one another. I think the BBC have lost the public; they’ve lost the dressing room.”
“You know, who do we watch now? GB News, anything but BBC. What does the BBC stand for? ‘Bring Back Corbyn,’ ‘Bring Back Communism.’”
“You know, it is a joke and we have to pay for it whether we like it or not. You know, let’s scrap it and watch GB News all day long.
Responding, this morning on Twitter, I asked:
“As Jim Davidson trends, should he apologise for his June 2021 remark: “I spoke to Paul Gadd [Gary Glitter] when I visited The Verne [prison] two years ago. He’s remorseful and he looked ready to start a new life” given the paedo has been recalled to prison after being caught on Dark Web?”
Other Twitter users took up the mantle and amongst comments were:
“I wonder if Jim Davidson still believes that Gary Glitter is remorseful and ready to start a new life?”
“Remember when Jim Davidson was funny? Me neither.”
“Fun Fact: For years the BBC didn’t give a flying sh*t about their right-wing so-called ‘comedian’ Jim Davidson’s racist/misogynistic stage show when he was hosting their flagship Saturday night show ‘The Generation Game’ #IStandWithGaryLineker.”
All that Glitters is not gold; all that is Jim Davidson is utterly toxic and now it is time for the latter to apologise for getting it well and truly wrong about one of the most evil men ever to set foot on this planet.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGGBmDZbfgE
TRAILER – Matthew Steeples will be ‘live’ with Shaun Attwood to discuss his views on Gary Glitter being returned to the clink after breaching his licence terms whilst in a bail hostel on Wednesday 15th March at 6pm GMT. Please do tune in and please do ask away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylQ6N-_gPRQ&t=0s
FULL EPISODE – This will be ‘live’ for the first time at 6pm GMT on Wednesday 15th March 2023. View here.
As Jim Davidson trends, should he apologise for his June 2021 remark: “I spoke to [Gary Glitter] when I visited The Verne [prison] 2 years ago. He’s remorseful and he looked ready to start a new life” given the paedo has been recalled to prison after being caught on Dark Web?
This morning on Twitter, Matthew Steeples asked: “As Jim Davidson trends, should he apologise for his June 2021 remark: “I spoke to [Gary Glitter] when I visited The Verne [prison] 2 years ago. He’s remorseful and he looked ready to start a new life” given the paedo has been recalled to prison after being caught on Dark Web?” He gave the options: A) “Yes, disgraceful remark”; B) “No, second chances matter”; C) “Cancel Davidson and Glitter” and D) “Couldn’t care less.” By 11:30am on Wednesday 15th March 2023, the majority of respondents favoured the idea of the cancellation of this noxious pair of grifters.GB News is about the only channel that will now accept the weird warblings of these two utter berks. A pair of toerags forever linked by a hashtag.Twitter users have rightly mocked the ‘entertainer’ over his decision to visit a disgraced ‘singer’ who abused children as young as 10 years old in prison. What on earth was it about the paedophile-nonce-monster Gary Glitter that attracted Jim Davidson to visit him in prison? An answer is required. The public should be told.Those that think Gary Lineker was WRONG to tweet about politics whilst working for the BBC should be reminded that both Jim Davidson and the late paedophile Sir Jimmy Savile openly campaigned for the Conservative Party and that both men also worked for the BBC. It is pure hypocrisy to call out Mr Lineker on this basis.
'What does the BBC stand for? Bring back Corbyn, bring back communism…and we have to pay for it whether we like it or not. Let's scrap it, let's watch GB News all day long.'
It is very clear that Dan Wootton has no nous when it comes to questioning Jim Davidson. Mr Wootton is clearly not a journalist prone to drilling into real stories; he just PR peddles for his chums.
Deserved “Public Hate Figure” Jim Davidson OBE’s Worst Moments…
On Great Yarmouth:
“Full of fat children of all colours.”
On London and the UK:
“I am never coming to London again… I may as well go to Dubai and be an ethnic minority there than wait five years till I become one here.”
On former UKIP leader Nigel Farage:
“The Jim Davidson of the political world.”
On beating up one of his four ex-wives:
“We’re like a couple of boxers. On the first occasion, I poked her in the eye by accident. I actually went for the mouth… The second time I gave her a shiner. I threw a bunch of keys which whacked her in the eye. Just for a giggle she kept blackening it up to make it look worse.”
“I took the wife out last night; one punch!”
On supposedly giving up on making jokes about black people:
“I can’t do impressions of Frank Bruno or Ian Wright? That’s racist, is it? But I can do Sven-Göran Eriksson?”
“I’m not going to get on my knee, and I’m not going to go ever black person I see, ‘hail you.’ I’m not going to apologise for the past; the past was the past.”
On Black Lives Matter protestors:
“Pondlife… F**king stupid.”
Of his thoughts about his chum Boris Johnson:
“Don’t listen with mother.”
On Piers Morgan (after he was paid to appear on his Life Stories programme):
“You don’t deserve to listen to anyone’s life story because you don’t f**king listen.”
On the BBC and the NHS:
“I was a smell under peoples’ noses… I’m totally erased; I am the statue that’s thrown into Bristol Docks… They gave me a million quid to go away.”
“I hate the BBC with a passion. It’s a toss-up between them and the NHS who I hate the most.”
Proving himself the ultimate ‘Brain of Britain’:
“People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die.”
After being declared bankrupt:
“My problem is money.”
On himself:
“I could cure Aids and give £1 billion to womens’ groups and people would still think I was a racist, sexist twat”.
After Matthew Steeples called out ‘leaky #lockdownfiles sieve’ Isabel Oakeshott, her ‘chlorinated chicken chap’ Reform UK leader and TalkTV host Richard Tice bizarrely enquired of him: “What kind of monster are you?”
“Let’s Make Britain Great” is the predictably and very clearly ‘borrowed’ strapline used by Reform UK, a ‘political party’ – which actually is just an entity registered in England and Wales as company number 11694875. The Donald Trump-esque mantra is used as part of an attempt to attract swivel-eyed right wingers to an ‘operation’ that didn’t win a single seat in the 2021 London Assembly elections; at that poll, Reform UK laughably finished in tenth position – behind the Women’s Equality, Rejoin EU, UKIP and Animal Welfare parties even.
Tweeting Matthew Steeples, in several rambling rants likely written after a boozy lunch in Belgravia yesterday, ‘considerably richer than yow’ businessman and TalkTV tittle-tattler Tice very generously shared our article (“thanks, Dicky”) and remarked:
“So @M_Steeples is clearly just jealous of Isabel’s success because he is a 2 bit journo of a 2 bit rag that no-one has heard of. Keep going Matthew!”
Turning to COVID-19 itself, the father of three and regular yellow stickered shopper at ‘Celebrity Waitrose’ Belgavia raged:
“So you do not care about the damage to children, the inhumane CareHome restrictions, the awful funeral constraints, the suicides? What sort of monster are you?”
The response to his tweets has been overwhelming, but likely not quite what Tice was anticipating. Aside from being told: “Save your faux outrage, you hypocrite!” one social media observed: “Right back at ya. Stop spreading misleading information” of his ‘monster’ related question. Now Dicky dear, please do go and pour yourself a British beer and please ease your and grubby gym gear-clad Issie’s “jealousy” with that.
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 – Richard Tice decided to give Matthew Steeples a “Sunday sermon” about monsters yesterday; he did so late afternoon and likely after a few (British beer only) shandies and perhaps a boozy lunch (with non-European wines only) in Belgravia.
This morning on Twitter, Matthew Steeples asked: “Yesterday, Richard Tice of the Reform Party asked: ‘What sort of monster are you?’ of me after I called out his leaky squeeze Isabel Oakeshott. Who is actual monster in story of #lockdownfiles leaking of MattHancock’s WhatsApp missives?” He gave the options of a) Isabel Oakeshott (32.6%), b) Richard Tice, (8.7%) c) himself (6.5%) and d) Matt Hancock (52.5%). As of 11.30am on Monday 6th March the results were as listed.58-year-old Richard Tice ‘bigs himself up’ as some kind of man of the people in spite of having a clearly very privileged past and present. Often spotted in the tony taverns of Belgravia, this former Conservative donor has been involved in amongst other things property development and investment. He was privately educated at Uppingham and is the son the late horse trainer Joan Tice DL OBE. That he claims Matthew Steeples “jealous” of his gossipy girlfriend – a woman who falsely acted as a muckspreader when she falsely shared fake news that David Cameron had performed a sexual act on a dead pig – is proof permanent that he’s the one who is actually off his merry rocker. “Keep going Dicky!”Called out by Steeples after he suggested him a “2 bit journo of a 2 bit rag,” Tice responded: “What sort of monster are you?” He didn’t find a very positive response to his idiotic question from the majority of social media users.
Social media responds to Richard Tice’s rambling rants and questions about monsters…
Responding on Twitter and Facebook to the missives to Matthew Steeples, social media users observed of Tice and Oakeshott:
“Two-bit? Do you mean The Steeple Times? I read it all the time as do all in the know; distinguished and principled journalism – especially compared to the dross trotted out by your squeeze.”
“You’re a professional troll and so is Oakeshott. Who is paying you?”
“[Oakeshott] had these messages two years ago. Why is she only concerned about those issues now? What sort of monster is she?”
“The problem you have is that you are even more wrong than the government were!”
“Don’t try to kid us you care. You’ve tried to exploit the release of that information with your partner in an attempt to inflict political damage & now you pretend you care? You’re a 2 bit crappy grifter like Farage. I wouldn’t trust you with a lettuce, let alone our rights.”
“Save your faux outrage, you hypocrite! What about the damage to children currently suffering from Long Covid? I don’t hear you utter a bloody word about them!”
“If Isabel had been a decent person, i.e. concerned about what is in the public interest, she would have released ALL the information to ALL media without payment. We see you two for what you really are!”
“You are using those examples of wrongdoing and other peoples’ real human suffering to promote your own ends. What’s worse is that you are gaslighting people by cynically pretending that you are doing it ‘because you care,’ when self-interest is always your real motive. Shyster!”
“What we know is that Oakeshott released these messages at a time that was politically convenient but chose to hide the fact that Banks lied until she was exposed.”
“Disgusting you are trying to manipulate peoples’ suicides for your own benefit and agenda.”
“Serialised in the telegraph to maximise the news cycle/exposure. How is this about any more than @IsabelOakeshott and her personal & political agenda? It’s a massive scoop, dripping with tabloid subterfuge, but why dress it up as a crusade?
“She felt it was in public interest, was disgusted… But not before the book was out. And no doubt her leakage has been handsomely rewarded, possibly even legal protection should MH sue her. She’s the reason journalists will be less trusted with confidential matters.”
“They’re insulting your credibility, I thought you’d recognise that given how often it must occur.”
“You are a charlatan… Trying to make political gain out of peoples’ suffering. What sort of monster are you?”
“[You] didn’t care until you and [Oakeshott] could make political hay and a boatload of cash.”
“None of [the things Tice supposedly ‘cares’ about] are remotely true or relevant. File them under ‘things which ill-informed fight-wingers bleat about but never actually happened. No wonder the ‘UK’ is a global pariah and laughing stock.”
“It’s genuinely painful when dead-eyed sociopaths obsessed with political power no matter the cost lecture others about ‘caring.’ Your entire platform exists and feeds only on negative emotion, reactionary populism with power for its own sake as the final and only goal.”
“You would happily send [sic] asylum seekers drown. F**k off with the faux humanitarianism.”
“You do not care about so-called ordinary people. Stop pretending. I suspect you want an authoritarian far right tax haven complete with subservient work force.”
“You can care about all of this and still think your significant other is a wrong’un. Hope this helps, Dicky.”
“Like your partner, you care when it suits your agenda [Richard].”
“It’s you that’s the monster… A Tory monster. The worst kind.”
“Stop using peoples’ deaths for your own financial gain, you ghoul.”
“[‘What sort of monster are you?’]… That last line, have you ever considered looking in the mirror and pausing to think, [Richard]?”
“Right back at ya. Stop spreading misleading information.”
“Nice one… Brilliant… Keep up the good work, Matthew.”
“Oooh, you’ve got your knickers in a twist… Grow up Tice… You should be the leader of the Whataboutery Party.”
In August 2019, ‘The Steeple Times’ shared an image of Brexiteer Richard Tice buying yellow stickered salmon at Waitrose in Belgravia. We asked: “What next? Chlorinated American chicken?” and suggested he find another yellow sticker… That yellow sticker? ‘Bollocks to Brexit.’In September 2019, ‘The Steeple Times’ condemned Isabel Oakeshott as a “fake news creator” and shared a reader submitted photograph of her next to the “lapdance loving MP” John Whittingdale. For once, she wasn’t wearing her grubby gym gear.Reform UK bases its message most clearly on 45th POTUS Donald Trump’s message: “Let’s Make America Great Again.” It’s a message that has yet to resonate at the ballot box with the great British public. Perhaps Richard Tice should focus on that problem before worrying about ‘monsters’ that simply don’t exist.On Twitter, amongst much mockery, this image of a ‘Grifter’ bicycle simply shone out and had to be shared. As Norman Tebbit once argued, it might be time ‘Dicky Boy’ got on it.
Bungling berk Boris Johnson is supposedly upsizing and has allegedly bought the £4 million Brightwell Manor in Oxfordshire; the lavish lush that is the former Carrie Symonds will need a big budget if she is to clad the colossal 10,508 square foot crib in £840 per roll Lulu Lytle wallpaper
In November 2019, Country Life’s longstanding property correspondent described a “rare part-moated manor house set in almost five acres of gardens and grounds at the heart of the picturesque Oxfordshire village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, on the eastern edge of the Vale of the White Horse” named Brightwell Manor as a “forever home.”
Featured in The Times in an article by Liz Rowlinson in November last year after it “had three viewings so far from Americans,” the part-Tudor, part-Georgian house and its annexe and guest cottage provides a total of 10,508 square foot of accommodation over three floors. It has a total of 9 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms and if The Guardian is to be believed, it has just been sold to the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his considerably younger than himself wife.
Brightwell Manor has been owned by the same family since 1971, so, if indeed the Johnsons are the purchasers, the former Carrie Symonds will need to spend a hell of a lot of money on Lulu Lytle wallpaper to bring it “upto scratch.” This is a place that needs a lot of work and no doubt, ‘Carrie On Regardless’ already has plans bring in also ‘Lady Doors-To-Manual’ Carole Bamford’s JCB diggers to help install a swimming pool in the 4.88-acre grounds.
Suitably for the Brexiteer buffoon Johnson – who got paid an £88,000 advance in 2015 for a book on Shakespeare that he’s never bothered to actually write – in their marketing blurb, the selling agents predictably claimed: “Of its many owners perhaps the most notable was the Reverend Doctor W. R. Inge, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and Knight Commander of the Victorian Order. He was a prolific author and used the family room as his study for writing.” Maybe now, this is a room that will become the place where the “pyramid of piffle” that will be Johnson’s memoirs might finally get written.
Described as a “village of picture postcard prettiness” and as “in estate agents’ jargon, this is a sought after village, but it is much more than a pretty face” on the local community website, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell – which flooded in 2014 and has a CAMRA award-winning pub named the Red Lion where Johnson will no doubt get smashed with his wife and the likes of Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone – has a population of around 1,500 people. It lies between the towns of Didcot and Wallingford, is 55 miles west of London is and close to Didcot Parkway train station – which has trains running to Paddington in just 37 minutes.
Offered for sale in November 2019 at a somewhat punchy price of £5 million by Hamptons International, the “magnificent Grade II listed Georgian village house” stands on the likely site of the long since vanished Brightwell Castle. It was relaunched to the market subsequently for a sum £1 million lower by Andrew Russell of agents The Country House Department in October 2022.
“[This is a] properly edge-of-village house, so that you can be involved in the village community, or you can keep to yourself, depending on what you’d prefer.”
“The property used to be moated all the way around, with about two-thirds of this moat remaining today. [It was the tallest house in the area at the time of its building and it was] not good form to build a house that was taller than the local church. To rectify this, the family who built it also added a red brick tower onto the local church, St Agatha’s, which reaches just higher than the façade.”
“I believe Brightwell Manor once owned all the land around, and it was a big apple farming estate, so some of those trees may be very old.”
Johnson also currently owns a Grade II listed property in Oxfordshire, The Old Farm House at North Weston, near Thame. He bought it with his then wife Marina Wheeler for £640,000 in 2003 and most memorably came out in an ‘Xchanging’ branded hoodie to serve journalists tea in August 2018 during the scandal about him comparing Muslim women to letterboxes.
Featuring what Country Life’s Carla Passino called “true blue tiles,” Johnson – who got to keep the £1.25 million crib as part of his February 2020 divorce settlement – placed the 2,659 square foot property for rent for a sum of £4,250 per month through Strutt & Parker in April 2021. It is not known whether he intends to keep The Old Farm House or whether he’ll still be able to continue to bed down at the Knightsbridge residence of Lord and Lady Bamford that he has most recently been calling “home.”
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
During his time married to Marina Wheeler, Boris Johnson lived much more modestly. Clearly, his ambitious and avaricious current wife Carrie would never contemplate living in a somewhat shabby former farmhouse.During their time in Downing Street, the Johnsons lived-it-up during lockdowns with their mates. Aside from boozing and bopping to ABBA with Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone, this grasping pair grabbed at least £30,000 of organic loot from their mate Lady Bamford’s Daylesford Organic. It was delivered by bike and van and no doubt, once in residence at their new mansion, they’ll be getting a hell of a lot more dropped off from the Gloucestershire emporiums of Daylesford.The Very Reverend William Inge KCVO FBA lived in the house for 30 years. He was born in Yorkshire, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times and was also a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1921 until 1951. A “strong proponent of the spiritual type of religion,” Inge was nicknamed “The Gloomy Dean” because of his pessimistic views and of social welfare he claimed: “It penalized the successful while subsidising the weak and the feckless.” Boris Johnson will no doubt take inspirtation from this in his writing in what was once his study.
The Names & Numbers – Brightwell Manor, off Brightwell Street, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 0RT, United Kingdom
February 2023 – Listed as “sold subject to contract” on Rightmove with the purchaser being Boris Johnson at a price of circa £4 million ($4.8 million, €4.5 million or درهم17.7 million), The Guardian reports.
November 2022 – Featured in The Times and touted as being an example as to “why Americans are buying up Britain’s country estates.”
November 2019 – Offered for sale for £5 million ($6 million million, €5.6 million or درهم22.1 million) through Hamptons International and featured in Country Life.
1971 – Sold for a sum unknown by William Inge’s sons to a family who continued to own it until its recent sale.
Of them, Penny Churchill observed: “They hadn’t been long installed in their new home when, one day, they saw walking up the drive the distinctive figure of a former Government Minister, who – figuratively if not literally – whipped out his cheque book and invited them to name their price.”
“However, having only just found the right house for them and their five children, they had little hesitation in declining their visitor’s generous offer. Now, 50 years on, a similar approach would perhaps be more favourably received.”
1954 – William Inge died at the house aged 93. He is buried in the graveyard St Agatha’s, the adjoining church to the property.
1950s – Extended by The Very Reverend William Inge KCVO FBA (1860 – 1954), its then owner. Of him, Penny Churchill observed: “[Inge was] an eminent theologian and writer, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature on three occasions. He served as Dean of St Paul’s from 1911 until 1934, when he retired to live at Brightwell Manor, dying there 30 years later.”
9th April 1952 – Listed Grade II by Heritage England.
1933 – Offered for sale for £2,000 or the equivalent of £11,300 today ($13,600, €12,700 or درهم50,000 today)
1910s and 1920s – Penny Churchill stated: “Brightwell Manor remained part of a thriving estate until the outbreak of the First World War, after which it was sold a number of times as casualties mounted. A report in Country Life on March 27, 1920, announced the sale of Brightwell with six acres of land, describing it as ‘an historical and commodious Georgian Residence of very attractive appearance, having extensive views over the famous Berkshire Downs. The pasture land here is of considerable value, letting readily at £4 an acre.’”
1600s – The earliest Tudor part of the house is constructed as a “modest farmhouse modest farmhouse on the surrounding farming estate, being gradually gentrified until, towards the end of the 18th century, the symmetrical Georgian front was added. A red-brick coach house, latterly converted to a two-bedroom cottage, was added in the 1840s,” Penny Churchill suggested.
Pictures of ‘Bungling Boris’s’ new country crib…
This ain’t Chequers, but it ain’t too shabby either.The drawing room, in its current condition, resembles something like that of the home of Polly Urquhart in the 1980s BBC bonkbusting classic ‘Howards’ Way.’ No doubt, Lulu Lytle will be drafted in to deck this room out in a somewhat more gaudy shade of gold.The dining room has tones of Liberal Democrat to it that the Johnsons will no doubt want to erase.This is presumably the room where ‘The Gloomy Dean’ wrote many of his works. Will it be the place where ‘Bosie The Clown’ is actually inspired to finally finish any of his?Perhaps the calamity formerly known as Carrie Symonds will take to the piano in this sitting room and bash out some of ABBA’s tunes when visited by the pugnacious pair she allegedly nicknamed “the gays” that are Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone.Another sitting room clearly has sofas that are more of the colour of Sir Keir Starmer currently. It also features a fireplace with a tiny painting above it that would be more at home in Phillip Schofield’s broom cupboard.The kitchen is decidedly basic and still present is a 1930s AGA stove; that presumably won’t be that off-putting to the Johnsons given that this pair of grifters can rely on Lady Bamford to supply them with freebies and ready-made organic meals from Daylesford whenever they want.This staircase hallway has been wallpapered with a print that will remind the former Prime Minister of that that adorns the Pugin-esque Palace of Westminster.If Mrs Johnson wants to inspire her husband to finally put pen to paper, she could cram these shelves with relevant literature.A bedroom for Boris? This wood-panelled sleeping chamber will likely become the ‘Baby Dada’ of children unknown’s place where he and his wife rest their wicked heads.Another of the many bedrooms features a sofa that was clearly bought at Ikea. Lulu Lytle will have that straight in the skip.The house adjoins St Agatha’s church. Will the former Prime Minister become a regular there and will he attend with a view to seek redemption for his many, many, many crimes whilst in office?The gardens are flat and vast and are noted for the apple trees planted generations ago. ‘Carrie On Regardless’ might be able to develop a sideline in making cider using them or perhaps she’ll start making apple pies.The moat of Brightwell Manor could prove useful if Boris Johnson is forced to face visits from the anti-Brexiteer Steve Bray or climate change campaigners such as Greta Thunberg.Aside from the main residence, the building comes with an annexe and cottage also. Perfect for when good old Dominic Cummings wants to come round for a weekend outing; it’d save him the drive to Durham, after all.The house, seen from the side, is all front and no trousers. The Georgian element that gives it grandeur is actually not the prime part of the property; a bit like Boris Johnson himself, in fact.Viewed from a drone, the nigh on 5-acre ‘estate’ backs onto open countryside and has a vast area of gravel to the front; perfect for visits from the convoys of limousines of oligarchs like Lord Lebedev.Set back from the village but near enough to the pub for ‘BoJo’ to escape his wine chucking wife when required, Brightwell Manor has the privacy from the press a former premier will require yet gives him the ability to walk down the drive to ‘pull a John Gummer’ with a BSE burger at the garden gate if ever that might be required.Tennis anyone? The former Prime Minister can perhaps woe his next love or lover on the property’s court.A floor plan of the new home of the most loathsome leader of the Conservative Party.Seen on GoogleMaps… This will no doubt soon get blurred for the sake of privacy.Heritage England’s map will no doubt be vamoosed also.
Matthew Steeples questions if it is right for the former Prime Minister Theresa May to presumably taking wads of wonga to give a speech to the World Travel & Tourism Council in Saudi Arabia given the World Economic Forum ranked the country 141 out of 149 countries on gender equality
On Thursday, an email pinged into my inbox from a London based organisation I’d never previously heard of – the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).
In it, the WTTC bragged that they were announcing she who viewed it naughty to go “wandering in wheat fields,” Theresa May, as its “keynote speaker for its Global Summit in Saudi Arabia.”
Of the presence and participation of Lady May – as the queen of “Brexit means Brexit” is now known after her “I do the traditional boy jobs by and large” husband was made Sir Philip for being “her rock” and “political services” – at this event in a country known best for its appalling human rights record, the WTTC did not declare what she would be paid or who was paying her.
Neither also did this organisation reference their thoughts on the regime running Saudi Arabia but instead, Julia Simpson, WTTC president and CEO, pontificated:
“Theresa May has a long-standing interest in the environment and as Prime Minister, she launched the ‘25 Year Environmental Plan’ to tackle issues such as plastic waste. In 2019 she formally committed the UK to achieving ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050, making Britain the first major economy to do so.”
“During the pandemic, Theresa May was concerned about the uncoordinated global response, and she showed great political leadership calling for international cooperation based on evidence.”
“Our event will bring together many of the world’s most powerful leaders in our sector to discuss and secure its long-term future, which is critical to economies and jobs around the world.”
Between 1st February 2021 and 31st January 2022, Lady May unabashedly claimed £143,008.98 ($168,982, €165,017 or درهم620,587) in expenses on top of her MP’s salary and in July 2021, Insider reported that she had earned £1,861,776 ($2.2 million, €2.1 million or درهم8.1 million) for speeches since leaving Downing Street in July 2019. Who’d have thought that anyone would want to give money to hear this “wandering warbler” bang on about anything, but hey, quitting frontline politics has most certainly brought this bland, boring woman a very, very pretty pay packet.
By email to the communications manager for the World Travel & Tourism Council, Felix Parker-Smith, whose contact details were listed alongside the press release, I subsequently requested clarification. My brief missive read:
“My questions are: 1. What fee is Lady May being paid for this appearance/speech and by what means will she be travelling to give this speech? Who is paying her fee and travel expenses?”
“2. What is the view of Lady May on human rights issues and abuses in Saudi Arabia?”
“3. Will Lady May be raising these well documented abuses in Saudi Arabia during her speech?”
“4. Does Lady May view it to be ‘sustainable’ to be travelling, presumably by aircraft, to give such a speech? Could she not have given such a speech via Zoom?”
“I would most certainly write about this and will look forward to answers to all four of my questions prior to doing so.”
Parker-Smith, without acknowledging who is actually giving the former Prime Minister a bag of cash, curtly answered:
“As these are questions for Mrs May, I’ve forwarded your email to our contact.”
By return, given Parker-Smith’s clear lack of willingness to address the issues raised, I responded:
“Thank you for forwarding on to Lady May’s representatives though surely the World Travel & Tourism Council must be the body that hired Lady May (I believe that to be her correct title given her husband’s elevation).”
“I would like to ask your organisation directly: 1. Does the World Travel & Tourism Council have any statement to make about the matter of Lady May being hired and why they chose her?”
“2. Given the then Mrs May’s involvement in bringing about the disaster for British tourist businesses that is Brexit, what influenced your organisation’s choice of the very woman who implemented ‘Brexit means Brexit’?”
“3. If the WTTC is not paying Lady May, who is funding this Member of Parliament on a trip outside of her constituency remit?”
Tellingly in his next email, Parker-Smith attempted to dodge another bullet and concluded:
“We will not be making further statements beyond our press release.”
“However, on background, I can confirm that previous Summits have attracted world leaders such as Barack Obama, Tony Blair and Emmanuel Macron. Alongside Ban Ki-Moon, Theresa May has held a prominent role on the world stage and has been invited in this capacity to speak about her experiences and insight for the global travel and tourism industry.”
As of 10.30am on Monday 21st November, no reply explaining who would be paying Lady May had been received by The Steeple Times from utterly anybody.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
In May 2018, Theresa May was quite rightly slammed by ‘The Sun’ for elevating Lady Meyer, the wife of the now croaked cretinous creep and well-known “red socked fop” Sir Christopher Meyer, to Baroness Meyer of Nine Elms in the London Borough of Wandsworth. The paper raged of the appointment of her “best pal” and quoted Darren Hughes of the Electoral Reform Society as calling her appointment “beyond a joke.” The “Chanel-clad” old boiler with a love of charity cash collecting tins got a jolly lovely bonus – peers get around £30,000 in expenses and attendance fees annually; nice work if you can get it.Lady May MP is often to be found dining with her ‘Garden Gnome-like’ hubby Sir Philip in Malik’s Tandoori House in Cookham, Berkshire. Here, the owner, is pictured serving her and also posing with another regular, her constituent and convicted paedophile Rolf Harris and his wicked wife Alwyn Hughes. Whether she’s ever invited her mate Baroness Meyer down for a ‘nosh-up’ there remains unknown.In February 2019, ‘The Steeple Times’ reported that a “plainly insane Tory donor” had spent £75,000 to spend an evening with Theresa May. Worse still, someone paid £175,000 for a set of four posters signed by this tedious twerp.
What else has Theresa been pocketing from her ‘Magic Money Tree’?
An MPs salary of £84,144 ($99,400, €97,100 or درهم365,100) plus expenses “to cover the costs of running an office, employing staff, having somewhere to live in London or their constituency, and travelling between Parliament and their constituency.”
An £85,000 per year ($100,400, €98,070 or درهم368,800 per year) salary from the Office of Theresa May Limited “until further notice” for just 24 hours work per month or just 288 hours work per year.
Honorary life membership of the Carlton Club.
‘VIP treatment’ at Heathrow Airport, valued at £4,200 a pop, at least 14 times totalling at least £58,800 ($69,500, €67,900 or درهم255,100).
Substantial rental income from a flat in London owned jointly with her husband.
A discount card from Amanda Wakeley, “which has the potential to be of registrable value.”
“Very unkind” windbag writer Rachel Johnson, a sympathiser of convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, offers sympathies windbag ball and cat kicker Kurt Zouma
“Poundland muckspreader” and “associate of two dirty dildo floggers” Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge CBE has been deservedly slammed for not firing Kurt Zouma, an overpaid kicker of bags of wind for West Ham, after he giggled as he got his brother to film him kicking and slapping a cat in his kitchen.
Now, the Prime Minister’s somewhat off her merry rocker sister, windbag writer Rachel Johnson, has decided to stick her claws in and on her LBC radio show yesterday suggested:
“Listen, I mean I know, thank God it’s after the watershed. I am not a cat person… However, I do think we are in danger of overreacting and cancelling Kurt Zouma for one misguided kick in his kitchen which his silly brother posted on social media.”
“He’s 27, clearly he’s old enough to know better, but do we really want to live in a world where one silly mistake can lead to the end of somebody’s career? I think we don’t.”
“I think he’s taken his punishment, his cats are no longer in the house. I think he should apologise and move on. I think there are bigger issues at stake.”
As we said of Baroness Brady – who pathetically excused this animal abuser and even suggested he could “turn something negative into long-lasting positives” – yesterday and we repeat again to Rachel Johnson today: “Try telling that to the poor abused cat.”
Previously, in November 2021, ‘Rabid Rachel’ penned another ‘excuse article’ for The Spectator that was rightly condemned as “sickening.” In it, the daughter of Stanley Johnson – a man whose first wife declared: “He hit me many times, over many years… He broke my nose. He made me feel like I deserved it” – offered her thoughts on the trial of the since convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell and disgracefully declared:
“It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell – 500 days and counting in solitary confinement.”
“I intersected briefly with her at Oxford. As a fresher I wandered into Balliol JCR one day in search of its subsidised breakfast granola-and-Nescafé offering and found a shiny glamazon with naughty eyes holding court astride a table, a high-heeled boot resting on my brother Boris’s thigh.”
“She gave me a pitying glance but I did manage to snag an invite to her party in Headington Hill Hall – even though I wasn’t in the same college as her and Boris. I have a memory of her father, Bob, coming out in a towelling robe and telling us all to go home.”
“I’m sure fairweather friends would not reveal they went to a Ghislaine Maxwell party: as Barbara Amiel’s brilliant memoir Friends and Enemies proves, you only know who your real chums are when you’re in the gutter.”
Clearly Rachel Johnson – who believes being “called unkind… really cuts to the quick” – is a woman with a moral compass as warped as not only her buffoon brother Boris Johnson, but also a woman who’ll excuse the activities of both the abusers of animals and humans. Perhaps it is now time for this blonde bozo to reassess her recent remarks and realise that the cats and victims of a sick sex trafficker are the ones she’s most definitely been most unkind to.
Pictured top – West Ham’s cat abuser Kurt Zouma, convicted sexual abusers Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein and continually abusive of power and privilege siblings Rachel and Boris Johnson.
Rachel Johnson got her breasts out against Brexit in February 2019. The LBC presenter with her father and siblings.Karren Brady – another defender of cat abuser Kurt Zouma – got elevated to the House of Lords by her guffawing chum David Cameron in spite of claiming to “have no interest in politics.” She also likes bumping fists with Carrie Johnson’s puppet, Boris.
“Very Unkind” Rachel Johnson’s Most Ridiculous Remarks
On boozy lockdown breaking parties in Downing Street:
“I didn’t see much of the Prime Minister and his family during lockdown, but the times I did see him, he was completely compliant: he dotted every ‘I,’ he crossed every ‘T.’”
“If it was rule of six, there were six. And what I didn’t see were all the things you’ve been reading about.”
“To my mind, if he did go out into the Downing Street garden – and he’s told us he did – for him, that would have been work. He may have had a drink, I don’t know. Is that one of the key questions? But that would have been work.”
“For example, at his birthday, it was me, my three brothers, Carrie and Wilf. That was six people. And I have to tell you something about my brother’s character.”
“You’ve been seeing the front pages which couldn’t have been worse: suitcases of booze going into Downing Street from the Co-op.”
“I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that he has never once turned to me or any member of my family and said: ‘I tell you what, let’s have an office party’ or: ‘I tell you what, let’s have a party.’”
“If anything, he would say: ‘Let’s play reading,’ when we were growing up, or even in our twenties, or: ‘Let’s play, who can memorise the most poems from the Oxford book of verse’’ And, of course, it was always him.”
“Look, I’m just telling you what I saw over lockdown and what I know of my brother’s character.”
On her own character:
“Of course, I’m naughty.”
“Without my Johnson trademark mop of yellow hair, I think I would be nothing.”
On politicians:
“If you tell the truth you get into trouble and that’s why politicians are extremely dull.”
On the sex trafficker and daughter of a thieving murderer Ghislaine Maxwell:
“It’s hard not to feel a batsqueak of pity for Ghislaine Maxwell.”
On food and coffee:
“In Germany, salads are assemblies of ham and mayonnaise.”
“I am a total coffee snob and bore. If anyone makes the mistake of offering me ‘a coffee’ they tend to regret it. I’m worse than Mariah Carey and the hot milk rider is completely non-negotiable.”
On her work:
“I used to sit at home in my tracksuit bottoms and the real excitement of my day would be going out to get a copy of Private Eye and a latte.”
“It’s often discouraging sitting working at home, wondering whether to put the heating on, answering the doorbell to the gas board, feeling it’s all utterly pointless.”
“The Lady [which she was the 9th editor of between 2009 and 2013] is a piddling little magazine that no one cares about or buys.”
On what others think of her:
“I’m worried about looking like a bad person… I don’t like the public image I’ve been dressed with and it worries me.”
“When I’m called unkind, that really cuts to the quick. You can say anything else that you like about me.”
“I don’t mind being called snobbish, a pain and a social climber, but being called unkind really hurts.”
Whilst Cardinal (John) Henry Newman got made a saint, Carrie Johnson’s Abba dancing buddy Henry Newman has been binned and turfed out with the rubbish
Oxford University educated Cardinal John Henry Newman was canonised as a saint in the Catholic Church in October 2019. Meanwhile earlier that year, his namesake, a spad of plainer birth but of the same alma mater, “discretely charmed by the bourgeoisie” Henry John Newman, got himself elevated when his Abba dancing partner, Carrie Johnson, got her clammering claws on the keys to the nation’s second most famous home, 10 Downing Street.
Now, whilst supposedly “sublimated homosexual” Saint John Henry Newman C.O. – despite having being dead for 132 years – is considered a “national treasure” and described as “the first English saint of the modern era” according to The Tablet, his openly gay namesake was this weekend turfed out of Downing Street with the rubbish.
Gone for Brexiteer ‘Bin Boy’ Henry Newman – who was bizarrely photographed pointing at bags of refuse in Camden in 2017 whilst standing to become a councillor – will be the days of quaffing booze on the terrace of the half acre garden behind the official residences of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now, instead, this graduate also of equally fabled institutions including Harvard and the London School of Economics, will have to pleasure himself with a pint in a pub in The Marquis of Granby after days working in the less salubrious surrounds of Marsham Street back with his supposed sometime flatmate Michael Gove.
According to the Daily Mail’s Andrew Pierce this morning, Newman was so important to Carrie Johnson that the Prime Minister allowed him to celebrate his 38th birthday last summer – hardly a milestone of any note – with a lavish bash at Chequers, the grace-and-favour residence intended for entertaining visiting statesmen and international dignitaries.
“It turned out to be a very high-spirited affair,” Pierce reported, with “Housing Secretary Michael Gove riding pillion as Boris Johnson took him on a joy-ride on his second-hand Yamaha motorcycle around the grounds. Gove clasped his hands around Boris’s ample waist as they nudged speeds of 55mph, while Newman – clutching a flute of champagne – laughed and cheered.”
Gone now are such privileges and gone also is Newman’s desk close to Boris Johnson’s study and instead this alleged “Chatty Rat” – if we are to believe Dominic Cummings – “has been banished to work with his former mentor Gove at his departmental HQ a 15-minute walk away in Marsham Street.” This once influential spad – whom once suggested on Facebook: “[What I’m] thinking [is that] this country needs is a new taskforce” – it appears, has been disposed just like a binbag full of stinking, rotten fish.
For Newman, this downgrade will no doubt seem heartless and unfair, but, as Pierce added: “It was [his] intimate relationship with Mrs Johnson that has proved his undoing.” He now faces likely criticism into what went on with ‘Partygate’ in Sue Gray’s report and as the journalist concluded: “There will be fewer cosy chats in the Downing Street flat in the future.”
Elsewhere, in a ‘Comment’ piece this morning, The Sun declared: “Only time will tell if the ‘greased piglet’ [Boris Johnson’ left it too late to escape” slaughter by his very own party. They neglected to remark on how it will continue to go from bad to worse for his spendaholic, power crazed wife ‘Carrie Antoinette’ now that she’s lost “her rock” and equivalent of Paul Burrell to the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
A fan of wearing beanie hats that declare: “Let’s get Brexit done,” here is a young man who taught politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), after studying at the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the London School of Economics. Henry Newman reportedly then “cut his teeth” working in the Cabinet Office during the coalition government years and then joined Michael Gove’s entourage in the Ministry of Justice after he was appointed as the Lord Chancellor in 2015.Aside from having travelled to Russia in his youth, Henry Newman joined the Vote Leave campaign during the 2016 referendum campaign and, according to ‘The Telegraph’ “was among a close circle of Mr Gove’s friends who were said to have helped to convince him to ‘knife’ Mr Johnson and torpedo his bid for the Tory leadership by deciding to run himself.” Later, a director of the pro-Brexit Open Europe think-tank, Newman was then rewarded for being “loyal” to his wine chucking bestie Carrie Symonds when Boris Johnson came to power.
‘Bin Boy’ Henry Newman’s words of wisdom on Facebook…
“Is drunk.”
“Is opening an organic box.”
“Is discreetly charmed by the bourgeoisie.”
“Is drowning in honey, stingless.”
“Once you kill a cow you gotta make a burger.”
“Wondering if he is really a top concern for US immigration.”
“Waiting for Jacqui Smith to resign.”
“Is dancing, dancing, dancing… Is listening to rumba in W. Hartford… Is dancing in the dark… Is missing dancing.”
“Is listening to the Stones while the economy collapses.”
“Is watching his tan fall off.”
“Hates people who don’t know how to use a rowing machine.”
“Is thinking what this country needs is a new taskforce.”
Descriptions of Henry Newman by…
Boris Johnson:
“One of my three musketeers.”
Carrie Symonds:
“One of my four favourite people.”
Toby Young:
“He is a new role model… If you were a [politics show] booker who had to find someone… Newman was the only name on your Rolodex.”
“As the oxygen went out of Theresa May’s premiership, and her withdrawal agreement began to breathe its last, the great balloon of his career became more and more inflated.”
Dominic Cummings:
“All the evidence [regarding the second lockdown leak] definitely leads to Henry Newman… I’m just trying to get the communications data to prove it.”
An unnamed “senior government source”:
“The allegations against Henry Newman are entirely false. He wouldn’t be working in Downing Street if he was suspected of leaking information.”
An unnamed “Downing Street insider” to The Mail on Sunday:
“This is the man who did more than anyone to encourage Michael [Gove] to stab Boris in the back.”
“But he’s used his relationship with Carrie to ingratiate himself back into the inner circle. He’s always up in the flat with her, and that gives him direct access to the PM. The rest of the No. 10 team have no idea what he’s saying to him. And that’s the root cause of a lot of this.”
Newman’s childish Facebook posts are not indicative of someone of academic note and his rise through government should be questioned as a result. Did he get there because of merit or simply because he was a ‘FOC’ (‘Friend of Carrie’)? The answer seems very, very clear.Henry Newman, like fellow mouthy sorts such as Diane Abbott, Jay Beecher and Owen Jones, likes to pontificate and peddle, but when called out, he simply hits the block button. Hardly the actions of someone who would like to think himself an able debater at the Oxford Union and more those of someone ‘trained’ by the wine chucking harpy Carrie Johnson.
