David Pun gobbled his way through General Election 2017 and was captured on camera by a Mail on Sunday reporter
Mail on Sunday reporter Ned Donovan secured the photo of the evening on General Election night 2017 in capturing party crasher extraordinaire David Pun at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, London in the early hours of 9th June.
In the image, shared on Twitter, Pun – whose claims to his connections at both Harvey Nichols and Peninsula Hotels frequently astound those he meets and whose position on a roll call of ‘shoppers’ in Queensway brought laughter to readers of The Steeple Times in April this year – is pictured raiding a tray of bacon baps as Lady Nugee (AKA Emily Thornberry MP) looks down from an overhead television screen.
Whilst Pun’s voting preferences got no mention, sadly nor did where fellow liggers Denis Doble and Sandra Shevey ended up on that night’s rampage. Whether they got trolleyed with ‘Team Theresa’ at Conservative Central Office or naughty with Nigel Farage at 5 Hertford Street, no doubt canapés aplenty were snaffled.
Vast “Italian style” oceanfront mansion in Orange County, CA relaunched for sale for £42.7 million; it has failed to sell at prices as high as £53 million
An 18,000 square foot barn of a residence described as “the finest oceanfront home in SoCal” has been relaunched to the market this month at a price 20% lower than when it was first listed in 2013.
Built in what is somewhat ambitiously termed an “Italian palazzo style” and featuring Spanish tile roofing, five imported European fireplaces and “terrazzo flooring evoking those in The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades”, 2585 Riviera Drive stands on an acre plot in north Laguna Beach’s private Irvine Cove community. It is one of twelve oceanside homes in a gated, 24-hour-a-day guarded community and enjoys “spectacular views” of the Pacific and access to a private beach.
Constructed to the designs of the Warner Group over a period of eight years and completed in 2010, the house offered occupies half of a larger plot owned until 2002 by Joan Irvine Smith, a woman whose family had at one time been the main landowner in the area. It features not only 5 bedroom suites and 9 bathrooms but also a screening room with bar, a 10,000 bottle wine cellar with tasting room and a 6-car garage with hydraulic lift.
Within the grounds stands a guest house that was designed to be “a scaled back replica of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut” and a 53-foot brass and glass waterfall made from materials salvaged from a Los Angeles bank. There are also 100-year old olive trees, a rose garden and a pool with cabana and spa.
An aerial shot of the site during constructionThe house today with the ocean beyond
“My wife and I love traveling to Northern Italy, particularly Bellagio and the lake country, where we’ve always admired the architecture… [But] I wouldn’t want [our house] to be construed as Tuscan in any way… Even though we built an Italianate palazzo, we wanted the flavor [sic] of mid-century design around us”.
“We wanted people to know they were stepping into an oceanfront property the moment they arrived”.
The Numbers – 2585 Riviera Drive, Laguna Beach
June 2002 – Land subdivided into three plots; 2585 Riviera Drive sold for sum of $10.5 million (the equivalent of £11.1 million, $14.3 million, €12.7 million or درهم52.5 million today).
July 2013 – Placed for sale for $65 million (the equivalent of £53 million, $68.2 million, €60.5 million or درهم250.6 million today).
May 2017 – Relaunched for sale for $55 million (£42.7 million, €49 million or درهم202 million).
Former Algerian Embassy in Holland Park for sale for £30 million; the detached stucco house needs complete renovation and counts David and Victoria Beckham as neighbours
The former Embassy of the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria in Holland Park, W11 has just been placed for sale for the sum of £30 million ($39.1 million, €34.9 million or درهم143.7 million).
Offered by estate agent Anthony Sharp, the 9,490 square foot, Grade II listed detached stucco house includes accommodation over five floors and was built in 1862. One of remaining Italianate villas designed by brothers Francis and William Radford, 54 Holland Park is described as being “in need of full modernisation” and as having “scope to create a magnificent family home”.
The buyer will count David and Victoria Beckham as near neighbours. They paid £31.5 million ($41.1 million, €36.6 million or درهم150.9 million) for 23 Holland Park in 2013 and finally took up residence there in July 2016 after completing an £8 million ($10.4 million, €9.3 million or درهم38.3 million) renovation that included, amongst other things, a vast subterranean redevelopment.
A previous ‘Moron of the Moment’ on these pages, Lady “I actually have quite a lot more experience than people think I do” Nugee asked the Secretary of State for Defence to reveal where he was on 27th May 2007. When Sir Michael said he did not know and “scrambled to defend himself”, Lady Nugee told him he was “talking bollocks” and curtly added: “You were in Syria and you were celebrating at a reception for the re-election of President Assad with 99% of the vote. Now, I’m not going to judge you for going to a reception with Assad”.
Though Sir Michael responded: “I don’t recall any party in Syria. I remember a fact-finding visit to Syria”, Lady Nugee continued like a mad attack dog and did not give up. She continued: “You really can’t just go around making this stuff up. There’s an election and people need to make decisions on the basis of the truth”.
Rather inconveniently for the Shadow Foreign Secretary, later in the day, a pictured emerged of her hapless leader, Jeremy Corbyn, at a reception with President Bashar al-Assad in 2009.
#DoubleBollocks
Lady Nugee with Sir Michael Fallon and Andrew Marr on Sunday
Dame Paddy Ridsdale, as she generally known, was an intelligence operative, secretary to Ian Fleming during WW2 and the inspiration for the Bond character Miss Moneypenny.
A Conservative Party stalwart and married to Member of Parliament for Harwich from 1954 to 1992 Sir Julian Ridsdale CBE (1915 – 2004), Dame Paddy – or Vicky, as she was known to some – is best known for her role in ‘Operation Mincemeat’, a “famous caper” concerning a “man who never was” in 1943.
In the war, Dame Paddy wrote love letters and telegrams that were planted on the body of ‘Major William Martin’, an invented, drowned naval officer, that was floated in the ocean off Spain. The body carried fictitious plans of a purported Allied invasion of Sardinia and Greece and formed part of a plot designed to deflect attention from the Allied landings in Sicily. Of it, she later remarked: “I was sent to buy clothes in all the best men’s shops and had to pose as his girlfriend. I had to go to post offices and rather loudly send this telegram to ‘my boyfriend’, hoping of course that somebody would overhear me”. In due course, the body was indeed found, the Axis powers completely taken in and “Mincemeat swallowed whole, hook, line, and sinker”. A BAFTA winning film directed by Ronald Neame, The Man Who Never Was, made about the deceptive scheme in 1956.
Dame Paddy was known as a “political hostess in the style of a bygone era”, lived in a mansion “sandwiched between a sheikh and a Saudi prince” in The Boltons for the majority of her adult life and is buried in the grounds of the church there. She had one daughter, became Lady Ridsdale when her husband was knighted in 1981 and was appointed Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in her own right, for political services, in 1991.
Of her relationship with her one-time employer Fleming, she concluded: “Ian had so many girlfriends that I was not tempted to become one of them”.
Thieving Chelsea based trollop Carina Reid was labeled “arrogant”, “extremely boorish” and a fraudster by a judge in May 2017. Often spotted in the now defunct La Brasserie restaurant, this tarty so-called beautician was jailed for three years in May 2016 and ordered to pay back £50,000 she’d falsely claimed in benefits a year later. Despite arguing she had no savings, taken no holidays and lived off free food from a mosque, somewhat dubious Miss Reid somehow managed to send £116,000 abroad to acquire property in Dubai in 2013/2014, paid £20,000 as a deposit for a flat in the Kings Road, SW3 and held savings of £180,000 in 19 separate bank accounts. Of this dishonest wench, Judge Douglas Marks-Moore remarked: “This is pie in the sky… You don’t listen to a word I have to say anyway. You have not got a hope in hell of getting an extension. You have been playing the system in my view”.
Pearl clad pensioner ‘Brenda from Bristol’ became the Gillian Duffy of the 2017 General Election when she shared her views about politics with a BBC reporter. This 75-year old retired secretary spoke for the nation in remarking: “You’re joking? Not another one!” Oh for God’s sake, I can’t honestly… I can’t stand this. There’s too much politics going on at the moment. Why does she [Theresa May] need to do it?” and later added: “There’s hardly anybody in any of the parties that you’d put your life on the line for. We need somebody who’s got a little bit of guts to get us all going”. Brenda is entirely right: It is time that politicians stopped bothering us.
Dopey drugs mule Michaella McCollum was one half of the ‘Peru Two’ jailed in 2013 for attempting to smuggle £1.5 million of cocaine to Spain with her friend Melissa Reid. Hailing from Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, shameless former model McCollum was pictured in a distinctive prison orange coloured outfit in May 2017 clutching a £2,000 Chanel handbag. This fame-seeking bleach blonde wastrel appeared to not have a care in the world and previously claimed: “I’m not a bad person… [But] I could have killed a lot of people”.
Explaining her rationale for ditching the Tories and the party of her Brexit supporting Foreign Secretary brother, Boris Johnson, Rachel Johnson commented:
“This is single issue election. We could be going over a cliff on a hard Brexit… Everything on the table from last June is now off the table. Business needs to stay in the Single Market. It’s all lose, lose, lose… A second referendum gives the country another go”.
Answering a question about whether she plans to stand as a candidate herself, Johnson, a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, remarked:
“This is my paper making mischief to embarrass me… [But I am] not ruling anything out”.
Later, in the segment, she tempered this further by adding:
“I am very tempted to campaign in my constituency of Kensington and Chelsea”.
Given her comments, The Steeple Times urges Rachel Johnson to join with us to support Gina Miller’s Best for Britain tactical voting campaign and suggests she also throws her campaigning efforts behind the Liberal Democrats’ Annabel Mullin for Kensington and Louise Rowntree for Chelsea & Fulham.
#BritainDeservesBetter #MakeJuneEndOfMay
Louise Rowntree (left) pictured with Matthew Steeples of The Steeple Times and Annabel Mullin in Chelsea last weekThe Johnson clan – Stanley Johnson (far left) with his children: Rachel, Boris and Jo
Scott’s in Mayfair to reopen after closing due to a mice infestation; Montpeliano remains open in spite of receiving a Food Standards Agency rating of zero out of five
Today, Scott’s restaurant in Mount Street, Mayfair reopens after having been closed for six days for what they called “a spring clean and revamp”.
The restaurant, which is owned by bouffant haired Richard Caring, in fact, actually received a food hygiene rating of 1/5 – which indicates a “major improvement [is] necessary” – on 13th February and was especially criticized for standards of cleanliness and management of food safety. In particular, according to the Mail Online’s Shari Miller, the report highlighted: “During the inspection it was noted that there was a significant issue with mice activity throughout the premises”.
Of this development at a restaurant loved by many, a spokesman for Scott’s told the Mail Online:
“We are shocked that the council found a reason to reduce our rating despite 10 years with a spotless record”.
“The issues identified were dealt with immediately and we pushed for Westminster Council to return and regrade us before we closed for a long-term planned refurbishment of the restaurant”.
“We are more than happy for them to come back when we open as we are totally confident of retaining our five-star rating”.
“[This was a] wake-up call… And a reminder that for us to maintain our exacting standards, we must put in our own intense checks on top of outside agencies”.
Elsewhere, Knightsbridge’s Montpeliano retains a rating of zero on the Food Standards Agency website. Awarded the truly dreadful score on the 21st September 2016, this “garden style restaurant” opened in 1974 and describes itself as “the place to go for dressy, classic Italian cooking”.
