The sale of The Duchess of Cambridge’s uncle’s holiday villa, La Maison de Bang Bang
Just as it is reported that the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge is said to be furious about photographers having managed to capture her in a bikini on a beach on the private island of Mustique, another of her previous holiday destinations has come to the market.
Kate Middleton and Prince William aboard Tapeka Point during their 2006 holiday in Ibiza.Carole Middleton’s brother businessman Gary Goldsmith.La Maison de Bang Bang’s sign.
The Duchess, as Kate Middleton, stayed with Prince William at the holiday home of her uncle, Gary Goldsmith’s in Ibiza in 2006. During the break at the exotically named La Maison de Bang Bang, the Prince and Miss Middleton were photographed on a motor launch, Tapeka Point, that was subsequently put up for auction in April 2012 for £120,000.
La Maison de Bang BangAn aerial shot of the property
The 4 double bedroom villa, named according to its official website, after “Ibiza’s famous banging house music”, is just five minutes from the Cala Jondal beach and the “hip” Blue Marlin beach bar. The house stands on a plot of 23,850 square metres and includes a large reception room, 4 dining areas and a fully equipped gym. In addition there is a staff bungalow, swimming pool and tennis court.
The main reception area in the house.One of four dining areas.One of four double en-suite bedrooms.An example of Mr Goldsmith’s humour.Buddhas can be found throughout the villa.And also in the garden.As well as an outdoor swimming pool, there is a full sized tennis court.
In a statement to the Daily Telegraph’s “Mandrake”, Goldsmith, who was subject to a News of the World sting at La Maison de Bang Bang in 2009, commented:
“I’m looking to buy a bigger house in London, given that I have only been there myself once in the last two year… After what seems like a million years of fun, fun, fun, I’m selling Bang Bang, folks”.
Of the house itself, Mr Goldsmith told the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay:
“It’s on for 6.5 million Euro. Despite the Spanish economy, it’s a good time to sell because the Euro is very strong at the moment, plus Ibiza isn’t like mainland Spain. It has a micro-economy all of its own”.
Knight Frank’s particulars for La Maison de Bang Bang were prepared last September and though Mr Goldsmith, who made £275 million selling his recruitment business in 2005, may be a canny businessman, it seems as if he may have to wait some time before someone else decides to put their bucks into the Bang Bang.
For more information on La Maison de Bang Bang, contact Knight Frank on +44 (0) 203 641 5161.
Matthew Steeples leaves a tribute to Michael Winner
As I’ve said before, Michael Winner (30th October 1935 – 21st January 2013) was like Marmite. He was loved and loathed in equal measure. Restaurants put up signs announcing “This restaurant is a Michael Winner free zone” after banning him for the most obnoxious and sometimes truly unfair reviews but his fans celebrated him in equal measure.
Winner is best known both for his Death Wish films and as a restaurant critic and I would suggest that the world is a poorer place for his passing. Yes, he was a preposterous buffoon with a capability to offend but surprisingly he also often stood for all that was right and decent.
The Queen and Michael Winner
He took the view that “an OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King’s Cross station” and once told Richard Littlejohn that he was an “arsehole”. Given my views on some of the names that have recently been honoured and thoughts on Littlejohn’s bile, I would suggest that shows someone who was actually quite reasonable. This is echoed further in his comment about Gordon Ramsay, whom he described as someone who suffers from “verbal diarrhoea”.
Michael Winner was a man who lived life to the full and in the end that was what took its toll. He suffered with a bacterial infection in Barbados after eating oysters and got food poisoning from eating steak tartare for four days in a row.
Towards the end, after doctors gave him just two years to live, Winner accepted his end was nigh and here we conclude with the last paragraph of his final column for The Sunday Times:
“Gstaad is packed with famous names, all fighting not to be in this column. I totally understand. It’s a miracle they speak to me. If it were known that they associated with me, they’d be barred from right-thinking society. Tell you about it later. Now I need a rest.”
She’s best known for the catchphrase: “You are the Weakest Link, goodbye!” but this television great has accomplished much else. The “Queen of Mean” is renowned for her knack of coming up with great newspaper headlines and has also accumulated a fortune of some £40 million. Robinson is vehemently pro fox hunting and lives in Kensington but don’t get her started on what she thinks about the Welsh.
Our view on the Christmas episode of Downton Abbey
Christmas Day is meant to be a time for celebration and joy. After feasting likes kings, many of us sat down to a cheery cartoon or drama. With that in mind, watching Downton Abbey seemed like a good option.
Joy and celebration for Matthew Crawley and his family was what viewers wanted to seeBut this was a step too far
8.1 million Brits viewed the ITV1 show this time last year and though the audience was down to 6.8 million, there was utterly no need for the ending created by Julian Fellowes.
During the two-hour programme, we found the majority of it tolerable despite the countless social inaccuracies but the way in which the main character, Matthew Crawley, played by Dan Stevens, was killed off was tasteless in the extreme.
After celebrating the arrival of an heir, Fellowes had the pivotal character crash an open top roadster. Blood poured from his head as he died and then they cut to Maggie Smith as The Dowager Countess of Grantham who stated: “We don’t always get our just deserts”.
This truly was a lowbrow piece of melodrama and we were disappointed that Fellowes didn’t use his dramatic licence a little better. It was, in fact, lazy writing and viewers have rightly reacted with horror in the hours since. Many have complained on Twitter that if they wanted this kind of action they’d be watching Eastenders or Coronation Street and one went as far as to say Downton Abbey is now “a Robin Reliant of a drama”.
Downton has been dumbed down enough. We imagine many of our readers will join us in pressing the off button when it returns in the New Year.
Jilly Cooper’s state of the nation style summary strikes chords with Matthew Steeples
Best-selling bonkbuster author Jilly Cooper might be best known for novels such as Riders and Jump! but in the 1980s and 90s she was equally lauded as “one of the Conservative Party’s most ardent supporters.”
Jilly Cooper
Cooper, born in 1937, showed she still has a grip on the nation’s pulse yesterday when she declared that the Conservative Party is “full of terrible people now” to The Spectator’s “Steerpike.”
Separately, in a comment to The Telegraph’s “Mandrake,” Mrs Cooper shared her thoughts on Pippa Middleton’s first book, Celebrate:
“[It] wasn’t a good idea. I don’t blame her – I think that she was ill-advised… All I can say is that I hope the British don’t demonise her because of it. She seems a lovely girl and her sister is wonderful.”
Ever the diplomat, Jilly Cooper, in these comments, shows herself as a truly brilliant wordsmith. She has tact and decency but at the same time doesn’t hold back when it comes to honesty.
Nigel Farage should put in a call. Mrs Cooper could be just the asset UKIP needs to transform them from a “bunch of loons” to electability.
The Tout gives his take on this weekend’s racing at Newbury
Winter has officially arrived and traditionally The Hennessy is the first of the major National Hunt events for the purists who love this sport. Sadly the race is a handicap and generally The Tout despises a contest such as this because those greedy bookies already have the upper hand. Without some inside information, we are playing with fire here but there are two prospects at both short and long prices.
Duke of Lucca in action
The Tout recommends the longer priced horse for a small wager but if you really must have a go at a favourite, Tidal Bay is an obvious choice at 4/1 for the in form Nicholls yard but then use that argument and the obvious choice at 25/1 is Duke of Lucca. Philip Hobbs, his trainer, is in great form and his rider Richard Johnston is the greatest jockey who never was thanks to the incredible Tony McCoy. This horse’s place ratio is huge and the value is outstanding.
The Tout advises a wager of a medium size on The Duke and then sit back and enjoy some serious winter action. Happy days.
Matthew Steeples responds to the recommendations of Leveson
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” was one of Edmund Burke’s most famous observations.
Today, David Cameron’s former spin doctor Andy Coulson and ex-News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks were in court to face charges of having conspired to pay Ministry of Defence employee Bettina Jordan-Barber around £100,000 for information. How terribly convenient for our Prime Minister that this court appearance coincided with Lord Justice Leveson issuing his report into press standards.
Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Leveson issues his report todayA spokeswoman for Hacked Off (http://hackinginquiry.org) responds to Leveson’s report. Kate McCann stands to her rear.Rebekah Brooks arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court this morning
In the inevitable media firestorm in the run up to today’s report being issued, one question has been missed and that question is: “Did we really need a £4 million inquiry to tell us that there are elements of the press that have done wrong and did we really need a 9-month inquiry to tell us that the Press Complaints Commission was a “toothless poodle”?
Inevitably, the media and politicians have reacted against many of Leveson’s suggestions and “victims” have suggested he should have gone further. The main suggestion made was that there should be a “new independent system of self-regulation underpinned by the law.” It’s hardly a revelation and it’s hardly a solution.
“Bad men and foreigners shouldn’t be allowed to run our press,” commented Conservative MP Sir Peter Tapsell of the report. He added: “[Media] ownership should be confined to British nationals.” This utterly ludicrous suggestion shows how out of touch certain politicians in this country are. We live in a global society in which the Internet allows information to be shared across transnational boundaries and as a result our media has to operate globally.
Sir Peter Tapsell MP
Our own audience is illustrative: 38% of our readers are based in the UK, but 31% are American. We have an ever-growing readership in Russia and China and receive countless comments from individuals in places as far apart as New Zealand and Finland. Though many may loathe him, the person whom Tapsell’s attack was directed at, Rupert Murdoch, is not a force for evil. He’s simply a tycoon who wishes to make money and get on with running his business. He should be left to do such and the media should be left to self-regulate.
Sir Christopher Meyer and Baroness Buscombe, appointed cronies who were put in place to regulate the media in the UK were responsible for the mess created at the PCC. They failed because they were busybodies with political agendas and they failed because they did not go the whole hog when it came to dealing with the bad apples. As a result, public trust disintegrated and the PCC will deservedly be scrapped.
The bad behavior of a small number of people should not destroy the free press as a cornerstone of our free society. Today is an illustration of a case where good men actually should do nothing.
The story of a 1929 bi-plane with a truly fascinating pedigree
Britain’s best-known wartime Prime Minister piloted a Gipsy Moth aeroplane that will be sold by auctioneers Bonhams in February 2013 at a guide of £120,000. The same craft was also featured in an iconic 1980s film and was also supposedly flown by a member of the Fiennes family who mysteriously disappeared in 1998.
The 1929 De Havilland DH 60 GMW Gipsy Moth bi-plane G-AAMY that will be sold by Bonhams at the Grand Palais in Paris in February 2013Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)
Piloted several times by Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965) and used in the Oscar award winning Out of Africa, this 1929 De Havilland Gipsy Moth bi-plane is 24-foot long and has a 30-foot wingspan. It is capable of a maximum speed of 105mph and “wears” a yellow and black livery. It’s registration is G-AAMY in homage to the pioneering English aviatrix Amy Johnson (1903 – 1941).
In the film, the plane was flown by Robert Redford but though the life of the big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton he played is intriguing; the exploits of Redford’s aviator double are just as fascinating a story.
Sydney Pollack’s “Out of Africa” (1985) starred Robert Redford and Meryl StreepTom Danaher pictured whilst filming with Mel Gibson
Few outside of the aviation world will have heard of Tom Danaher (1929 – ) but aside from Out of Africa, he’s pretty much done it all. After graduating from a high school in Dallas in 1941, he became a Marine Corps fighter pilot. Stationed on Okiwana in August 1945, he shot down the last Japanese bomber on the final night of the Second World War and also made history, aged 21, for downing three other Japanese “Betty” bombers in the eight nights before the ceasefire.
Recalled to active service in 1951, Danaher flew one of the earliest jets, the F3D Skynight, with the Marines in Korea on night combat patrols and then was part of the last combat mission on a high altitude bombing strike over Pyongyang, North Korea in July 1953.
Danaher’s passion for flying continued after the war and in 1954 he flew his own plane, a 1948 Bonanza, to England to visit friends he’d made from the RAF whilst in Korea. To make the journey, he built a 109-gallon auxiliary fuel tank so that he could fly straight across the Atlantic. On the way home he called in for an audience with Pope Pius XII in Rome.
The surplus Second World War minesweeper from which Wonderful Radio London operated in the 1960s
Danaher’s visits to England led to him becoming involved in a pirate radio station in from 1944 to 1967 named Wonderful Radio London. Like many others, Danaher was not impressed by the BBC’s monopolistic attitude to radio programming and so helped build a 17,000-watt station on a surplus Second World War minesweeper. It was anchored three and a half miles off the English coast and outside of Britain’s territorial limit. Of the experience, Danaher told Airport Journals:
“We had someone in Dallas who would record KLIF, a top 40 station, and we put it right on the air… The Englishmen over there just ate it up… The station programmed news and top 40 music and was very successful. It had the largest listening audience of any of any commercial broadcast station at the time.”
Back in America, Danaher owned three car dealerships in Wichita Falls, Texas but sold them in 1972 to open his own airport, the Tom Danaher Airport. Lake Wichita Airport (7TXO), as it was also known, kept the aviator busy but he has also piloted in films numbering Empire of the Sun, Sky Bandits, Air America, Bad Medicine, The Pleasure of Love, White Hunter Black Heart, Cliffhanger and Goldeneye.
In 1985, Danaher was recruited to fly Gipsy Moth G-AAMY by Sydney Pollack (1934 – 2008), the American director of Out of Africa. He recounted his six week experience on set in Masai Mara, Kenya in an interview for his local Texan newspaper, the TimesRecordNews, in 2008. Here, he highlighted the problems of trying to film with a vintage plane that “has no brakes and is difficult to steer”:
“Robert Redford couldn’t make the thing turn. It took considerable finesse to turn it on the ground… The third time, he gave it full throttle… The left wing contacted a thick thorn bush and it tore some of the fabric off the lower left wing of the plane. We couldn’t fly it the rest of the day.”
Other dramas arose with G-AAMY in terms of Meryl Streep’s body double refusing to fly in it and the craft struggling to reach the high altitudes necessary to film a sweeping shot of the plane flying past a waterfall. Danaher took charge stating: “If I can get a piece of string and a ruler, I can fix this.” He found just such, cleverly installed them and Pollack: “got every single shot he wanted.”
Pilot Roger Fiennes (1944 – 1998) pictured with Alexy Zaitov during the 1989 Glasmoth project expedition to Moscow and back
Another person to have piloted the Gipsy Moth G-AAMY, according to a comment left in the PPRuNe Professional Pilots Rumour Network forum, was a man named Roger Fiennes. Whether this “rumour” is true or not, the cousin of the actor Ralph Fiennes and the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, is another character with a flying history as fascinating as his true family name – which turns out to be “Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes” when presented in full. Of why he did not use this lengthy and historic surname, Fiennes is said to have once commented:
“You try writing that signature on a 6 foot long cheque book.”
Fiennes flew many hours in a variety of planes and one of the best documented was an expedition supported by the Daily Mail from White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire to Sheremetyevo Airport in the Soviet Union in April 1989 and back. He flew one of three Tiger Moth bi-planes with a Russian navigator named Alexy Zaitov. The journey took three weeks to complete, involved 33 perilous stops and covered 5,000 miles.
On 19th April 1998, Fiennes was piloting a 1941 DH82A Tiger Moth, G-BALX, from Dieppe to Headcorn Aerodrome in Kent but he failed to reach his destination. The Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) report into the disappearance concluded:
“Although the pilot contacted Paris Information by radio, in the absence of a specific request, the flight plan was not activated. Lashenden was therefore unaware of the flight’s departure and ETA. When the aircraft was reported missing overdue action, and the subsequent Search and Rescue operation, which was activated on the morning of 21 April 1998. Since then there has been no sign of the aircraft or pilot.”
Articles at the time and forums since are sparse in detail but several forum posters and articles suggest that Mr Fiennes had “mounting debts and a string of business collapses.” Whilst some go as far as to suggest a “Lord Lucan” style disappearance and make references to “paddling canoes” and “check[ing] the Panamanian register,” others remember a “nice guy, sadly missed.” Whatever really happened that fateful day, though, will probably never be solved.
Another image of Gipsy Moth G-AAMY
G-AAMY, which was marked G-AAMT for the filming of Out of Africa, is a plane with a remarkable past. We suspect there’ll be a few more dramas for this craft yet.
The 1929 De Havilland DH 60 GMW Gipsy Moth bi-plane G-AAMY will be sold by Bonhams at the Grand Palais in Paris, France sale during Rétromobile week (6th to 7th February 2013). For more information telephone +33 1 42 61 10 11 or go to: http://www.bonhams.com
Amy Childs: A brash young lady with questionable taste
Our last picture of the week featuring a Range Rover Sport was of one that had been driven by a couple described in the comments section of a Mail Online article as a “pair of pillocks in a puddle.” We subsequently received a Tweet from one of them whining about our article in which he stated that our editor was a “prat.” Those that saw this, excuse the pun, laughed like drains about such a missive coming from a person who drove their car into a flooded ford and then wondered why that vehicle sank.
Amy Childs in a well managed pose with signage for a tyre company, a new car, a new numberplate and another of her vehicles
Mr and Mr Drewitt-Barlow, primarily known for having had five children by a surrogate, had been at an event named Essex Fashion Week on the evening in question and today’s picture features another of their number, the former The Only Way is Essex “star,” Amy Childs along with two white Range Rover Sport vehicles.
Miss Childs, a “beautician” aged 22, is someone who has been moulded into a “brand” by Claire Powell of Can Associates, a lady who variously has been the representative of Katie Price, Peter Andre and Kerry Katona. Though the appearance fees Childs received on TOWIE were “minimal,” she’s amazingly made a lot of money since “[shooting] to fame in 2010.” Childs, the Mail revealed, has just spent £80,000 of her new found wealth on a personalised plate based on her favourite phrase, WE11 JEL.
Whilst the Mail Online suggest Childs posing in the lot of Imperial Cars in Romford with her new Range Rover and its expensive plate came about because she “outbid a premiership footballer and a TOWIE producer to win” it in a DVLA auction, we’re not entirely convinced.
The Mail are especially keen to share with their readers that Amy Childs paid for the car itself on her American Express platinum card but publishing an image of her in a far from glamorous yard under a sign for “part worn tyres” and next to a wheelie bin just looks silly. This story seems just as staged and ludicrous as that of the puddle dwellers and for that reason we make this Essex girl and her pointless “purchases” our picture of the week.
Another rumoured sale of “Beckingham Palace” is reported
November 2012: In March this year, the blog that preceded The Steeple Times looked into reports that David and Victoria Beckham would be selling their Hertfordshire home, Rowneybury House (better known as “Beckingham Palace”). For all the talk of that sale, as far as we are aware, it still remains in their possession. In recent days another media source has reported that the house is indeed on the market and that the Beckham family are now moving to New York. This has now become a story akin to that of “the boy who cried wolf” and it’s one that we’ll only believe to be true when the removal vans actually pull up.
March 2013: In a further update, the story has resurfaced but the supposed price is allegedly now just £10 million. That’s quite a reduction.
Whenever there’s a quiet news day, British newspapers like to put out claims that David and Victoria Beckham are to sell their Hertfordshire mansion, Rowneybury House. Such a sale has never followed but that the Mail Online chose to run this as a lead article is indeed interesting in view of the footballer’s recent return to LA Galaxy.
“Beckingham Palace” before it was altered: Rowneybury House, Harlow Road, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, CM21 0AJThe results of the “Posh” makeover included extensions, garden landscaping and even a soccer pitch
Similar stories, for example, ran in the Mirror in April 2007 and again in September 2010. In the latter piece, an unnamed spokesman stated:
“We can confirm David and Victoria have had their UK home valued.”
Strangely all of these stories share a lack of credited sources and are written in the same vein on each occasion. Though Rowneybury House has certainly not come to the open market to date, today’s suggestion that the couple are selling as they think it “wasteful to hold on to when they never visit” would appear a sensible course of action.
Rowneybury House itself was built in the 1930s and used as a council owned orphanage. Bought by the Beckhams in October 1999 for £2,500,000, the couple vastly altered and enlarged the Grade II listed house to include 7-bedrooms, a recording studio, gym, pool room and indoor and outdoor pools. They even added a 52ft garden pavilion complete with a huge barbecue reputed to have cost £70,000.
In the grounds, which extend to some 24 acres, the Beckhams have added a petting zoo for their children as well as a soccer pitch, two full size golf holes, a floodlit tennis court and a helicopter landing pad. Three gazebos, one “romantic,” one “lakeside” and another “ornamental” were also constructed.
The sum total for all of this work is, for some reason, always quoted in the mainstream press at £18,000,000. Though it is obvious that vast expense has indeed been spent on Rowneybury House by the couple, the figure does seem a little exaggerated. Equally ludicrous is the suggestion that they will sell at a loss.
The Beckhams’ time at Rowneybury House has not been without drama. In 2002, police foiled an Eastern European gang who planned to kidnap them from the house and on occasions intruders were caught in the grounds. Further drama ensued in 2008 when the pair’s housekeepers, Eric and June Emmett, were arrested after being accused of stealing items of memorabilia.
I myself found myself involved in a story about the house when, in 2004, I worked for a PR firm who were representing an estate agent selling an adjoining property. The owners Mick and Lynda Allen, who I believe eventually sold their home, Rowneybury Bungalow, to the Beckhams, used the surrounding publicity to attempt to launch the pop career of their daughter Nikki. I am not certain how she subsequently fared.
David and Victoria Beckham with their children Brooklyn Joseph, Romeo James, Cruz David and Harper SevenThe $22,000,000 “Italian style” 9-bedroom Los Angeles home the Beckhams have owned since 2007
The Beckhams, who are worth some £160,000,000, now spend the majority of their time in America and are said to prefer it there. When in the UK, they opt mainly to stay at either Claridge’s or The Savoy as both are more convenient for Mrs Beckham’s meetings at her design studio in Battersea.
Both the Mail Online and the Mirror suggest that Victoria Beckham has recently been looking at apartments “next to Hyde Park” so that she can maintain a smaller base in the UK. Perhaps a move to the £7,000 per square foot One Hyde Park development could be on the cards.
If this news is indeed finally true, it’ll certainly be the end of an era for the pad dubbed “Beckingham Palace” as a portmanteau of “Beckham” and “Buckingham Palace.”
