Bob Hoskins: A gent who passed before his time
Suffolk born actor Bob Hoskins started his career as a circus worker, fruit packer and camel herder but rose to become one of Britain’s best loved actors. (more…)
Tag: died
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Mary The Elephant (AKA ‘Murderous Mary’)
Considered the “largest living mammal on the planet” at the time and owned by Sparks Circus, Mary was a 5-tonne elephant who could play 25 tunes on the horns without missing a note. When an inexperienced drifter named Red Eldridge was hired to handle her in September 1916 in Kingsport, Tennessee, the elephant grabbed him with her trunk and stomped on his head. Eldridge died and in revenge the townsfolk demanded that the poor elephant be killed. Shooting failed so thus, in front of 2,500 people, Mary was hanged from a railroad derrick. A true indication of how depraved humanity can truly be. -
Viola Herms Drath (1920 – 2011)
This twice married 91-year old Georgetown, Washington, D.C. socialite and journalist was born in Dusseldorf and died as a result of “strangulation and blunt force injuries” in her own bathroom in August 2011. (more…) -
A monstrous murder in Mayfair
Matthew Steeples offers offers a tribute to the late Robert Troyan
I first met the larger than life Bostonian character Robert Troyan (1950 – 2013) with his partner Anthony Feldman in the early 2000s at their impressive apartment in Mayfair. Though I did not come to know them well, I fondly recall a number of evenings that they hosted there planning an event for a charity we were all involved in named Marine Conservation and several dinner parties.
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£50 grifter
He looks like a harmless old buffer but he truly isn’t. On approach, there’s always a tale of woe and then a demand for £50. His wife has died in Gloucester and he hasn’t got the train fare or he needs a hotel room for the night as his wallet was stolen. Whatever the story from this swearing pest, £50 is always required and we hope this entry warns off others in SW3 from falling for his con. -
Teacher tops charts with posthumous single
Zach Topley reports on a Wellington College teacher who lost his battle with cancer who is now topping the iTunes chart
Jimmy Higham, who sadly lost his battle with cancer last year, has soared through the iTunes download charts with a beautiful cover of Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely. Higham, a Lancashire born teacher at Wellington College in West Berkshire, recorded the song just months before his tragic death in December 2011, aged just 26.
The late Jimmy Higham is now topping the iTunes downloads chart After being released on iTunes last week, the song quickly rose through the charts and now stands at number 15. All proceeds go towards the Jimmy Higham Bursary Fund, set up in his memory to enable 16-year-olds from the north of England to attend the school and play sport.
“Jimmy was an instant hit at Wellington with students and staff, hard-working, dedicated, wise, funny, kind, helpful, a gifted teacher with amazing promise. The students loved his dry humour and willingness to listen,” the College said in a statement.
Students at Wellington have got behind the cause, spreading the word via Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #jimmyhigham.
A student commented: “We’re all hoping it can get to Christmas number one. We need support from everyone, both in buying the song on iTunes, as well as telling friends about Jimmy’s story.”
Follow the campaign for the Jimmy Higham song to top the charts on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/JimmyHighamSong
Donate to the Jimmy Higham Bursary Fund at: http://www.justgiving.com/wco
Watch the official music video for the single at: http://youtu.be/RDYOHmQWFcU
To purchase the single for just 79p, go to: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/music-video/isnt-she-lovely/id587014296
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Beverly Cohen
Co-owner of the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills with her husband R. J., Cohen is of surprisingly humble origins. She grew up on a chicken farm in Cleveland, Ohio but moved to LA with her divorced mother aged 13 when she opened a Kosher chicken killing plant on Santa Monica Boulevard. This hardworking lady now instead hosts the likes of Rod Stewart, John Tavolta, Quentin Tarrantino, Mel Gibson, Britney Spears and Ryan Seacrest. On an occasion Matthew McConaughey has even been known to park his Airstream on the front lot to barbeque steak for passersby. -
Derek Paravicini
This echolaliac prodigy has absolute pitch and has been described as “the human iPod.” His abilities as a musician are amazing given that he’s both blind and autistic. The cousin of The Duchess of Cornwall’s children, Tom Parker Bowles and Laura Lopes, Paravicini unexpectedly played Big Spender to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, in 2009 and made legal history when The Court of Protection was opened for the first time in 2010 to discuss his future care. He captivates audiences throughout the land. -
Docked excess
Matthew Steeples compares two comparable examples of motoring excess: the “Golden Zebra” and the Fulda Maybach Exelero
In recent weeks I’ve received a number of messages about an $8,000,000 car named a Fulda Maybach Exelero. One of them referred to it as “one of the most over the top cars on the planet” and so it piqued my interest.
The 2005 Fulda Maybach Exelero concept car was inspired by the design of the 1939 Maybach SW38 Stromlinie 
The front of the car is dominated by an aggressively styled grille 
Whilst the rear would most definitely appeal to Batman 
A view from the side illustrates just how long this 5890mm vehicle truly is In these straightened times, such a figure seems quite a lot for a car but what, you may ask, makes it so special? Well, for a start it was a one off and commissioned in 2005 by the tyre company Fulda to showcase their Carat Exelero range. Designed for them by a 24-year old student named Fredrik Burchhardt of the Pforzheim Polytechnic Department of Transport Design and built on the chassis of a Maybach 57 limousine, this 2-seater coupé is 5890mm long and 2140mm wide. The vehicle, which weighs a not so insubstantial 2.6 tonnes, has a 5.9 litre V12 twin turbo engine and in testing achieved a top speed of 218mph at southern Italy’s Motodrom Nardo.
In due course the Exelero was sold to André Action Diakité Jackson, a diamond industrialist, for €5,000,000. Jackson allowed Jay-Z to use the car in his Lost One music video before selling it to a “European entrepreneur” named Arnaud Massartic. Subsequently, various reports state that Massartic sold the vehicle on to the rapper Bryan “Birdman” Williams for $8,000,000 in April 2011 but other articles suggest that he failed to pay for the vehicle. Who knows where it is now.
Rapper Bryan Williams (AKA “Birdman”) is best known as one half of the Big Tymers and is also the co-founder of Cash Money Records (http://birdmanstunna.com) 
Birdman in another of his cars, a Maybach 62s Landaulet 
Sir Bernard and Lady Docker 
The ex-London Motor Show 1955 Daimler DK400 “Golden Zebra” coupé with coachwork by Hooper & Company. Registration number: TYL 575, chassis number: 92705 and engine number: 48771. 
The front of the “Golden Zebra” Whether or not this piece of “automotive art” is indeed in the ownership of a “bling-king,” there are countless other examples of individually designed vehicular excess but amongst the most extravagant has to be an example commissioned by Lady Docker in 1955.
Norah Docker (1905 – 1983), whose third husband was Sir Bernard Docker, chairman of Birmingham Small Arms and its subsidiary the Daimler Motor Company, spent £12,000 in 1955 creating the “Golden Zebra” coupé on the chassis of a DK400 limousine. She replaced anything on the car that would have normally been made in chrome with gold and upholstered it in real zebra hide. Black, white and gold-trimmed accessories completed the look and amongst them were picnic stools, folding rear seats complete with a cocktail bar and an elephant ivory dashboard makeup table with a mirror, compact, comb, brush, cigarette case and cream jars.
Commenting as to why she chose to use zebra for the car’s upholstery, Lady Docker’s justification, in a quote that Barbara Amiel could only dream of having come up with, was simple:
“Because mink is too hot to sit on.”
The zebra hide upholstered interior of “The Golden Zebra” 
The car even features a golden zebra as a mascot 
Lady Docker, considered a visionary in her design skills by some and as vulgar and brash by others, even thought to include a drinks cabinet within the folding rear seats. 
In the front, an elephant ivory dashboard makeup table with a mirror, compact, comb, brush, cigarette case and cream jars show how much thought she put into the vehicle’s creation. 
Conrad Black and his wife Barbara Amiel have been much discussed in the press in recent days for their “extravagance.” They had nothing on Sir Bernard and Lady Docker. The 4.6 litre “Golden Zebra” was to be last of the cars created to Lady Docker’s designs as shortly afterwards, in May 1956, Sir Bernard Docker was sacked from BSA’s board for squandering the company’s cash. In addition to the extravagance of the “Docker Daimlers,” he’d used shareholder money, in a manner that could indeed be compared to Lord and Lady Black’s days at Hollinger, to buy his wife a castle in Wales and maintain a 212ft motor yacht named Shemara.
Daimler forced the Dockers to return the Daimler vehicles Lady Docker had so diligently designed and in revenge she bought a Bentley Continental from the firm’s rival, Rolls-Royce. The “Golden Zebra” and the other “Docker Daimlers” were stripped of their expensive trimmings and sold. In 1966, the car was offered for sale by Daimler distributors Henlys of Chester for just £1,400 and after passing through the hands of several other owners ended up in California.
In 1988, the “Golden Zebra” was purchased by a Daimler collector named John Wentworth. He restored the vehicle to its original glory with the help of experienced craftsmen and even managed to locate Kenyan zebra hides at a tannery in South Africa. Wentworth died prior to the completion of the car’s restoration and in 2006, it achieved £177,500 at Bonhams. The “Golden Zebra” came up for sale again in 2011 for £175,000 in Florida. It is now on display in the Louwman Museum in The Hague, Netherlands.
“The Golden Zebra” was certainly a car that reflected the excesses of the 1950s and the Exelero was without doubt the equivalent for the 2000s. What on earth could usurp these two moving monuments of extravagence next? We are on the lookout.
Watch a video of Sir Bernard and Lady Docker at: http://www.britishpathe.com/video/sir-bernard-counted-out-1
View the Louwman Museum entry for the 1955 “Golden Zebra” Daimler at: http://www.louwmanmuseum.nl/asp/appmain.asp?appactie=collectiedetail&taalcd=en&collsq=5486
View Fulda’s website dedicated to the Fulda Maybach Exelero at: http://www.das-projekt.com/EN/maybach_homepage_en.html
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Richard Mason
This talented author was born in South Africa but educated at Eton and New College, Oxford. The Drowning People, his first novel, gained him a “vast” advance and was published during his first year at university. It’s been translated into 22 languages and has sold over 3 million copies. Richard Mason funds a foundation in memory of his sister that pays for gifted South African children from poor backgrounds to attend the country’s top private schools and with a writing style that’s been compared to “Henry James on Viagra”, he’s definitely got many more pages to pen. An early critic, who told him he “should have killed [himself] rather than publish”, is now writing reviews of home décor shows.