Ninety-year-old daily martini drinker Micheline Stephen of Cupar, Scotland is to be saluted for grabbing a robber and calling him “a wee sh*te”
Spotted on the brilliant Facebook group ‘Angry People in Local Newspapers,’ our heroine of the hour just had to be a “Dame Maggie Smith lookalike” named Micheline Stephen of Hill Street, Cupar, Scotland.
Featured in an article by Jamie Callaghan in Fife Today on Monday, French born daily martini drinker Mrs Stephen “was coming out of her bathroom when she noticed someone wandering around her kitchen.”
“Initially, she believed it was her grandson,” the paper reported, but, as he attempted to escape through a window, Mrs Stephen “noticed it was not my grandson, but a young man… He had a rucksack on his back.”
The sprightly pensioner “tried to pull him in” and “understandably angry… hurled abuse at the robber as he fled.” She remarked: “I told him that he was a wee sh*te.”
Though yet to be apprehended, the nasty little tyke got away with Mrs Stephen’s cigarettes and lighter. In turn, officers from Police Scotland sent her a birthday card when she turned 90 two days later.
Today, we join those on ‘Angry People in Local Newpsapers’ raising a martini to this “legend” and suggesting a “Kickstarter for Micheline Stephen’s fags.”
On the Facebook group, the journalist Jamie Callaghan’s girlfriend Catriona Wilkie, joined the 50 people leaving comments about the article. One user told her: “It’s a CV moment” of his having made Angry People in Local Newspapers,” though another stated: “I have knocked off points for no mention of grankids [SIC] names, ages or other irrelevant health conditions.”Fans declared Micheline Stephen’s actions “fabulous” and one declared: “This is the most Scottish thing I’ve ever read.”
The National Crime Agency’s investigation into and that Theresa May stopped a previous inquiry into Arron Banks’ activities is proof that he must now be properly questioned
Arron Banks looks like the kind of a man who’d have been a bully at school. He was actually expelled from two schools – once for stealing the lead off a roof – and was incensed that William Hague effectively termed him a “nobody.”
Named after the Scottish island of Arran (though his parents bizarrely got the spelling wrong), Banks is undoubtedly wealthy but that he likely provided money of dubious source to the Leave.EU campaign is definitely worthy of detailed examination.
Married to a Russian he met at a Britney Spears concert and the driver of a ghastly purple Range Rover – complete with the equally pretentious numberplate “X MI5 SPY” – Banks also co-owns the ridiculous website Westmonster with the “remarkably unpleasant child” and “milk bottle white” Michael Heaver. He hangs around mostly with a supposed “diplomat from Brazil” named Andy Wigmore, hands out diamonds like confetti and is a “man of many legends” according to The Daily Mail’s Andrew Pierce.
Now, however, this ‘Bad Boy of Brexit’s’ business affairs may very well be his undoing.
Marilyn Monroe’s 1956 Ford Thunderbird to be auctioned
A 1956 Ford Thunderbird gifted as a Christmas present to Marilyn Monroe in 1955 by her business partner, the photographer Milton Greene, is to be auctioned in November.
The raven black roadster bodied automatic – dubbed a “personal luxury car” by Ford – comes with numerous documents and of it, the current owner comments:
“I found the vehicle in lovely show condition. Nevertheless, the car has received a frame-off restoration to its exact original appearance by Prestige Thunderbird, Inc., of Santa Fe Springs, CA. Prestige is the premier west coast firm specializing only in classic 1955, 1956, and 1957 Ford Thunderbirds. In recognition of the car’s important provenance, special heed was given to the retention of original parts, with most driver and passenger touch surfaces left undisturbed.”
“Finding this car, a classic two-seater model, after 56 plus years of its unknown whereabouts, was a singular event. No other car has been located and documented as owned by the incomparable Marilyn Monroe.”
Speaking of the 225 horsepower, V8 engined vehicle, Amy Greene, wife of Milton Greene, remarked:
“Marilyn liked to drive. We’d take the convertible and with the top down, we’d go sailing along the highway. We both liked to feel the wind in our faces and the warmth of the heater on our legs.”
Kept and driven by the icon for six years, Monroe and her playwright husband Arthur Miller drove the Thunderbird to their civil wedding ceremony on 28th June 1956 and likely also to their private wedding on 30th June 1956. The vehicle was subsequently ‘regifted’ t to John Strasberg, the son the director and acting coach Lee Strasberg, as an 18th birthday present in 1962. It comes with a black canvas convertible top, a porthole windowed hardtop and has 30,399 miles on the odometer following an engine rebuild.
Darren Julien, president of Julien’s – the firm conducting the sale – added:
“Once in a while something comes along that has a powerful magic about it, a charisma, because of everything and everyone associated with it. This wonderful Ford Thunderbird is not only part of automotive history but comes with an aura of glamour, romance and tragedy of a true Hollywood legend. It will make the centrepiece of any classic car collection and be an object of fascination to millions.”
Julien’s Auctions will offer the car at their ‘Icons and Idols: Hollywood’ on 17th November in Los Angeles, California. They have set an estimate of £230,000 to £384,000 ($300,000 to $500,000, €262,000 to €436,000 or درهم1.1 million to درهم1.8 million).
Hemel Hempstead born gymnast Max Whitlock performed a spectacular dance routine on a piano at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards in 2015 and became the first British male World Gymnastics Champion at the age of 22. (more…)
This British Army officer served in the Boer, First World and Second World Wars. He was shot in the face twice in WWI and lost his left eye and was shot once through the skull, hip, leg, ankle and ear. In 1915, he lost his left hand and tore off his own fingers after a doctor refused to amputate them. Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart also survived two plane crashes, escaped capture twice, was branded a “model of chivalry and honour” by Winston Churchill and won a VC in WWII. Of the 1914 – 1918 conflict, he later wrote: “Frankly, I enjoyed the war; it had given me many bad moments, lots of good ones, plenty of excitement and with everything found for us”. Aside from his military might, Evelyn Waugh modeled the character of Brigadier Ben Ritchie Hook in his Sword of Honour trilogy upon this twice married, Oxford educated aristocrat and in retirement he is said to have enjoyed indulging in “pursuing salmon and snipe”. In male company he is described as having been “a delightful character [who] must hold the world record for bad language”.
The widow of the creator of White Shoulders perfume is well known in New York for both her “amply proportioned figure” and for being “highly made-up”. This resident of The Pierre loves bright colours and once told the New Yorker: “I never wear a watch at night. I don’t want to know what time it is at night”. The New York Social Diary suggests she even has her “fur coats dyed to match her emeralds, rubies, diamonds, and sapphires”. They add: “The baroness is one of those individuals of indeterminate youth and age, to put it politely, whose legend, long having departed reality, provides a rich lore that may be more enticing than the facts”.
As Fred Dibnah’s former home comes to the market, Matthew Steeples is reminded of a true BBC legend
As the nation continues to cringe in horror every time the name “Savile” is mentioned, memories of another BBC relic of the 1980s resurfaced when it was revealed that Fred Dibnah’s former home is for sale.
Dr. Frederick “Fred” Dibnah MBE (1938 – 2004)
121 Radcliffe Road, The Haulgh, Bolton, Lancashire, BL2 1NU (originally known as Park Cottage)
For those of our readers who weren’t fortunate enough to be alive when Dibnah graced our screens, he, unlike Savile, was a legend who truly deserves the accolade of such a title. This thrice-married Lancastrian was a steeplejack who became a television personality just as his breed died out. He didn’t understand why he’d become famous and of it commented:
“It’s a funny thing, this celebrity. If you don’t wave back you’re a miserable bugger, if you do wave back you’re a big-headed bugger. I don’t know.”
Fred Dibnah in his garden
A view of the “garden”
Fred Dibnah preferred to think of himself as “just a bum who climbs chimneys” but he ought instead be remembered for his forthright manner. Amongst the legendary comments this “chimney feller” came out with were remarks like:
“The modern world stinks… We’ve become a nation of con men, living by selling double-glazing to each other… Teaching boys to bake cakes? That’s no way to maintain an industrial empire… Them fancy London types don’t know the pleasure of eating chips with fingers… I prefer the past to the present. Because life today, with all its modern technology, isn’t very good, is it? And the future looks even worse.”
Dibnah bought 121 Radcliffe Road in Bolton in 1967 for £5,000. A Grade II listed former park keeper’s lodge, the building is known as “Two Cats” locally because of the coat of arms of the Earl of Bradford on one of the gables features two leopards and is said to have been built in 1854.
The cottage was the setting of the filming of many scenes from Dibnah’s shows and it was here also in 2003, whilst undergoing chemotherapy, that Dibnah decided to embark on the construction of a replica coal mine with his friend Alf Molyneux. His rationale for this was simple: “It’s not everyone who has a coal mine in their back garden.”
An attempt to auction the house with a guide price of £300,000 to £350,000 in 2007 failed because of a boundary dispute
A Bolton & District Civic Trust plaque commemorates Dibnah having lived there from 1967 until 2004
Leon and Jeanette Powsney purchased the derelict property in 2009 for £185,000 and set about turning part of it into a 5-bedroomed home for themselves and the remainder into The Fred Dibnah Heritage Centre.
Visitors, who come by the coachload, are able to tour the yard and see Dibnah’s machinery. Amongst that on show are steam-powered workshop with a circular saw, a band saw and a hydraulic hammer. The 70ft mine shaft remains and in addition there is a 50ft chimney, a gift shop and a small tearoom. The venture turns over about £100,000 per annum and is now for sale through agents Intelligent Business Transfer.
Mr Powsney, who is planning to move abroad, commented:
“We’re selling it as a going concern. It was a business set up against all the odds, we saved it from being flattened and from being redeveloped. We have worked hard to make the centre what it is, and have invested a lot of money in it. We think there’s potential for a buyer to make a tidy profit from it, but we’re looking to relax a bit more now.”
If the asking price of £1,250,000 sought by Mr & Mrs Powsney is achieved, I’m sure the legendary steeplejack wouldn’t disagree that here is a case of: “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.”
He created the “wedge bob” hairstyle and liberated women from the “tyranny of the salon.” Four times married and a Sephardi Jew, Sassoon sold his brand in 1993 to concentrate on philanthropy. The Daily Telegraph once described him as an “anti-fascist warrior-hairdresser” and he will indeed be remembered as a man who led a revolution.
