EXCLUSIVE – Matthew Steeples shares that “now is the time to drink” as Claude Bosi and Bibendum return to Brompton Cross in Chelsea in July after having been closed for a year
On Sunday 31st August last year, the acclaimed French chef Claude Bosi “permanently” closed his Bibendum and associated Oyster Bar restaurants on Brompton Cross citing that “despite our very best efforts, we were unable to reach a resolution with our partners and landlords that would allow Michelin House to move into its next chapter.” Bosi had run the restaurant since 2017 and had been preceded by Simon Hopkinson from 1987 until 1994.
Going further, in an interview for JancisRobinson.com a month later, Bosi cryptically commented: “The situation is complicated because the lease is held by members of the Conran and Hamlyn families and I do not want to jeopardise anything or antagonise anybody.”
Named after Michelin’s portly mascot ‘Monsieur Bibendum’ who, in turn, took his name from the latin phrase Nunc est Bibendum – “Now is the Time to Drink” – The Steeple Times can now exclusively reveal that the Bibendum restaurant will reopen with Claude Bosi at the helm in July.
Two Michelin starred Claude Bosi and his representatives were approached for comment, but had not replied by the time of publication. Meanwhile, the adjoining 31,750 square foot former Conran store remains shuttered and to let through agents Colliers. Whilst the rental figure for the space is not publicly available, the rateable value for the space alone is the astoundingly off-putting sum of £1 million per annum.
Now is indeed the time to drink. We join all raising a glass and say cheers to this truly great, rare piece of restaurant news.
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Of the restaurant premises, in September 2025, Claude Bosi told Nick Lander of JancisRobinson.com: “Although this is a building that looks wonderful from the outside and from the interior if you are a customer, what the restaurant trade refers to as ‘back of house’ was inadequate and getting worse. The kitchen staff needed a lot more space; the restaurant staff were having to store tables in the flower shop, and because it had originally been built as Michelin House, it included a tyre-fitting bay and a place where motorists could plan their journeys. The services [for a restaurant] were inadequate. The one downpipe for the lavatories and kitchen would overflow from time to time and the electricity supply was never sufficient. We tried to negotiate but sadly that failed and when it did I had no option but to close. It’s a beautiful building and one that needs to be looked after.” These problems will hopefully have been resolved prior to July 2026’s grand reopening.Designed by François Espinasse – who was also responsible for Michelin’s Paris headquarters – and built “as an ode to the glory of the tyre,” Grade II listed Michelin House, 61 Fulham Road, Chelsea, London, SW3 6RH stands at the northern end of Sloane Avenue and the start of the Fulham Road. It has a façade clad with green and white tiles and features stained glass windows based on the tyre manufacturer’s adverts of the time. The premises opened for business on 20th January 1911 and remained owned by Michelin until 1987 when it was acquired by Sir Terence Conran and Lord Hamlyn for £8 million. The pair redeveloped the site to provide retail, restaurant and office spaces and increased its size from 90,000 square foot to 118,000 square foot with the addition of a new steel and glass structure on the Sloane Avenue elevation.A tyre-fitting workshop within Michelin House, photographed circa 1912.The original Michelin Man mascot, introduced in 1898, was a slightly intimidating, mummy-like figure rather than the friendly marshmallow character known today. The design – also known as the ‘Michelin Tire Man’ or ‘Michelin Tyre Man’ and ‘Bib’ and ‘Bibelobis’ – reflected multiple stacked rings designed to resemble stacked rubber tyres. The ‘Michelin Guide’ itself was first issued in 1900 and awards up to three Michelin stars to a select few restaurants in certain geographic areas annually.‘The Steeple Times’ featured a party that was held at Bibendum on 7th June 2019 for a London to Monte Carlo car female only car rally that ironically sought to raise funds for victims of sex trafficking. The Cash & Rocket event in Michelin House was attended by heiresses including Paris Hilton and Chloe Green, but became infamous for being the last public sighting in the United Kingdom of the since convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell. The pension pot plundering ‘Bouncing Czech’s’ deviant daughter subsequently vanished before being located at the equally ironically named ‘Tucked Away’ on 2nd July 2020; she was then unceremoniously hurled into the clink and rightly remains there rotting.
Matthew Steeples invites you to an evening with ‘Waking The Dead’ writer and co-founder of ‘Byline Times’ Peter Jukes on 20th May 2026 at PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie, London
Matthew Steeples of The Steeple Times
invites you to
An evening with author, screenwriter, playwright and journalist Peter Jukes
Writer: ‘Holby City’, ‘The Inspector Lynley Mysteries’ and ‘Waking The Dead’
Author: ‘A Shout in the Street’ and ‘The Fall of the House of Murdoch’
Podcaster: ‘Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder Exposed’
Co-founder: ‘Byline Times’
The Steeple Times – Discussion and Dinner
at PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie, 52 Fulham Road, London, SW3 6HH
on Wednesday 20th May 2026
THE EVENING
* Arrivals for a Prosecco reception in a private setting on the first floor of PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie from 6.30pm. Those arriving earlier are welcome to enjoy a drink at the ground floor PJ’s bar.
* Matthew Steeples in conversation with Peter Jukes at 7pm prompt with audience questions to follow for 30 minutes. The format will be similar to our previous discussions with amongst others biographer and true crime legend Geoffrey Wansell, Britain’s best known crime correspondent Martin Brunt of Sky News, actor, writer and producer Steven Berkoff, filmmaker Amanda Eliasch, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York author Andrew Lownie and Manhunt and Crime Suspect host Peter Bleksley. There will be an opportunity for questions.
* 3-course dinner with wine, with options for those with particular dietary requirements, to follow. Guests will have the opportunity to chat with Peter Jukes and Matthew Steeples during the dinner.
* After dinner, guests will be welcome to continue discussions downstairs at the legendary PJ’s bar for further cocktails and conversation.
PETER JUKES
Swindon born Peter Jukes graduated from Queens’ College, Cambridge with a double first in English. A self-declared “Jack of all trades,” Peter’s early plays were performed by Tilda Swinton and Johanna Scalon and his contemporaries at the Cambridge Footlights numbered Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and Emma Thompson.
During a veritable and varied career, here is a personable polymath who has worked as a journalist, playwright, screenwriter, literary critic and author. Aside from being lauded as an expert in the art of dark comedy, on television and radio, Peter is primarily known for his work in the field of crime thrillers and medical dramas. Credits have included The Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Waking the Dead and Sea of Souls. His opening episode of the third season of Holby City was described by The Guardian as “the televisual equivalent of crack” whilst his 20-part series about the murder of the British private investigator Daniel Morgan topped the UK iTunes podcast chart.
Delving into the phone hacking scandal took Peter down a rabbit hole that resulted in him becoming the first person to ‘live tweet’ a trial on his iPad (with the permission of the presiding judge, Mr Justice Saunders). After spending nearly 9 months doing this in 2013 and 2014 and having written a book about the paradoxes of the News Corp head honcho, Rupert Murdoch, titled The Fall of the House of Murdoch, in 2012, he co-founded the crusading investigative title Byline Times in 2012.
The work of Peter Jukes and his colleagues on topics ranging from Brexit and Cambridge Analytic to Jeffrey Epstein’s expressed desire to establish a church for “confession privilege” have resulted in Byline Times being described as a “counter-balance to the billionaire dominated British press.”
BOOKING
Tickets are priced at £85 per person and include a glass of Prosecco on arrival and half a bottle of either red or white wine per person with dinner.
To pay by bank transfer, please use the details below or alternatively please make a transfer of £85 per ticket to the account listed below by clicking the following link:
Tickets can only be purchased in advance and guest names must be supplied for allocated place settings. The deadline for booking is 6pm on Tuesday 19th May 2026. Tickets are issued on a non-refundable basis.
MENU
The ticket price includes a glass of Prosecco on arrival, ½ a bottle of either red or white wine per person and a three course meal.
‘Private Eye’ called out for publishing classified adverts from wacko wannabe “Village Elders” with a penchant for “amusing kids” and an actual crackpot crazy who tried and failed to kidnap Princess Anne in London in 1974
The latest edition of Private Eye contains an especially creepy classified advertisement. A link to it was sent to us by an especially beady eyed reader. It states:
Couple (60s) seek position as Village Elders in a community. Skills include knitting, martial arts, book-keeping, business advice, vegetable growing and amusing the kids. Any location worldwide but must speak English. No remuneration needed. Text 07486 434079 for more details.
Aside from the Jimmy Savile-esque vibes that the throwaway inclusion of “amusing kids” gives off, the fact that two sixty somethings of sex undefined want to move utterly anywhere for utterly no payment seems a little beyond weird. Whilst calls and texts from The Steeple Times to the number for the knitting and martial arts lovers listed were not answered, what’s the betting on these wannabe “Village Elders” being successful in their quest for their wacko wants? We wouldn’t go below 999/1.
The advert posted by the wannabe “Village Elders” that will likely not result in them achieving the placement they desire.
Elsewhere in the same magazine’s classified section is an advert placed by another oddity named Ian Ball. It doesn’t exactly share a great deal of detail, but simply offers:
‘To Kidnap a Princess’ by Ian Ball noveltokidnapaprincess.co.uk
For the majority whom unsurprisingly don’t immediately recognise this somewhat ordinary sounding name, this is the very same Ian Ball who attempted to kidnap Princess Anne on 20th March 1974 on Pall Mall in London, but who only succeeded in injuring a number of bystanders with a series of shots. Ball failed in his attempt – which was later bizarrely ‘justified’ as a “publicity stunt” and an attempt to raise £2 million from a ransom that he claimed he intended to give to the NHS – and subsequently pleaded guilty to attempted murder and kidnapping. John Hazan QC, defending, claimed his client was “mad” and had been “led by a voice of either his late father or God.”
Top: The attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne in March 1974, as reconstructed in the 2006 ITV drama ‘To Kidnap A Princess’. Bottom: Failed kidnapper Ian Ball snapped arriving for his trial and the Rolls-Royce in which Princess Anne travelled on the night of the attempt to abduct her.The advert promoting Ian Ball’s book.
Ball – who also goes by the pseudonym ‘Anthony Stewart’ – was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia and detained in mental hospitals for 45 years until his release in 2019. In August 2025, he laughably claimed the late Queen Elizabeth II had been the “ringleader” of a plot that led to him being wrongfully jailed and told the Daily Mail: “I’m an innocent, sane man… The whole idea of performing the hoax was to get the publicity so I could write my autobiography and I expected to get £10,000 in royalties.”
Going further, on the website linked to from the online version of the weekly magazine, most certainly beyond bonkers Ball rages whilst promoting his tall tale tome To Kidnap a Princess:
“The author spent 45 years locked up in Rampton and Broadmoor criminal lunatic asylums, after being convicted of the attempted kidnapping of Princess Anne.”
“Throughout his stay in the asylums he was in constant conflict with the psychopathic screws and criminal doctors.”
“The abuse resulting from the conflict was born with a remarkable stoicism and with an astonishing positive attitude. Such resilience was due, mainly, to the author’s efforts in applying his hilariously unique and wry sense of humour to the situation.”
“Although the authorities did everything to try and break his spirit, the author remains unbowed and eventually prevails.”
In light of the highlighting of these two clearly crackpot advertisements, perhaps Private Eye might henceforth implement a better procedure to vet those taking space in their classifieds. Paraphrasing what Princess Anne is said to have exclaimed on being ordered out of her chauffeur driven Rolls-Royce by her wannabe kidnapper Ian Ball that dark night in March 1974, the chances of such are probably to be found in the land of “not bloody likely!”
Tiny, overpriced studio ‘flatlet’ lacking room to even swing a cat in somewhat ‘shady’ building opposite Harrods in Knightsbridge unsurprisingly remains on sale for the not so tiny sum of £250,000 after 3 years on the market reports Matthew Steeples
Prison cell-like 109 square foot ‘flatlet’ in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge for sale for staggering £250,000; national minimum allowable size for a flat since 2011 is 398 square foot.
Brompton Road is one of London’s most polluted roads; the Brompton Oratory, one of the highway’s main landmarks, was used as a ‘dead letter drop box’ by Soviet spies during the Cold War.
Nearby now defunct Brompton Road London Underground station became the control centre for the 26th(London) Anti-Aircraft Brigade during the Second World War.
Ritzy department store Harrods, directly opposite, stands on a 5 acre site and was sold to the Qatar Investment Authority for £1.5 billion by alleged abuser of 200 women Mohamed Al-Fayed in 2010.
Listed initially at £275,000 in December 2022 but now slashed to a still stupendous £250,000 after failing to get flogged, Grow Portfolio estate agents are hawking a minute and clearly overpriced 109 square foot studio flat in Brompton Road, Knightsbridge as a “fantastic base” and “excellent opportunity”. If the ask price were to be achieved, the vendor would earn themselves a very punchy return of £2,294 per square foot; the median average price for this part of London, SW3 has been a significantly lower £1,610 per square foot during 2025.
Offered on a lease of approximately 169 years and having a service charge of “approximately’ £1,000 per annum to include the assistance of a 24-hour concierge, a buyer will garner themselves a single room measuring 6 feet by 11’9” feet with a small adjoining shower room also. The 70 square foot room itself has tiled flooring, a window, a cupboard housing a microwave and cooking hob and a minute fold-down table also. There’s frankly nowt much else to say about it further than in November, the Evening Standard lauded its décor for being a “clinical white” achromatic scheme.
A floor plan shows the very limited scope of the accommodation offered. Tax dodging tennis legend Boris Becker produced a son after a ‘bonk’ in a broom cupboard at the Metropolitan Hotel; given his size now, he might struggle with such activity in this space today.It’s rare that a property can be entirely shown with just a single photo; in this case, it most definitely can.In this watercolour by Cyril Farey (1888 – 1954), which Manning Fine Art describe as “capturing Princes Court at its prime”, the golden era of a building is shown. The art dealers observe: “[This] is not merely an architectural drawing it is expressing a lifestyle that only an apartment in Princes Court can provide. As such the fashionable and modern apartment block is surrounded by a Mediterranean blue sky and Hyde Park peaks out from the sides as an Eden of lush green. The smart street is punctuated by smart, friendly, yellow awnings whilst classic, stylish cars and iconic London buses pass by.” The same cannot sadly be said of the setting today given this part of Brompton Road has become better known for housing hookers, Rolex robberies and chronic pollution.
Designed to “resemble an ocean liner” by architect George Valentine Myer (1883 – 1959) between 1934 and 1935, the building in which the studio flat is to be found, Princes Court at 88 Brompton Road, SW3 1ES, was originally named Knight’s Court. This large steel-framed block of 94 flats with 9 retail premises on the ground and first floors directly opposite Harrods began life as “a popular and exclusive place to live”, but in recent years has become more commonly used for Airbnbs and by ‘ladies (and gents) of a certain profession of the night’.
Of the apartment complex, a past resident complained to The Steeple Times: “I did not live there long as I could not even open the windows in the summer due to the pollution and traffic noise from supercars revving in the summer on the Brompton Road. The ‘bedroom banging activity’ from my clearly-a-hooker neighbour did not help me sleep at night either.”
No-longer-so-ritzy Princes Court previously hit the headlines in 2012 when an 84 square foot studio flat went on sale for £89,950, in 2021 when a 128 square foot offering sold for £325,000 and in 2022 when an 88 square foot studio – in spite of lacking even a lavatory and without any kind kitchen – was auctioned with a guide price of £175,000. A two bedroomed flat extending to 877 square feet on the ninth floor of the building is currently being touted by Harrods Estates at a guide price of £1.3 million.
Given the spoof website supporting the homeless charity Shelter that is the National Institute of Feline Orbital Studies (NIFOS) calculates that 78.54 square foot is required to swing an ‘average’ cat and that it would cost £158,180 to “buy enough space to swing a cat in SW3”, the 109 square foot flat offered by Grow Portfolio has not only not enough room to swing a cat, but would not even adhere to the government’s technical housing standards if it were a new build property. The minimum today required to meet regulations is 398 square foot, meaning that this poxy pad falls 72% short of that sum; these regulations do not apply to buildings constructed prior to 2011.
Fair warning to whoever purchases this ‘flatlet’ suitable only for someone seriously slim: In February 1988, an actual broom cupboard measuring 5’6” feet by 11 feet “with not even a cooker” in Princes Court sold for £36,500 (the equivalent of £102,500 today) during what Pete May termed an “obscene property boom” in his 2012 book Rent Boy. The self-professed “punk-turned-journalist who spent 20 years falling off the property ladder’ added: “Even I wouldn’t live in that. Yet it was recommended as a purchase for ‘those who like eating out’.”
Within months of the cupboard sale, the economy tanked and studio flats, given their limited appeal, were the very first properties to see their values plummet. In 2025, with Rachel Reeves ‘Queen of Thieves’ having her grubby mitts on the nation’s tiller, this is probably not the time to be shelling out £250,000 for what the “honest estate agent” and Brothel in Pimlico author Roy Brooks would have likely marketed as a ‘broom cupboard in a brothel building in Knightsbridge’. At this time, perhaps, ‘buyer best beware’ would better be borrowed.
Curious facts about Brompton Road
The area of ‘Brompton’ dates to the 15th century and originates from the name ‘Brokendon’ – meaning “a place near a brook”.
The road itself starts at Knightsbridge Underground station and ends at the crossroad intersection known as ‘Brompton Cross’ where Fulham Road begins. It is thought to have ‘officially’ first been designated as ‘Brompton Road’ in 1863 on land originally owned by the Moreaus, a wealthy French Huguenot family.
Brompton Road is one of London’s most polluted highways due to heavy traffic, especially from diesel vehicles. In 2013, the London Assembly claimed pedestrians were being “showered in dangerous airborne particles” on this road identified as having NO2 levels massively exceeding World Health Organization guidelines.
Between 1906 and 1934, passengers on the Piccadilly London Underground line were able to alight at Brompton Road tube station. It was closed due to being surprisingly little used, but served as the command centre of the 26th (London) Anti-Aircraft Brigade during the Second World War. During this period, the tunnels, subways and lift-shafts were adapted to provide bomb-proof accommodation and in 2014, the site was sold to Dmytro Firtash, a billionaire Ukrainian businessman for £53 million. His plans to convert the 28,000 square foot site into residential accommodation have still not come to fruition.
The best-known retail landmark on Brompton Road is Harrods department store. It stands on a site that covers an astounding 5 acres in total and includes 1.1 million square feet of retailing space.
Famous customers of the store, which first opened in its present form in 1894, have included Agatha Christie, Beatrix Potter, Oscar Wilde and Asma al-Assad, the wife of the former President of Syria. She used an alias to shop there in order to get around European Union sanctions that froze the assets of her and her husband.
In 1898, Harrods debuted Britain’s first ‘moving staircase’ (or what we now term an ‘escalator’). At the top, “nervous” customers were offered brandy to revive them from the “ordeal” of their ride, The Drapers’ Record reported at the time.
Harrods was bombed by the IRA in 1983 and 1993. The first attack killed 6 people and the second injured 4.
The store was bought by the now late alleged serial sex offender Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1985. The ‘Phony Pharaoh’, as the Egyptian was nicknamed, is said to have abused at least 200 women on the premises during his ownership. He sold the business to the Qatar Investment Authority for an astounding £1.5 billion in 2010 and died in 2023 without ever having been brought to justice.
In 2022, Apple opened a store on the road in what was once the Brompton Arcade. It is staffed by over 200 employees, or as the tech giant prefers to call them – team members.
Another major landmark, and a building like Harrods complete with a dome, is the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This Catholic parish church is better known as the Brompton Oratory and also referenced as the London Oratory.
Consecrated in 1884, the church was where ‘Master of Suspense’ Sir Alfred Hitchcock married Alma Reville in 1933 and it is said to have inspired Nick Cave to write the song Brompton Oratory in 1997.
During the Cold War, this ornately decorated church was used as a ‘dead letter drop’ (or ‘DLD’ to those in the know) by Soviet agents in Britain. Spies would visit the church and place documents and microfilm behind one of the pillars for later collection by their compatriots; the location suited given the building’s proximity to the Russian embassy and as Harrods was a suitable rabbit warren for losing a tail if they thought they were being followed.
Standing behind the Brompton Oratory and accessed from Brompton Road is Holy Trinity Church, Brompton. ‘HTB Brompton’, as it is now generally referenced, stands on a site of 3.5 acres and is now one of the primary sites for the teaching of the Alpha course programme that focuses on “the evangelization of the nations, the revitalization of the church and the transformation of society.’
Further photographs of the £250,000 Princes Court flatlet
The kitchen facilities would not exactly excite Gordon Ramsay.The shower room is modern and clean; there’s not much further to say further than that.Both the shower room and ‘studio’ room have windows; a ‘Brucie bonus’ for sure.A view of the ‘studio’ towards the door; most prison cells are bigger than the space offered here.If you bought the studio offered and needed to host a visitor, you could do so in the lobby of Princes Court. It’s got seating and space aplenty in comparison to the ‘flatlet’ itself.Princes Court (here partly shrouded in scaffolding) is literally opposite Harrods, undoubtedly one of the most famous department stores in the world.The rear of Princes Court with Harrods department store behind and the store’s former depository, now apartments also, to the right.
‘The Steeple Times’ invites you to a discussion dinner with ‘The Truth Will Out’ filmmaker Amanda Eliasch, filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and actor Ron Destro on Thursday 23rd October 2025; the question proposed will be “Will the REAL William Shakespeare please stand up?”
Join Matthew Steeples of The Steeple Times on 23rd October for a conversation with Amanda Eliasch, director of the forthcoming feature documentary The Truth Will Out.
Also on the panel will be the filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and Ron Destro, an actor and founding director of the Oxford Shakespeare Company.
A discussion and questions focused on “Will the REAL William Shakespeare please stand up?” shall be followed by a 3-course dinner at PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie, London, SW3.
Matthew Steeples invites you to PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie in London for an evening where director, writer and producer Amanda Eliasch, filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and actor and founding director of the Oxford Shakespeare Company, Ron Destro, will discuss two enduring myths crafted to serve political and cultural agendas: that of the virginity of Queen Elizabeth I and the true authorship of William Shakespeare’s works.
Amanda Eliasch is an English artist whose career has spanned photography, poetry, film and theatre. She champions the theory that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford authored Shakespeare’s works and explores such in her forthcoming documentary film The Truth Will Out. Eliasch’s fellow panellists for this event, themselves both respected experts in this field, Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and Ron Destro, will join her to discuss the ‘elephant in the room’ that has intrigued many for so long; did William Shakespeare actually pen the plays attributed to him or was the real writer hiding under the radar?
On 23rd October at PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie – following on from evenings with amongst others Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York author Andrew Lownie and Manhunt and Crime Suspect host Peter Bleksley – guests will get to enjoy a delicious 3-course dinner after 45-minutes of conversation and questions about the enigma best known as the ‘Bard of Avon’. The £75 per person ticket price includes a glass of Prosecco on arrival and half a bottle of either red or white wine per person also.
Amanda Eliasch with Peter Bleksley at ‘The Steeple Times’ discussion dinner with Peter Bleksley in November 2024; Matthew Steeples.Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and Ron Destro.
To book your tickets…
TIMINGS
The event will be held on Thursday 23rd October 2025.
Arrivals for Prosecco in a private setting on the first floor of PJ’s from 6.30pm.
Matthew Steeples in conversation with Amanda Eliasch, Cheryl Eagan-Donovan and Ron Destro at 7pm prompt with audience questions to follow for 45 minutes.
3-course dinner, with options for those with particular dietary requirements, with wine to follow.
After dinner, guests will be welcome to continue discussions downstairs at the legendary PJ’s bar for further cocktails and conversation.
ADDRESS
The event is to be held at PJ’s Chelsea Brasserie, 52 Fulham Road, Chelsea, London, SW3 6HH.
The nearest London Underground station is South Kensington (District, Circle and Piccadilly lines); it is located just 5 minutes away on foot.
The event is to be held on the first floor of the building; access is by staircase only.
PAYMENT FOR TICKETS AND BOOKING QUERIES
Deadline for booking – Wednesday 22nd October 2025 at 6pm; tickets can only be purchased in advance and guest names must be supplied for allocated place settings.
Tickets can be purchased at a rate of £75 per person. Please make payment by bank transfer to:
Bank: Barclays Bank
Account Name: Longreach Publishing Limited
Sort Code: 20-90-74
Account Number: 63608697
IBAN: GB13BUKB20907463608697
SWIFTBIC: BUKB
Please reference payments “SHAKESPEARE” and include your surname also to aid our record keeper.
Should you have any queries of questions, please contact Jane Monckton at [email protected]
SET MENU – 3 course dinner, Thursday 23rd October 2025
The ticket price includes a glass of Prosecco on arrival, ½ a bottle of either red or white wine per person and a choice of one of each of the following:
WORLD EXCLUSIVE – Ghislaine Maxwell’s notorious London home –the very pad that caused Prince Andrew to pay out £12 million over sexual cavorting allegations relating to a “bathtub bonk” in 2001 – is astoundingly back up for sale for a bonkers sum nearly 100% higher than she ‘sold’ it for just 3 years ago; much of the mucky madam’s furniture bizarrely remains
Just as the meddling mate of the mendacious mucky madam and her pension pot plundering papa that is Peter Mandelson has been ‘anointed’ in Game of Thrones style as Keir Starmer’s ambassador to the United States of America, it can be revealed that the infamous former London home of Ghislaine Maxwell is back on the market.
Whilst properties, however sordid their histories, come up for sale now and again – for example, when we featured five of the worst ‘murder location houses’ offered for sale in November 2022, we were inundated with further suggestions – the totally unsurprising detail in the current Chestertons listing for 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia is that there is no mention of this mews house’s infamous past owner-occupier.
Interestingly, however, the agency’s ‘current’ photographs of what The Steeple Times mocked in January 2022 as “Randy Andy’s Bathtub Bonk Pad” – given what allegedly went on between the Duke of York and a then 17-year-old then going by the name Virginia Roberts in the first-floor, full-sized bathtub of the residence on the 10th March 2001 – show a property that still includes free-standing furnishings that were present when representatives of the then incarcerated Miss Maxwell sold on 19th April 2021 for £1.75 million against a far more punchy initial asking price of £2.6 million. Indeed, it does seem most curious that the ‘purchasers’ decided to keep a set of naff 1970s tables and chairs that presumably belonged to the convicted sex trafficker – especially given they decided to throw out an equally gaudy pair of velvet curtains from the house that have now ended up on display in a Bristol art gallery as part of exhibition of all sorts of odd things that is rather appropriately titled Grey Unpleasant Land.
In January 2022, ‘The Steeple Times’ was the first publication to share a photograph of the then unrenovated bathroom at 44 Kinnerton Street where Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts (now Virginia Giuffre) allegedly bonked in the tub. The image we shared (top) provided proof that the tub was of a standard size and not “too small for any kind of activity whatsoever,” as Ghislaine Maxwell had stated during a 2015 defamation civil case brought after Maxwell called Giuffre a liar. The case was settled in 2017 in favour of Virginia Giuffre and at that time Ghislaine Maxwell was forced to pay damages. The same bathroom photographed in 2024 (bottom). The flooring and fittings all remain; the tiles have been changed, as have the bath taps.When asked about what occurred on the night of 10th March 2001 in the first-floor bathroom at her Kinnerton Street mews house, Ghislaine Maxwell responded: “[Virginia Roberts] then characterized [sic] things took place in my bathroom in the bathtub itself. The tub is too small for any kind of activity whatsoever.” The picture of that very same tub used in marketing material by Wellbelove Quested and more recently Chestertons proved exactly to the contrary.A floor plan shared by the likes ‘The Daily Mail’ and ‘The Sun suggested the first-floor bathroom at 44 Kinnerton Street to be 7-foot, 4 inches by 7-foot, 2-inches. Floor plans shared by Wellboved Quested suggested that the room is actually 8-foot, 4-inches by 8-foot, 2-inches. Either way, there was most definitely plenty of room for two (and whatever activities might have gone on between that particular two-some)…Then and Now – The ground floor reception room of the house (top) as it was in “doctor’s waiting room” style in January 2022 (top) and as it now is in December 2024 (bottom) opened up to the kitchen. Note that though a wall and fitted furnishings have been removed and the flooring replaced, the somewhat naff dining table and chairs remain.
Laughably lauded by Chestertons as “charming” and “wonderfully bright,” the 1,477 square foot three-storey building has admittedly been knocked around a bit during the current ownership. Gone is a clapped-out kitchen that grubby groper Ghislaine likely never cooked her vegan nosh in and gone also is the wall between that room and the adjoining former “dentist’s waiting room-style” reception room where Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein’s London victims were likely lined-up for the vilest forms of sexual abuse. Also replaced are the fittings in the primary bathroom in what would have been the ‘Mucky Madam Master Suite’ on the top floor, but what is beyond bizarre is that the house’s most horrid bit of history survives for posterity virtually intact. The very same first floor full-sized bathroom where sexual relations allegedly occurred that caused Prince Andrew to allegedly pay £12 million to the aforementioned Virginia Roberts Giuffre (without any admission of guilt) remains virtually unaltered.
In that very bathroom, next to the very landing where the ‘killer’ photograph of Miss Maxwell, Miss Roberts and the late Queen Elizabeth’s favourite son were so inconveniently snapped on 10th March 2001, the very same full-sized shower and the very same full-sized bathtub that The Steeple Times proved Ghislaine Maxwell lied about during her April 2016 deposition at the law offices of Boies Schiller & Flexner in New York in an article we published in January 2022 remains in-situ. Yes, the walls have been retiled and the taps have been changed, but every other element of the room’s grotty days of old remain as a kind of Miss Havisham-esque horror memorial.
When asked during the videotaped and subsequently transcribed 2016 deposition, which was given before one Leslie Fagin, a court reporter and notary public in the State of New York, about the photograph and sexual activities in the first-floor bathroom, Maxwell went full ‘porky-pie’ about her ‘standard’ five-foot-six-inches length bathtub and snapped:
“What I’m representing is that [Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s] entire ludicrous and absurd story of what took place in my house is an obvious lie… She claimed things took place in my bathroom in London. Her characterizations [sic] is just not possible… She then characterized things took place in my bathroom itself. The tub is too small for any type of activity whatsoever.”
Clearly buyers are not flocking to purchase a pad of which Maxwell lied about and one of which Loyd Grossman might ask: “Who the hell would want to pay £3.45 million to live in a pugnacious pad like this?” In spite of spending less than a month on the market, Ghislaine Maxwell’s former lair – complete with its historical bonking bathtub – has just had its price slashed by a not-so-insubstantial £200,000 to ‘just’ £3.25 million.
Then and Now – The somewhat decrepit kitchen, as it was in January 2022 (top), and as it now is, after being opened into the adjoining reception room (bottom) in December 2024.Then and Now – The ‘Mucky Madam Maxwell Suite’ at the top of the house as it was in January 2022 (top) and now is (bottom) in December 2024.The house under renovation in July 2021 and November 2023.The curtains binned during the renovations were featured in a review by ‘The Guardian’ in November 2024 of a new exhibition that debuted at the Spike Island gallery in Bristol. Amongst the items shown in ‘Grey Unpleasant Land’ are a set of sun-bleached red velvet curtains. Of them, the paper’s Evan Moffitt observed: “Described as having been acquired from the 2020 clearance of 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia. A Google search will tell you that the house belonged to Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted associate of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. It’s understandable why the artists chose not to name her, though without the extra effort, the drapes are a mysterious stage prop. Throughout, the show poses questions about how objects accrue value and meaning, which often comes down to how much or how little they’re framed. Maxwell is very much the elephant in the room alongside items from the same class as the person she set up with underage girls.” One could instead argue that it is curtains for sanity in Britain when Ghislaine Maxwell’s stained curtains are considered worthy as “art exhibits.”A floor plan of 44 Kinnerton Street prior to the renovations that came after the April 2021 sale.A floor plan of the house illustrating the changes to the ground floor layout.In July 2021, ‘The Steeple Times’ shared an image of an open door at 44 Kinnerton Street when the house was undergoing external repainting. The bannister pictured clearly is exactly the same one featured in the March 2001 image of Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell on the first-floor landing of the property.In 2019, Shaun Attwood of ‘Shaun Attwood’s True Crime Channel’ interviewed a lady who answered the door at 44 Kinnerton Street. In the footage he subsequently uploaded to YouTube, the bannister is again seen still in-situ.
Late December 2024 – £200,000 is slashed off the listing price of the property, taking the asking price to £3.25 million ($4.09 million, €3.92 million or درهم15 million), a sum 86% higher than the April 2021 selling price.
Early December 2024 – 44 Kinnerton Street is again listed for sale, this time by Chestertons. It is priced at £3.45 million ($4.34 million, €4.16 million or درهم15.94 million), a sum 97% higher than the April 2021 selling price, but is now available on a freehold instead of leasehold basis.
18th November 2023 – The Sun’s Jane Matthews reported that 44 Kinnerton Street was “getting a major revamp” and was “covered in scaffolding.” Matthews suggested “the new owners” were thought to be a developer and quoted a management accountant named Wendy Howard, “who has worked on Kinnerton Street for ten years,” as saying: “I know [representatives of Maxwell] sold the property fairly quickly and for a discount. I’m surprised, it’s not really the type of house anyone would want to buy. It really has the wrong associations. Personally, I thought the whole situation was seedy and very disappointing… You do see some tourist groups going past, but it’s not very well known that Maxwell used to live around here. Sometimes you see people filming or making documentaries, so sometimes people ask about the house, but not too often.”
19th October 2022 – The MailOnline’s Stewart Carter reported that “locals refuse to talk about the black spot on their street” in an article that also suggested the house “has not been lived in since Maxwell sold it… to pay her legal fees in 2021” and added: “It is collecting cobwebs and dust as locals grow increasingly frustrated about its eerie past.” Maxwell’s ‘friend’ – who was meant, but ultimately did not give in evidence in her trial, Kevin Moran, was referenced also. He stated: “It’s all investment – nobody lives here.”
14th January 2022 – Property website TheMoveMarket.com values the house at £2.11 million ($2.88 million, €2.53 million or درهم9.75 million), a sum 19% lower than the current asking price for the unrenovated property.
January 2022 – Estate agents Wellbelove Quested offer the mews house for £2.6 million ($3.6 million, €3.1 million or درهم1 million), an extraordinary increase of 49% on the sale price just 270 days earlier. The house is offered on a lease of 127 years that commenced on 24th June 2014 and previously on their website Wellbelove Quested had marketed the house for a higher price of £2.75 million ($3.738 million, €3.283 million or درهم13.731 million).
July 2021 – The Steeple Times reports on repainting work to the outside of the house being underway. An open door reveals the infamous staircase bannister to still be in-situ.
19th April 2021 – Records confirm the house to have been sold for £1.75 million ($2.39 million, €2.09 million or درهم79 million). Details about the beneficiary of the sum from this sale are not publicly available.
March 2021 – Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer offered cash from the “pending sale of her £1.45 million ($2 million, €1.74 million or درهم28 million)” home as part of a package when they sought bail for the mucky madam for a third time, the Daily Mail reported. This sum was 44% lower than the September 2020 asking price and 400% higher than the January 1997 purchase price.
March 2021 – A Knightsbridge estate agent told The Steeple Times: “Knowing the street as I do, 44 is one of the smaller houses which I assume it to be a little over 1,000 square foot in size. Depending on the condition, I estimate the freehold value to be circa £1.8 million to £2 million ($2.5 million to $2.7 million, €2.2 million to €2.4 million or 9درهم million to درهم10 million).”
December 2020 – Members of the Maxwell family attempted to raise finance on the property but are not successful, The Steeple Times learns from a financier with connections to the Maxwell family and their representatives. They were rejected on the basis of the “toxicity” of their familial name.
September 2020 – Estate agents Aylesford list 44 Kinnerton Street for sale for £2.6 million ($3.6 million, €3.1 million or درهم1 million) on (it was claimed) a freehold basis, a sum 797% than the January 1997 purchase price. They subsequently later reduce the asking price to £2.1 million ($2.9 million, €2.5 million or درهم10.5 million) “according to a leading property expert.”
August 2019 – According to Insider, a woman with “long hair [who] appeared to be in her 60s” was seen entering the property. She “denied that the socialite owns or lived in the house, claiming instead that the elusive socialite lived elsewhere down the street.”
10th March 2001 – Prince Andrew allegedly had sexual relations with 17-year-old Virginia Roberts in a bathroom in the property. He continues to deny this occurred whilst claiming that a photograph of himself with Miss Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell on the first floor of building is a fake also.
22nd January 1997 – Ghislaine Maxwell paid £290,000 ($396,000, €347,000 or درهم5 million) for the three-storey leasehold mews house. It is situated at the heart of the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate.
1989 to 1995 – Ghislaine Maxwell is known to have resided at 69 Stanhope Mews East, South Kensington, London, SW7 5QT. Her father bought it for her two years before his mysterious death and she reportedly “groomed and befriended Minor Victim 3 in London, England, between approximately 1994 and 1995… Maxwell introduced Minor Victim 3 to Epstein and during those interactions, Maxwell encouraged Minor Victim 3 to massage Epstein, knowing that Epstein would engage in sex acts with Minor Victim 3. During those massages, Epstein sexually abused Minor Victim 3” at that very property. It was sold for £267,000 ($365,000, €320,000 or درهم3 million) on 15th March 1995 and then again for £1.75 million ($2.39 million, €2.10 million or درهم8.77 million) on 30th August 2019.
Further images of the house (as presented in December 2024) illustrate internal redecoration has occurred, but that not much has been done with the external roof terrace…
THAT 2001 Photo STILL NOT PROVEN A FAKE – The 10th March 2001 photograph of Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell at 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia
The photograph, taken supposedly by Jeffrey Epstein on the first-floor landing at 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, London, SW1X 8ES, United Kingdom, has been shared by the world’s media in hundreds of thousands of articles and analysed countless times by countless experts.
In November 2019, the Daily Mail’s Inderdeep Bains called it: “The photograph that WON’T go away” and it, as of date, has NEVER been discredited. Amongst evidence suggesting it to be perfectly real is that:
The setting of the photograph has been confirmed as genuine by the Maxwell family. Of it, in March 2021, Ian Maxwell told Radio 4’s Today programme: “I do recognise that setting.”
The window in the picture has the same features as the front first floor windows of 44 Kinnerton Street.
The width of the first floor landing is accurate to the measurements shown in the floor plan of the sales brochure prepared on the 14th October 2021 by estate agents Wellbelove Quested.
Though he claimed to be “at a loss to explain this particular photograph” during the 2019 BBC interview, the Duke of York has admitted to having visited 44 Kinnerton Street. He stated: “I don’t think I think ever went upstairs… The dining room and everything was on the ground floor.” Contradicting the royal, sources have claimed that the room behind him, Roberts and Maxwell in the photograph was used as a sitting room.
The heights of all three individuals in the picture look to be accurate proportionately.
Prince Andrew’s “chubby fingers” are clear to see. The Queen’s second son’s fingers are clearly “chubby fingers” and these very same “chubby fingers” have been seen hundreds of thousands of times in hundreds of thousands of other photographs.
Prince Andrew has claimed he only ever goes out in London in a suit and tie. Images of him in open necked shirts in the capital – including one of him leaving the nightclub Chinawhite – prove to the contrary.
Prince Andrew has claimed he does not “do” hugs and and embraces in photographs. Images of him taken in St Tropez embracing the US socialite Chris Von Aspen in July 2007 suggest the alleged non-sweater is wrong also on that score.
The outfit worn by Virginia Roberts – a woman who has already received financial settlements from Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell – has been seen on her in photographs of her at Naomi Campbell’s 2001 birthday party in France. In spite of some suggestions that a lady only wears an outfit once, we counter that a lady in Miss Roberts’ unfortunate situation would be forced to wear what she was told appealed to those in control of her wished her to wear.
Matthew Steeples of The Steeple Times and Shaun Attwood of Shaun Attwood’s True Crime Channel have both seen inside 44 Kinnerton Street and the stair rail shown in the photo remains in place and is thus genuine to the setting. Attwood subsequently released film footage of this on his YouTube channel and The Steeple Times shared its most recent image of the open front door with the stair rail beyond in July 2021.
Many experts have repeatedly stated photo manipulation was in its infancy at the time that this image first surfaced.
The FBI have never questioned the authenticity of the image.
The TRUE FAKE PHOTO – The August 2019 photograph of Ghislaine Maxwell at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant
It must be remembered that the now convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell was likely involved in leaking that infamous “too perfect” photoshopped image of herself at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Los Angeles in August 2019. Aside from this wicked woman – whom bangs on about being vegan constantly now – “planting herself for a double-double” burger, that image was subsequently debunked by The Cut. For them, Bridget Read stated:
“The intrepid Daily Mail checked out the location of the burger joint in Hollywood where Maxwell was allegedly spotted by a regular last week and found some odd discrepancies. Notably, a bus stop in the background of the shot shows an advertisement for the movie Good Boys – which the company that operates the ad space said has never been there. The bus stop currently displays an ad for a local hospital, which it says has been there since July 28. Maxwell was supposedly photographed at the In-N-Out on August 12.”
“Questions about Maxwell’s lunch outing have fed into the already robust set of conspiracy theories around Epstein, his high-profile acquaintances, and his death. Why was a second smartphone on the In-N-Out table? Why did Maxwell never stick a straw in either her soda or her shake? Why did the diner who supposedly photographed her have such a nice camera, with a lens that took a very clear photo? It doesn’t help that the In-N-Out employees at that location have been forbidden, supposedly by their employer, to talk about Maxwell’s visit.”
“If [family friend and attorney Leah] Saffian did indeed leak the photo of Maxwell, it was likely to try and throw the FBI off her scent… If the In-N-Out photo is indeed doctored, Maxwell could be anywhere and could show up anywhere she pleases. What’s next? Some predictions: eating a hot dog on the steps of the Met, posing with a cactus at Joshua Tree, riding a unicycle at Burning Man, or painting her nails on the C train.”
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.
Tardis-like hidden house in Knightsbridge once home to ‘airhead’ Donna Air – who once amusingly asked The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” – for sale for £14.5 million (or 383% more than it was ‘worth’ in 2003)
Update, Thursday 4th April 2024 – Internal images removed at insistence of Annabel Edney, associate PR, Savills.
The ‘cheap wing’ of one of Knightsbridge’s landmark churches, St Saviour’s, has gone on sale for a not-insubstantial sum of £14.5 million after the more ‘expensive wing’ was marketed for the very punchy sum of £55 million in 2019 and the still somewhat punchy sum of £44 million in 2020.
The deceptively Tardis-like Hastings House in Walton Street is a ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ home from the pavement. It is entered through a small door to the side of a church that was reduced in size to accommodate the vast 12,102 square foot St Saviour’s House and the new-build in 1999 property of 5,261 square foot now offered by agents Savills.
Actress and presenter Donna Air – who once hilariously asked the siblings that formed The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” during an interview – numbers amongst the well-known ‘names’ to have lived in the house. This likeable lady shared the property with her wealthy conservationist then partner Damian Aspinall and even operated her even more hilariously named company (since dissolved) Airhead And Money Limited from the address.
Occupied also variously by a fast-living, Bugatti driving oil trader named Pierre Andurand and the controversial Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro, the three-storey residence is centred around a “serene” private courtyard and includes 2 reception rooms, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a rather impressive roof terrace.
Savills describe the freehold house as “opulent” and laud “one of the crowning jewels of the residence,” its underground pool, as a “hidden gem” in the basement; perhaps Sharon Corr and her siblings could hold a reunion there.
Actress and presenter Donna Air and conservationist Damian Aspinall with James Middleton – Air’s partner between 2013 and 2018 – and Victoria Fisher – whom Aspinall married in 2016. Aspinall and Air were an item between 2000 and 2007. Donna Air’s most famous moment on the telly box was summed up in an interview with Sharon Corr of the Celtic pop band The Corrs. Of the encounter, Corr stated: “We did a live television interview with Donna Air. Her opening question was: ‘So, where did you all meet?’ I looked at my brother and sisters and our hearts sank. If that was the opening question, it could only go downhill from there. It was clear that she knew absolutely nothing about us.”Oil trading tycoon Pierre Andurand and sports tycoon Pierandrea Semeraro have also both been listed at the address in Companies House records. How long each of the men lived at the property is unknown.
The Names & Numbers – Hastings House, Walton Place, Knightsbridge, London, SW3 1SA, United Kingdom
March 2024 – Offered for sale as an “ultra-cool freehold house” by William Duckworth-Chad and Alex Christian of Savills for £14.5 million ($18.3 million, €17 million or درهم67.2 million) – an asking price 123% higher than the asking price 20 years ago in March 2004 and 383% higher than the quoted worth in May 2003 – and described by Robb Report’s Abigail Montanez as a “stately London home hiding in plain sight… in the affluent Knightsbridge neighbourhood.”
April 2012 – Richard Compton Miller for The Standard bizarrely contradicts previous evidence and suggests Damian Aspinall and Donna Air “recently moved into [the] converted church.” It can only be assumed he was regurgitating somewhat outdated parish news.
April 2010 – Listed as the address of French “entrepreneur” Pierre Andurand on his appointment as a director of Andurand Events Limited company. The company ultimately was dissolved on 28th June 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.
Aixe-en-Provence born Mr Andurand is listed on Wikipedia as a “businessman and hedge fund manager” who was educated at the University of Oxford. This twice married “leader” of Andurand Capital has variously been listed as a “star trader,” an “oil trading wildcard” and someone who operates with “no set risk limits.” World Top Investors list this kickboxing enthusiast as “the comeback kid, the hotshot trader living the jock-bro dream, driving a Bugatti supercar, a Knightsbridge townhouse, and a trophy wife Russian model.”
23rd January 2007 – A planning application submitted by the Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro concerning the property is approved.
Mr Semeraro is listed on Wikipedia as having been the president of the Sports Union Lecce from 2006 to 2010. He was subsequently banned and disqualified after an investigation into a football betting scandal.
November 2006 – Planning application submitted to make various alterations to Hastings House by a firm named Stanhope Gate including the addition of skylights.
April 2004 – Described by the Daily Mail’s Adam Helliker as being the “weekday… converted church” home where “daughter of a bus mechanic from Newcastle” who “has, by all accounts, rather taken to the life of luxury” Donna Air “busies herself with acting lessons, acupuncture, shiatsu and stints with her personal trainer.”
March 2004 – Featured once again by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan after going on sale for the far higher than he’d previously mentioned sum of £6.5 million ($8.2 million, €7.6 million or درهم30.1 million) through the rather ritzy realtors Aylesford.
Of it, Flanagan enthused:
“Behind a discreet doorway on an exclusive Knightsbridge street lies this 5,250 sq ft home, which the estate agent describes as ‘one of London’s hidden gems.’”
“You’d never guess the house was built in the 1990s as you wander through its elegant Italianate central courtyard to the neo-classical cloisters and drawing room. One clue, however, is the basement swimming pool and bar, which has a more modern – if a little Footballers’ Wives – look… ‘There’s an amazing ‘party pad’ feel to it,’ says a spokesman.”
May 2003 – Described by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan as worth £3 million ($3.8 million, €3.5 million or درهم13.9 million) in a feature that mentions it being the home of actress Donna Air and zoo owning tycoon Damian Aspinall.
28th July 2000 – Listed as the correspondence address of “presenter” Donna Air’s amusingly named “radio and television activities” company, Airhead And Money Limited. The company ultimately was dissolved on 1st March 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.
4th September 1998 – Full planning permission granted for the construction of Hastings House by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. Of the planning history of the unlisted property then to be constructed, the council noted separately: “The subject site was formerly included within the ground of the St Saviour’s Church, which is a listed building, however following planning permission which was granted in August 1997 for the erection of the subject building, the subject site has been formally renumbered in 2001 as Hastings House and is considered as a separate planning unit to St Saviours Church.”
Matthew Steeples explores theconundrum of how to describe cheese made from goat’s milk and shares the eclectic thoughts of everyone from Susie Dent to Alan Rusbridger, Christine Hamilton, Jay Rayner, Matthew Jukes, Mic Wright, Nigella Lawson, Matthew Wright, Tom Parker Bowles and Samantha Markle on goat cheese
At the River Café in Hammersmith, the menu references serving Rabiola Rochetta cheese from Piemonte that is made with “goat’s milk” to get around a conundrum that has “got the goat” of many over the years.
London’s most traditional establishments, amongst them The Ritz and Wiltons, avoid the pasturised matter completely. They respectively just list “artisan cheeses” and “farmhouse cheeses” on their menus, whilst the self-declared “old fashioned restaurateur” James Chiavarini, proprietor of one of J. K. Rowling’s favourite haunts in Kensington, Il Portico, told me: “I haven’t the faintest idea to be honest!” when I enquired as to his thoughts on a cheese that is rather like Marmite in being both loved and loathed.
That matter? The debate over whether a restaurant or grocery store should list cheese made from goat’s milk should as “goat cheese” or whether it should be “goat’s cheese” or “goats cheese” or “goats’ cheese” even. Also described by the French as “chèvre,” one respondent to my questioning argued that it should, in fact – like “soured” rather than “sour” cream – be written-up as “goated.”
Detested by multiple respondents to my inquistive questioning including charity fundraising supremo Lorraine Burns, LBC Weekend Breakfast presenter Matthew Wright and TalkTV Crime Suspect host Peter Bleksley, this contentious cheese made with milk supplied by goats attracted the attention of Channel 4’s Countdown’s ‘Dictionary Corner’ guru Susie Dent. Her synopsis? “Oxford Dictionaries give both goat cheese and goat’s cheese. I usually go for the latter.”
Though other views (and plenty of brands with differing approaches) follow below, ‘La Dent’ – as The Observer’s restaurant critic Jay Rayner referenced this “God in these matters” – will now, excuse the pun, be the “goat-to” Queen of “goat cheese.” This cheesy conundrum can now finally be put out to pasture allowing grammar pedants to return to waging war on Waterstones (which should surely have always remained Waterstone’s).
In Broadstairs, lovers of the product made with goat’s milk can enjoy a bring-and-join-in ‘Cheeseboard Tuesday’ gathering weekly every Tuesday from 2pm until 5pm hosted by the delightfully delectable Sam Hawkins at The Magnet, 37 Albion Street, Broadstairs, Kent, CT10 ENE. Other cheese varieties, condiments and bread will be available.
The legendary lexicographer Susie Dent – “That woman in Dictionary Corner” – was first to respond to my query about the GOAT/GOATS/GOAT’S/GOATS’ conundrum. The author of ‘Words From The Heart’ remarked: “Oxford Dictionaries give both goat cheese and goat’s cheese! I usually go for the latter.”Notable food critic for ‘The Observer’ and famous face on the telly box Jay Rayner responded to the same question via email. He observed: “I won’t deny: it’s one I hesitate over. So much so that I couldn’t immediately tell you what I put in the copy I file. So I had a look at a few of the reviews in which I’ve mentioned it and it’s clear our house style is ‘goat’s cheese’. Just as it would be ‘cow’s milk’. That said I’ve had a Quick Look online and my conclusion is that, as with so much in language, there is no definitive answer. You could make a plausible argument for three of the four. I’m just not sure you could argue for ‘goats cheese’ without any possessive. That said La Dent is god in these matters and I’ll happily defer to her.”Fellow food critic Tom Parker Bowles, also on Twitter, argued: “I’d prefer goat’s cheese. As it is the cheese of a goat. Although obviously the end product is the result of many goats’ milk. So could be either. Goats cheese, on the other hand, is plain wrong.”The Cambridge Dictionary, giving examples of usage, declared the noun “goat cheese (also goat’s cheese)” to mean “cheese made from goat’s milk, usually soft and white.” Elsewhere, the Milking Goat Association share of goats in Britain: “The UK dairy goat industry is made up of 40-45 thousand goats producing just less than 34 million litres of milk commercially. This compares to a UK dairy herd of 1.9 million cows producing just less than 15 billion litres of cows’ milk (2014/5). Though significant, goat dairy remains a specialist market with goat milk representing less than 0.2% of the volume of cows’ milk produced in the UK. Goat cheese (UK and imported) is now in the top 10 cheeses consumed in the UK. Goats’ milk produced in the UK is primarily sold as butter, cheese and yogurt.” Clearly both luminaries in their respective fields favour the use of GOAT in regard to the cheese produced using goat’s milk.Author and screenwriter Samantha Markle takes the view that it is GOAT’S CHEESE and argued: “Goat’s milk. I’ve never heard anyone say ‘I don’t drink cow milk.’ I have only heard ‘cow’s milk’ (possessive). It logically follows that since cheese is made from milk, we would say goat’s milk/goat’s cheese… I think.”Former editor of ‘The Guardian’ turned editor of ‘Prospect’ Alan Rusbridger hesitatingly observed: “I’ve always thought goats’ cheese. But I may be wrong.”Equally, legendary British battleaxe and media personality Christine Hamilton shared: “I have no idea, but let’s go for goat’s cheese or goats’ cheese – it must be one of those!”Nigella Lawson stated: “I generally go for goat’s cheese, though I feel goat cheese is also ok.”Taking an entirely different view was Charlie Baker of ‘The Fence’ magazine. He opted for GOATS’ over all the other options.Doyenne in raising funds for cancer charities Lorraine Burns from Broadstairs, Kent responded and made clear that she’d solved the matter for once and for all: “What a contentious little question indeed. However, I believe that goat’s cheese is correct – the cheese produced using the milk of goats and I won’t stand for any other usage. Please inform all other recipients of the email, there is no need to respond, the issue is resolved.”Writer, media critic and ‘Conquest of the Useless’ newsletter creator Mic Wright was his usually to the point self. He stated: “It’s goat’s cheese or goat cheese. Never goats cheese. And chèvre if you’re fancy or French.”Colin Steeples asked: “Is it not about how many goats produced the milk for the cheese but what kind of animal produced it? Goat’s cheese for me.”Ex Scotland Yard detective turned TalkTV ‘Crime Suspect’ host and author Peter Bleksley didn’t have a view on the apostrophe, but he did have a clear view on the cheese: “It’s rank. You’re welcome.”Former 7/7 counter-terror Scotland Yard detective turned investigator and author of ‘Finding Suzy’ David Videcette shared: “It’s not goat’s cheese when it’s on my plate, moreover by the time it has arrived in my plate it’s more likely to be goats cheese. But when I order it’s goat cheese, obviously.” Some may find that analysis a little cryptic.Restaurateur James Chiavarini – owner of the much loved Il Portico on Kensington High Street and the adjoining more recently opened La Palombe –was more honest than most. He declared: “I haven’t the faintest idea to be honest!”The Grammar Monster website favours “goat’s” over other options.Screenwriter turned ‘Byline Times’ founder and executive editor Peter Jukes just believes the cheese to be “great… however you spell it.”Respected wine writer Matthew Jukes went against the grain of the dictionaries and favours GOATS’ cheese.Restaurateur and bon viveur Rex Leyland – former proprietor of Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea institution Foxtrot Oscar – was more interested in the smell of the cheese. He suggested “cheese from goats” as an alternative description.Joining those believing the dairy product to be “disgusting” was LBC radio host Matthew Wright. He shared: “Anything that smells like the cloven-hoofed beasties turns my stomach.”
Nine notably different examples of labelling on packaging of cheese made from goat’s milk… Illustration of utterly no consistency
Tesco opt for GOATS’ cheese and were featured in an August 2013 article in ‘The Guardian’ by David Marsh. Included in their ‘Mind Your Language’ section and titled: “If you can’t use an apostrophe, you don’t know your shit,” Marsh said of the retailing giant: “Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket, is in a class of its own when it comes to apostrophe abuse. You’d think that someone among its half a million employees would know better than to put up signs saying ‘Kids toys.’ It gets worse in the clothing department: a simple ‘Kids’ seems fair enough, but the signs nearby are a scarcely credible ‘Mens’ and ‘Womens.’ The meaning may be clear but the sloppiness demonstrated by this insult to the intelligence of its customers makes you wonder what else the company gets wrong. Sell-by dates? Prices? I wonder how far I’d get with a job application to Tesco if I wrote something like this: ‘Id really like a job at Tescos, I think its a great company, it sell’s everything from kids toys to Mens. p.s I also like the BOGOF’s.’”Waitrose & Partners opt instead for GOAT’S and market their “British” offering as “mild, creamy and fresh tasting.”Marks & Spencer also opt for GOAT’S and currently sell an “English soft” that is “mild and creamy” that is “crafted at the Lubborn Creamery, Somerset.”Sainsbury’s, however, follow Tesco and go for GOATS’ also with the “sweet and mild” cheese made in Somerset.Another product offered online, “Capricorn” has no apostrophe at all. It is simply GOATS cheese.A firm named Olympus simply opt for GOAT as labelling on the packaging of their “traditional” offering.On Twitter, @AdzWhitcombe shared an image with me of a goat with a pipe on the packaging of a “smoked goat cheese” called “The Smokin’ Goat.” He argued: “It would be bad for pregnant women to eat this particular cheese judging by the cover image.”Another brand, Melis, to promote its “white soft cheese in brine” that is supposedly “a wonderful cheese with a rich taste and mild goat’s [note the apostrophe] aroma” as GOATS MILK CHEESE. Confusion clearly reigns at this particular firm when it comes to apostrophes.Wildly Delicious opt for a more artisan look and follow the Oxford and Cambridge Dictionaries suggestion with plain old GOAT. They do also reference their cheese as “chèvre” however and thus keep both the Brits and French satisfied.
The varied thoughts of the Twitterati on this contentiously cheesy topic….
A Belgian born butler to the bastion of business Lord Bernstein – chief of Granada Television – was brutally murdered in a mansion in Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, London just before Christmas in 1970.
The closeted victim, Julian Sessé, was savagely slayed with a knife and a meat cleaver by a much younger bisexual gigolo, Mustapha Bassiane.
Bassiane subsequently fled to Morocco and then got snared when he audaciously returned to Europe in 1972; he was sentenced to life in prison in 1973 and deported back to his homeland 11 years later.
The ‘Scotland Yard Uncensored’ podcast recently covered this little known case, but failed to mention the strange fact that The National Archives have records on the case closed until January 2071; who is actually being protected here and why?
London’s Belgravia is renowned for its associations with power and privilege and as some might say, where there’s money there’s quite often muck, meddling, murkiness and murder.
Whilst the infamous 7th November 1974 murder of Sandra Rivett – the nanny to the children of Lord and Lady Lucan – at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, SW1 has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons, a sadistic slaying four years earlier on 19th December 1970 at another ritzy residence nearby is one that has been largely forgotten.
The victim in the particular case in question, it was noted in a recent Scotland Yard Confidential podcast by John Hopkins, was “a kind and generous man in life,” but one who was “shamed and shunned after his own brutal murder.” In this day and age, such a clear cancellation would quite rightly be called out as an utter outrage and especially at a time when the Metropolitan Police are so deservedly under fire for their appalling levels of misconduct.
On the tragic Saturday night in question in 1970 and just before London revelled in the arrival of a ‘White Christmas’ just six days later, 64-year-old Belgian butler Julian Louis George Sessé was senselessly beaten and brutally murdered with a kitchen knife and meat cleaver. Here was a crime that involved a butler to the rich and famous, but a crime also that was quite the opposite of those crimes orchestrated by the notorious ‘Killer Butler’ Archibald Hall. For those yet to know of him, Hall – who was also known as the ‘Monster Butler’ – mercilessly robbed and murdered in the same part of Belgravia later in the 1970s. Perhaps there could be something in the water of that part of SW1…
Unlike self-serving monster Hall, “dedicated” Sessé had worked at a 5-bedroomed mansion at 32 Wilton Crescent, just off Belgrave Square “for decades.” His end was to come that snowy evening when he was mercilessly slaughtered sometime after 11pm in a basement grace and favour flat that he occupied in the home of his very well-known employer Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein – the buccaneering bastion businessman and chairman of the Granada Group and Granada Television.
Described as “tall and distinguished” and always “neatly dressed in pinstriped trousers and black jackets,” neighbours argued this particular butler to be “the perfect servant.” Grey haired Sessé was lauded by the owner of the nearest ale house to 32 Wilton Crescent, The Grenadier, as “a quiet and respectable customer.” Here, indeed, was an example of someone who would not wanted to have brought any “shame or stigma” upon his master and mistress.
Alone that night in the vast and imposing 32 Wilton Crescent mansion whilst Lord and Lady Bernstein were away on holiday in the West Indies and with other staff having been given a “leave of absence,” homosexual Sessé most unfortunately decided to take advantage of something akin to “whilst the cat’s away, the butler might play.” He invited a “drifter-like” 26-year-old unemployed Moroccan nurse named Mustapha Bassaine to ‘visit’ his “cosy apartment” and clearly anticipated a night of fun and frollicks. The two clearly closeted – but for very different reasons – men had met prior and money had previously been exchanged for ‘companionship’ and sexual activities, it was later noted.
That night’s ‘pairing’ represented anything but a ‘relationship’ of equals and was one instead where the elder man expected intimacy with the former whilst the younger believed he could rinse the latter of as much money as possible. Given “pock marked” faced Bassaine was a dastardly deviant and diminutive desperado who’d been out drinking with his girlfriend prior, it was to be a meeting that was never going to end well.
Sessé was said to have been of the view that “money that exchanged hands be called a ‘gift,’” but was similarly described as not being under any delusions about what he gained from the “clandestine” encounters he had with various young men. He was a man with ‘friends’ with similar attractions, but in the wake of his death, his family and most associates clammed up and denied knowledge of such preferences. As loyal as the butler, relative and friend had been, it seemed that that was sadly never repaid by those he should have been able to have expected to have remained closest to him.
After a delivery driver and a part-time cleaner failed to find signs of life and several days of out-of-date newspapers on the doorstep of 32 Wilton Crescent on Monday 21st December, the latter called Lord Bernstein’s secretary, a 24-year-old named Miss Hazelwood. She then opened up the property and discovered a scene that Hopkins described as having “shocked her to the core” in the basement. Naturally scared witless, the secretary dialled 999 and the police process began.
Blood was said to spattered everywhere. It was all over the living room and all over the kitchen, but it was in a bathroom – most bizarrely locked from the outside – that the body of Julian Sessé was discovered draped in an equally bloody bath towel. The poor unfortunate’s throat had been cut and aside from multiple stab wounds to his head and chest, his stomach had been slashed open. A knife and a meat cleaver were bizarrely located by officers in the bowl of a latrine and given the “high profile” of the house owner, the case was “quickly passed to Scotland Yard.” Scandal, after all, would be something that the likes of Lord and Lady Bernstein obviously would rather avoid.
Detective Superintendent John ‘Ginger’ Hensley – who had previously been involved in the investigation of the vicious 1966 Shepherd’s Bush policemen murders by Harry Roberts – took the case and the next item to be found just happened to be the bloodstained trousers of the man presumed to be the killer in a washing machine. They were clearly not the trousers of the much larger Sessé and with a wardrobe in his bedroom ajar, it was thus determined the murderer likely fled in a pair belonging to his victim.
Evidence of foul play was everywhere and no attempt had been made to clean up. It was noted by Hopkins that it “all seemed wild and confused” and with no sign of forced entry and letters that indicated Sessé’s ‘activities’ with other gay men including paying for sex, Hensley is said to have immediately surmised it a “crime of passion” rather than a simpler robbery gone wrong.
Shortly thereafter, a pathologist determined that Sessé had partaken in sexual intercourse not long prior to his demise and found the cause of his death to be shock and loss of blood following a frenzied attack with both the knife and the meat cleaver. His demise would have not been instant and wounds to the body suggested that this was a man whom most definitely courageously fought back.
As police inquiries proceeded, few friends and associates were willing to divulge information. This, after all, was an era where to be seen to be gay was still the ultimate taboo. Though one local vaguely cited a “foreign looking man” having been seen outside the house at the time of the murder most horrid, all leads had alibis and even Sessé’s very own family made it clear that they knew nothing of his sexuality. The family went as far as to add that that they simply “did not want to know.”
Given these factors, here was a case that initially seemed headed to join a long list of unsolved murders, but a breakthrough came just days later on Wednesday 23rd December. On that date, police were contacted by an Irish waitress named Jean Fitzgerald from her home in Anson Road, Tufnell Park after she’d “spent days and nights wondering about the case.” The 22-year-old claimed to have met Sessé through her bisexual boyfriend and stated thatmhe had arranged to go to meet the butler at 32 Wilton Crescent after the couple had been for drinks in the West End late on the fateful night in question.
Allegedly, Bassaine had told his girlfriend that he would “visit Sessé to try and get some money off him.” She admitted to police she was “not a fan of her partner’s activities with other men,” but “understood that he usually got well paid for his ‘services.’” Hopkins went further and surmised that this “somewhat timid woman, but one with fire in her eyes” had an excuse for overlooking the ‘activities.’ That excuse was: “Besides, we always needed money.”
During questioning, Fitzgerald stated that she had gone home after being in the West End alone late on 19th December as Bassaine had left her to head over to Belgravia at around 11pm. She further shared:
“We paid the rent on the apartment between the two of us. He got money in another way when he was unemployed. Sometimes he gave me money but I don’t know where he got it from. He said something about going out with ‘faggots,’ having drinks with them, and getting money from them. He showed me a picture of Mr Sessé and told me that the butler often gave him money.”
Bassiane did not return home that night, but instead called Fitzgerald the next afternoon. He asked her to come to Sessé’s apartment, but she declined. Of why, she subsequently reminisced:
“I thought it was very strange that he wanted me to go there. He wanted me to go for a drink [at 32 Wilton Crescent] and he got mad when I said no. I was afraid of Mustapha Bassaine because he was very depraved at times and I was afraid that he would beat me like he had done before.”
After his girlfriend’s refusal to attend, Bassiane himself returned to Anson Road drunk and cried as he told Fitzgerald that he had argued with his ‘friend.’ She noted that he was wearing clothes he had not worn before – including trousers and a jumper that were “too large for him” – and “assumed they belonged to Sessé.” Going further, aside from noting her boyfriend’s shoes were stained with blood and that he had scratches on his hands, she suggested that she was so scared of Bassiane’s mental state that she was fearful to go to bed. Instead, she sat up all night with him, she continued.
“He arrived with a bag full of drinks and fruit and showed me a watch, a camera and a ring that he told me were Christmas gifts that Julian had given him. On 22nd December, he threw some clothes and some papers in the trash and told me that he had to go to Morocco immediately because his mother was sick. He bought an air ticket and went by plane. He had no difficulty paying for the ticket in cash even though he had no money when he went to Julian’s house over the weekend.”
Despite being supposedly penniless and potless only a couple of days earlier, Mustapha Bassaine flew to Casablanca on 23rd December after having paid the then not insubstantial sum of £44 in cash for a one-way ticket. He also exchanged a further £50 in cash for Moroccan Dirhams and after giving Jean Fitzgerald his Moroccan familial address, requested she send any newspaper cuttings that mentioned his name there. Allegedly, according to the Irish waitress, he also mentioned having seen newspaper reports about the murder at 32 Wilton Crescent and added “he couldn’t understand how anyone could have done such a thing to a man as nice as Julian.”
Though police officers questioned whether Fitzgerald could just be another ‘spurned girlfriend,’ some of the details mentioned made Hensley take her more seriously than the many cranks who call in when crime occurs. A search of bins in the neighbourhood followed and resulted in the aforementioned bloodstained shoes and trousers being found.
Justifiably, Bassiane – who turned out to be the son of a high ranking official in the Moroccan Foreign Office – was either a man too stupid to dispose of the items of his crime or he was someone who had a plan and didn’t think he needed to be bothered about the consequences of the DNA on them. Meanwhile, fingerprints found in the couple’s Anson Road flat matched fingerprints found at 32 Wilton Crescent and thus here was a man who rose straight to number one on the list of suspects.
Ten days after the murder, police issued an international warrant being for Musapha Bassiane’s arrest, but there was a major problem for Scotland Yard as Britain had no extradition treaty with Morocco. It seemed, given the key suspect had already ‘flown the nest,’ as long as he stayed in his homeland, Bassiane was a safe fugitive from justice. This was a situation similar to that involving the billionaire playboy Farouk Abdulhak in the more recent 2008 ‘Murder in Mayfair’ of Martine Vik Magnussen; getting someone back from a country like Morocco then or Yemen now is, in fact, nigh on impossible.
In addition, in case Fitzgerald had either got it wrong about where her errant bisexual lover was travelling to, or was instead covering for him, a police watch was put on her Anson Road flat in case he decided to return. Of course, aware that this young Irish girl was of no further use to him, the grubby, grifter never, ever did revisit that address but found himself safely hidden away in his homeland.
Meanwhile, with their holidays over, Lord and Lady Bernstein returned from their tour of the West Indies – where they had visited either Barbados or Bermuda or perhaps even both (depending on which reports you believe) – shortly after Christmas. Funeral arrangements were made for Julian Sessé, but only a small number of people were said to have attended a service at St Mary’s Catholic church in Cadogan Street, Chelsea. The deceased’s place of burial remains presently unknown, but it is said that his clearly embarrassed family “refused” to attend the service in what can only be perceived as move most spineless.
Separately, on returning to 32 Wilton Crescent, though Lady Bernstein identified that a sum of £80 was missing from the desk in her bedroom, a search of the house discovered that no further familial property had been stolen. By now, however, it seemed that the aforementioned watch, camera and ring and perhaps further money taken by Bassiane to the Anson Road apartment had actually been stolen instead from his victim.
In spite of all of this relevant new information, the judicial process was opened and postponed no less than eight times. According to the person in charge of the criminal investigation, a Mr Gavin Ilurston, “the investigations were not finished.” The reasoning for such is definitely something worthy of question still to this day.
Hensley, however, knew exactly where Bassiane was in Morocco and “through Interpol asked other the police of all European countries in Europe countries to be prepared” in case the suspected killer appeared. Eighteen months later, he got again lucky when he and his colleague Detective Sergeant Bernard Davis were informed that the on-the-run deadbeat was planning a trip to Germany and the Netherlands.
“Handlebar moustached” dimwit Bassaine was arrested on 28th June 1972 after police in Holland detained him for immigration offences in Rotterdam. Given the fugitive from justice had been on Interpol’s list as wanted for murder, if he’d simply stayed in Morocco, he would not have ever been caught, but here instead was a feckless fool clearly beyond arrogant who thought himself above the law.
By 10th July 1972, with extradition paperwork complete, Mustapha Bassiane was transferred to the custody of Davis and shackled to him and flown to London. A flight attendant, Hopkins in the conclusions of his podcast shared, requested the shackles be removed for the duration of the journey, but Davis was most definitely not going to allow any opportunity his captive to escape for a second time. The unshackling was rejected and once in London, it was straight off to a remand prison until trial for the man suspected of the murder of Julian Sessé.
On 8th February 1973, Bassiane’s trial began at London’s ‘Old Bailey’ Central Criminal Court. Akin to form, he pleaded not guilty and though admitting to having spent the evening with Sessé, argued that “the butler was in fine health when he left on the Sunday morning.”
Turning the cards on his by then ex-lover Fitzgerald, Bassiane told the court that she “flew into a wild jealous rage” and threatened to “harm the old man and hurt the old bastard… She threatened to smash his face.” He added that “the same day Jean Fitzgerald had gone out and he had not seen her until the afternoon. She was shaking and had told him she was sick.” His basic and somewhat bizarre line of defence – given the substantive forensic evidence against his own person – was that it was her and not him that had committed the ‘crime passionnel.’
Unsurprisingly, the jury did not believe this “fierce tempered” killer and Mustapha Bassiane found himself sentenced to life in prison on 12th February 1973. He also received a concurrent sentence of two years for stealing £80 in cash from Lady Bernstein’s desk – a sum that was about equivalent to a month’s average wages at that time, but most definitely not a sum worth killing for.
Before sending him down, the judge in the case slammed Bassiane. Judge Forbes is said to have told the court: “This was a brutal murder. The sentence has been the product of evidence in which there is no doubt. Your attempt to place part of the blame on Miss Fitzgerald has received the treatment it deserves.”
It is unknown what became of this murdering monster after he was deported in 1984. Mustapha Bassiane had served just 11 years of his life sentence in the UK; a term that surely was far from long enough for such a brutal and evil murder and a crime committed in a country where young men who proclaim their innocence like Mark Alexander and Omar Benguit have rotted in prison for 13 years and 18 years respectively in spite of a clear lack of evidence against them.
Turning to other thoughts post-sentencing, Hopkins shared in his podcast that Hensley believed Bassaine had tried to blackmail the butler and killed him when he didn’t comply. He also suggested that “hapless” Fitzgerald could have been implicated if she had gone to the mansion that night and concluded “her distrust of his motives may have just saved her from a dark fate” at 32 Wilton Crescent. Would her lover have killed her there also or would he have set the place up to pin the blame on her? Thankfully, given she saw sense, no one will ever know.
If still alive in 2023, Mustapha Bassaine would be 79-years-old; Julian Sessé, on the other hand, would be long dead, but if he hadn’t met his noxious nemesis that night in December 1973, he’d probably have gotten to have enjoyed a long, happy and fulfilled retirement. The ‘Belgravia Butler’ perhaps should have been more careful, but he most definitely didn’t deserve such a sordid end.
Pictured top – No image of Julian Sessé can be found on the Internet (left); 32 Wilton Crescent (top centre) and the late Granada head honcho Lord Bernstein (lower centre); killer Mustapha Bassaine in the only known image available of him (right).
Listen to the ‘Scotland Yard Confidential’ episode about the slaying of ‘The Peer’s Butler’ by clicking here.
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.
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The story of the December 1970 slaying at 32 Wilton Crescent features in a 37:02-minute March 2023 episode of the excellent podcast ‘Scotland Yard Confidential’ – which can be listened to as ‘A Spotify Original.’ The description for the episode reads: “In December 1970, Julian Sessé, the long-serving butler to Granada TV Chairman, Lord Bernstein, was found brutally murdered in his basement flat in Belgravia. With little hope for a successful investigation, and two murder cases already on their books, local police quickly handed the case to Scotland Yard. Evidence gathered from the flat revealed that the elegant 65-year-old butler was in the habit of picking up younger men and entertaining them at his home. He was discreet and private in these affairs, and his personal acquaintances were equally secretive. Was his killer a stranger or a friend? And how would detectives trace him if no one was willing to talk? It fell to Detective Chief Superintendent John ‘Ginger’ Hensley to crack the case of the Peer’s Butler. Learn more about your ad choices.”In an edition of ‘The News’ on 16th February 1973 that reported on Julian Bassaine receiving a life sentence for the slaying of Lord Bernstein’s butler, other articles included one about a Burton’s Court, Chelsea, SW3 resident having had £1,100 fur coat stolen “while she was having her hair done” and another listing TV licence fines awarded to residents of Draycott Place, Sloane Court West, Lyall Streeet, Margeretta Terrace, Sydney Street and Swan Court. A tragic story of a mother and baby found dead in a bedsit in Onslow Gardens, SW7 was referenced on the same page along with an ex-Grenadier Guardsmen being found dead after a fit in a ‘super loo’ at Victoria Station, SW1. A tale of a drunken man being fined after throwing a bottle through a Kings Road boutique, the Little-Big-Horn was one of the day’s more light-hearted pieces of coverage; Thomas Patrick Canon of Redburn Street, SW3 told the judge: “I am terribly sorry for what I have done, but had no recollection of it. All over the weekend I have asked myself what reason I had to do it and I can’t come up with any answer. I have been thinking it was a nightmare. I wouldn’t like it, neither [if that had been done to a shop I owned].”The scene of a murder most horrid on the 19th December 1970 – 32 Wilton Crescent, Belgravia, London, SW1X 8RX. Beyond the then owner Sidney Bernstein (formally titled The Right Honourable The Lord Bernstein of Leigh in the County of Kent, 1899 – 1993), others who have have variously lived or have connections to the likely now worth upwards of £40 million residence have included Gilbert Heathcote, 9th Baronet (in 1941) and a lady named Sarina Abramovich (circa 2015 to 2016). Ms Abramovich was subsequently (in 2021) 432 Park Avenue, New York based and shares a surname with the former Chelsea Football Club owning, one-time Putin supporting billionaire Roman Abramovich, but it is unknown if they are related. A statue of Sir Robert Grosvenor KG stands just opposite 32 Wilton Crescent and others to have lived on this most tony of streets have included the 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Lord Randolph Churchill, Quentin Crewe, the Grand Duchesss Charlotte of Luxembourgh and Demetri Marchessini.Essex born and Jewish, Sidney Bernstein, Baron Bernstein was lauded as “the dominant influence on the growth and development of commercial television” by the British Film Institute. Twice married and a father of three, his business interests included amongst other things a circuit of 60 cinemas and theatres, motorway services stations and a hugely profitable television rental business. He was a lifelong friend and partner of Sir Alfred Hitchcock in film production and turned Granada Television into a huge commercial success; he was portrayed by Steven Berkoff in the 2010 BBC one-off drama, ‘The Road to Coronation Street.’Sarina Abramovich is listed as being connected with 32 Wilton Crescent in 2015 and 2016 in documents relating to imports and exports. Whether she has any connection with the property now is unknown and records relating to the building remain shrouded in mystery. The Heathcote family were connected with the house in the 1940s when Mark Heathcote, 10th Baronet was born there in 1941.
![In this watercolour by Cyril Farey (1888 – 1954), which Manning Fine Art describe as “capturing Princes Court at its prime”, the golden era of a building is shown. The art dealers observe: “[This] is not merely an architectural drawing it is expressing a lifestyle that only an apartment in Princes Court can provide. As such the fashionable and modern apartment block is surrounded by a Mediterranean blue sky and Hyde Park peaks out from the sides as an Eden of lush green. The smart street is punctuated by smart, friendly, yellow awnings whilst classic, stylish cars and iconic London buses pass by.” The same cannot sadly be said of the setting today given this part of Brompton Road has become better known for housing hookers, Rolex robberies and chronic pollution.](https://www.thesteepletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Princes-Court-Knightsbridge-by-Cyril-Farey-designed-by-George-Valentine-Myer.jpg)
![When asked about what occurred on the night of 10th March 2001 in the first-floor bathroom at her Kinnerton Street mews house, Ghislaine Maxwell responded: “[Virginia Roberts] then characterized [sic] things took place in my bathroom in the bathtub itself. The tub is too small for any kind of activity whatsoever.” The picture of that very same tub used in marketing material by Wellbelove Quested and more recently Chestertons proved exactly to the contrary.](https://www.thesteepletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ghislaine-Maxwell-bathtub-statement.png)
