At a time when her billionaire brother Sir Richard is deservedly taking a pounding for trying to rape the state, multi-millionairess Vanessa Branson could have perhaps postponed the launch of her self-indulgent autobiography
It’s not Vanessa Branson’s fault that she’s the sister of the all-round dickhead Sir Richard Branson, but it is she alone whom made the choice to gauchely publicise a book about her anything but modest life during the worst pandemic since Spanish Flu.
Serialised, as only it could be in the top paying publication for such guff, the Daily Mail, Vanessa Branson’s One Hundred Summers: A Family Story has a stench of what the Scottish would call “guff” about it. Aside from bemoaning “sulking about” buying a tidal island complete with 9 houses in the Inner Hebrides – which she terms “Neverland Found” – this privileged woman boldly touts her book as: “Taking the reader on a journey from the dying embers of Edwardian England, through the trauma of two world wars, the hedonism of London in the 1980s and ‘Cool Britannia’ in the 1990s right up to the present day.” How utterly endearing.
Just like her self-publicising brother, this constantly crying 61-year old former art gallery owner plainly cannot get enough of herself. Here is a ramble through holidays in palazzos in Venice and trips to LA; there’s an arts festival in Morocco and there’s a second home in Sussex. Life ain’t that shabby for this woman, but all she does is moan. Her husband comes and goes (and comes and goes again and again), but with such she name-drops how Grayson Perry gave her a pot charmingly featuring the words “Marriage Wrecker” next to “images of fat middle-aged men with drooping breasts and sagging scrotums” and Tracey Emin wrote her a poem for her to use on her headboard. Its read: “Oh God you made me feel so beautiful/ And then I wanted to feel it again and again. With myself, by myself/ Never forgetting.” That’s surely enough to make anyone join in blubbering with this very, very rich multi-millionairess.
With her brattish brother condemned even by that pillar of capitalism that is The Telegraph as “Now Virgin Atlantic’s biggest liability,” Vanessa Branson could not have chosen a worse time to launch her tome. Though lauded as: “A vivid and charming tapestry of English eccentricity, fortune, fate and passion,” One Hundred Summers is more likely to ultimately be remembered just as a tale of the pathetic appendage of the deservedly most loathed man of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Here is one book we most definitely will not be recommending as essential lockdown literature.
Swivel-eyed berk Sir Christopher Meyer appears on Sky News in a plastered condition; his “Chanel-clad” pointy-fingered wife was, however, nowhere to be seen
Concealing a bit of a bash on Tuesday evening, tittle-tattling former ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer appeared on Sky News to share some totally irrelevant drivel that nobody needed to know about the relationship between America and China. Anybody sensible went to the kitchen and poured themselves a glass of wine during the tedious segment and only returned when the obnoxious oaf had been replaced onscreen.
As ever, drippy dimwit Sir Christopher, husband to the late-not-so-great PM Theresa May’s bestie, sniveling snob Baroness “Chanel-Clad” (AKA ‘Charity-Tin Cathy’), proved himself as much use as a chocolate teapot. His most pertinent remark was to claim: “Trump is desperate to shift the blame for the coronavirus onto the Chinese… Why? Because this is an election year.” A revelation and a half, if ever there were one.
Subsequently, looking and sounding a tad beyond over-oiled, this weird wazzock continued: “Remember injections of disinfectant and all that?” Perhaps, indeed, his not-so-good lady wife had administered him with just such prior to plonking the plaster-clad prat in front of Sky News’ camera.
Now, Sir Christopher: Please, just get back on your meds old chap. Thank you kindly.
Elsewhere, on Twitter, a “South American banker” named David Hutchinson shared his views about deservedly loathed “red-socked fop” also. He most accurately commented: “Sir Christopher Meyer. Anti-EU. A cerebral skinhead without the tattoos.”
‘The Steeple Times’ suggests that in the wake of the latest drivel she spouted in ‘The Sun on Sunday’ well-known washed-up wench and all-round “nasty piece of work” Karren Brady belongs in the funny farm
Aside from illustrating her rank on the Mensa roster in revealing something nobody else on the entire planet knew in stating: “What a month it’s been for Boris Johnson,” Lady Brady also announced: “I am as keen as the next person to regain my freedom.” She then, pass the sick bucket urgently please, added: “At present, in fact, I am mainly wearing pyjamas all day as well as in bed.” As constellation, at a time when we are all coping with the COVID-19 lockdown, one can at least be thankful that she didn’t go further and follow Baroness Mone and go on about her bra choices or dip into the territory of Ferne McCann and try and flog some soiled knickers.
Disgracefully ennobled by David Cameron for utterly no good reason, “muckspreader” Lady Brady (AKA ‘Baroness Bozo’ and #LazyBrady) went on to show how out of touch she is with the ordinary populous. In a segment ever-so enthusiastically titled: “PREGNANT PAUSE FOR A NATION” (in caps for extra-special emphasis), this dimwitted oddity bizarrely offered “huge congratulations” to an American model of Dutch-Palestinian descent named Gigi Hadid and an English singer of Pakistani-Irish descent named Zayn Malik. We’re no doubt lightyears away from fathoming the reasoning as to why the ever-so-vital “pregnant pause” and the ever-so “huge congratulations” are especially required for Hadid and Malik, but, hey ho, we are dealing with Karren Brady – Lord Sugar’s token bit of sideline smut from the graveyard for self-declared “genuine celebrities” that is The Apprentice.
Aside from not explaining exactly which “nation” exactly she was referencing (she probably doesn’t actually know what a nation is herself, poor love), former “dildo merchant” turned “faithful companion of Jesus” Lady Brady helpfully then declared: “They are expecting a baby… which just proves that life goes on. What a beautiful baby they will have. It’s great to have some good news amid the gloom.” Let’s all join her and praise the Lord.
Of this wannabe prophet, one reader previously observed: “All business transactions associated with Lady Brady end in Richard Branson-esque failure” and now we’ll go further: “All falling for the supposed wise words of the pyjama-clad Lady Brady henceforth may find themselves joining her in the funny farm.” It is now time to lock this hapless harridan in a padded cell and throw away the key.
Sunday evening acid-throwing Arthur Collins’ ex-partner Ferne McCann attempts to flog used knickers and bras online whilst posing with their brat, a girl named Sunday
Brentwood born Ferne McCann’s “baby daddy” Arthur Collins caused life-changing injuries to 22 innocent people after arriving at the Mangle E8 nightclub in Dalston, London during a night out on Sunday 16th April 2017. Stoked up and out of control, this “verminous cretin” hurled acid at clubbers at around 1.45am and then went on the run. This sub-human specimen, whose previous convictions numbered assault and possession of cocaine, deservedly got 20 years in jail, yet many continue to argue that that sentence was far too lenient.
Meanwhile, in the months that followed, McCann proceeded – without a moment’s consideration for Collins’ victims – to name their child, you’d never believe it, ‘Sunday.’ She supposedly spoke with her incarcerated ex-scaffolder lover via a phone illegally delivered to his prison cell and liked photographs on Instagram calling for this turd-like criminal’s release even.
Ferne McCann posing with her since convicted criminal lover Arthur Collins in Dubai.
Offered at prices as low as £8 for a black bikini top with “a few crystals missing,” McCann plainly is a woman who’ll attempt to sell not only her soiled goods: This self-declared “very well-known celebrity” lost an application relating to a “range of toilet preparations” in June 2019. She was ordered to pay £2,400 in costs to a firm named CP Management and now we’re left wondering: “What’ll she get thong next?”
Pictured top: Ferne McCann and her child, Sunday. On Depop.com this money grabbing wench sold the blue dress pictured for £40. She’s unsurprisingly not had as much luck in attempting to hawk her second-hand undergarments.
Eaton Square apartment in a Grade II* listed building that has been home to both Bond star Sir Roger Moore and aristocrat-who-went-missing Lord Lucan for sale for staggering sum given it is on a lease of just 15 years
Best known for playing the British secret agent James Bond in seven feature films from 1973 to 1985, Sir Roger Moore KBE (1927 – 2017) once remarked: “I enjoy being a highly paid actor.” He added: “It’s easy to sit in relative luxury and peace and pontificate on the subject of the Third World debts,” though in his various homes in such places as London, Monaco and Switzerland, he certainly illustrated that he took the bit about opulence seriously indeed.
Now, someone with aspirations to live like “the definitive Bond” has the opportunity to purchase an apartment in an Eaton Square building where not only he resided, but one that was also a childhood home of the most famous aristocrat to go missing ever, the 7th Earl of Lucan (born 1934, last seen alive in 1974, declared dead in 2016).
John Bingham, better known as ‘Lucky’ or Lord Lucan, is said to have returned to London from wartime exile in New York in February 1945 with his siblings to find: “As they walked past their home at Cheyne Walk, they realised the whole building had been bombed. Their other family home at 22 Eaton Square had no windows due to the blow of a bomb and rationing was in full swing.”
The apartment available now has windows complete with actual glass in-situ and is situated in what was once a single-family residence. It extends to 927 square foot and consists of a reception room with open plan kitchen, two bedrooms, one bathroom and one shower room. There are wooden floors throughout and the space has air conditioning also.
The fourth floor flat at 22 Eaton Square is offered by estate agents Ayrton Wylie at a price of £795,000 ($1 million, €914,000 or درهم3.7 million) or the equivalent of £53,000 per year ($66,700, €60,900 or درهم244,800 per year). Its lease expires on the 23rd February 2035 and an annual service charge of £6,779 per year ($8,526, €7,791 or درهم31,313 per year) is payable also.
Jonathan Downey, owner of London’s Milk & Honey bar, takes to social media to share news he won’t be reopening without a rent holiday; it is likely he is set to head a wave of similar announcements
Just as happened to venues like Keith McNally’s Lucky Strike in New York, a wave – perhaps, excuse the pun, even a flood – of closures of bars and restaurants is likely coming in London and across the rest of the UK. As a result of coronavirus most recently and due also to landlord’s charging extortionate rents and council’s levying excessive business rates in the years prior, we could soon sadly end up with far ‘drier’ high streets.
On Wednesday night on Facebook, in an impassioned plea, the owner of the Soho institution that is Milk & Honey – a “prohibition-style speakeasy cocktail bar” where ‘house rules’ include: “Gentlemen will remove their hats. Hooks are provided. Gentlemen will not introduce themselves to ladies. Ladies, feel free to start a conversation or ask the bartender to introduce you. If a man you don’t know speaks to you, please lift your chin slightly and ignore him” – Jonathan Downey shared news that post the coronavirus lockdown ending, his venue might “never reopen.”
In his post, multiple venue owner-operator Mr Downey stated:
This is Milk & Honey in Soho. A very special place that was 18yrs old last week. It’s been the ‘World’s Best Bar’ (a few times) and the making of so many great bartenders, but we may never re-open. Our annual rent is £210,000 but, despite the current closure and no hope of re-opening for months, our landlord won’t allow any deferral or rent free. He expects payments to be made upfront. He’s got no chance.
One of three things will happen (in most likely first order):
– We give the keys back.
– We get a 9 month #NationalRentFree and re-open paying rent for another 18yrs.
– The landlord backs down/sees sense.
I’ve written back to our landlord. I don’t expect we’ll get anywhere and without a #NationalTimeOut, we won’t be able to re-open Milk & Honey. Including VAT, we’ve paid more than £3.9m rent in 18yrs.
Going further, Downey shared the letter he’d written to his landlord. It read:
We won’t be paying any rent on this site again this year. I’m sorry but you’re kidding yourselves if you think otherwise. We have no income.
We have been paying rent there for 18 years, totaling in excess of £3m. We have no idea when we may be allowed to re-open. Even when we are allowed to re-open, we won’t because fear of the virus and physical distancing will mean we will be loss-making. The best (and possibly only) time we can expect to re-open is once a vaccine becomes widely available. Until then, zero income = zero rent.
I have been campaigning for a #NationalTimeOut for tenants and landlords, which includes a 9 month #NationalRentFree. If we get this, then there may be a way through for all of us. Otherwise, we’ll be giving back the keys and surrendering the very valuable 03:00 licence.
I am happy to discuss if you want but that’s our position and we don’t have any other.
Jonathan Downey (right) shared his sentiments on the future of the bar he set up in 2002, Milk & Honey, 61 Poland Street, Soho, London, W1F 7NU in a Facebook post on Wednesday.Mr Downey also published the text of a letter he had sent to his plainly thus far unsympathetic landlord.
Previously, in an interview with The Caterer earlier this month, Downey commented:
The best thing for most people in our industry is a National Time Out – nine months rent-free, with a matching debt repayment holiday for our landlords. Understandably the pubcos don’t like it, but it is being supported by UKHospitality.
We can’t each negotiate 150,000 separate agreements with landlords. We need a national arrangement that everybody falls in line with, that the government decides and legislates on.
We should get the rest of this year rent-free – for most businesses it’s the biggest single cost apart from staff – and extend loan terms for landlords, because if they can’t get their rent for nine months, they can’t repay the debt for the premises. If they have borrowed, they should get a nine-month repayment break. It should be pushed back onto the banks – they can handle nine months of not having loans repaid.
Of the longer-term, he added:
I don’t see anybody doing well. Nobody will do well out of the crisis. I think there will be even more empty high street sites. My next business will probably have to be something outside the hospitality industry. Certainly, the business I’m in – large-capacity venues – I don’t see coming back until there’s a vaccine, which is a year or maybe 18 months away. Maybe I’ll take a year off and come back in the way that music festivals will have to. We needed a shake-up as an industry, but we didn’t need one so brutal.
That, to a large extent, the business model of a lot of hospitality businesses is hopelessly flawed. It’s ridiculously fragile, the margins are far too slim and it’s just not sustainable. We were fucked after 10 days to two weeks of no and low income.
I think there’s going to be a lot of reflection and soul-searching and realising that, despite these brilliant things we do as individuals and businesses, if the business model doesn’t stack up, you’ve got to find another way or find something else to do.
We can’t pay people what we need to pay them, we can’t pay the rent, we can’t deal with business rates at this level and with VAT at 20%. It’s just insane. Everybody wants something for nothing. In hospitality we always try to deliver, but this has made us realise we can’t deliver the impossible or the unsustainable.
Since its inception, The Steeple Times has advocated the premise of ‘use it or lose it’ for bars and restaurants and today we join Jonathan Downey in calling for #NationalRentFree and #NationalTimeOut. Now, we must all unite in coming together to support our favourite establishments as otherwise, just like many of us found with the closure of the very much missed La Brasserie in South Kensington in March 2017, we’ll again be left crying into our caipirinhas with nowhere to go.
‘The Steeple Times’ asks readers to name the brilliantly batshit bonkers bird spotted gyrating in front of Chelsea shop windows during the coronavirus lockdown
Spotted on both the Fulham Road and Kings in Chelsea in recent days, a sometimes lycra-clad lady has been spotted by beady eyed readers gyrating in the glistening windows of empty shops. In days of old, we had ‘Widow Twanky’ and in days of coronavirus lockdown, we’ve got ‘Window Twerky.’
Presumably using said elevations as the mirror in which she can celebrate her very own maniac moves, little else is known about this non-conformist. Today, therefore, we ask anyone in the know to send in this wonderfully wacky woman’s name. We would like to contact her and push her forward to Simon Cowell for an audition as he will undoubtedly join in giving an almighty ‘YES!’
The Steeple Times joins those suggesting that this wacky wonder deserves wider public accolade and also a thank you for bringing joy to all who’ve witnessed her Fifty Shadesof Crazy antics during this Strictly insane time. Bring on yet more batshit bonkers as, after all, that’s what the Kings Road was always meant to be all about.
Rock on ‘Window Twerky’ – Your nation needs you!
With thanks to Claire Rubinstein and Tom Griffiths for first sharing ‘Window Twerky’ at-work on their Instagram stories.
Self-absorbed Alexa Chung isn’t worrying about people dying from coronavirus; she’s too busy moaning about people not focusing on the real her
“The human” Alexa Chung can be relied upon to make utterly everything about herself.
Earlier this month, the “fashion genius” and “belle of the ball” revealed that she begged David and Victoria Beckham to talk to her at a party. Of the encounter, this strange woman bizarrely told the Mail on Sunday’s ‘Talk of the Town’ column: “I said: ‘I know you have a lot of money, but I’ll pay you anything to talk to me right now.’ And they were really nice.” The trick plainly worked – as Miss Chung got the column inches she plainly so desperately so craves.
Now with no one in their right mind wanting to talk to the very wealthy Beckhams – who’ve quite deservedly joined the ranks of the pariahs of the coronavirus pandemic due to their shameless attempts to get the state to bailout their failing businesses – Chung yesterday moved on to share her latest woe in order to garner a few more words in print.
“The only thing people want to know about her is what it’s like having the same name as Amazon’s [Alexa]” stated ‘Talk of the Town,’ before concluding: “Unsurprisingly, she’s getting a bit fed up.” Chung – whom (as you do) loves “people-watching” in airports and “Googling pictures of Jane Birkin” at breakfast – herself added: “This is the most frequently asked question in my life.” Ah, diddums!
Matthew Steeples highlights three things that are keeping him going through coronavirus lockdown living (aside from not running out of gin)
Having found myself ensconced in East Anglia for five weeks now –never did I imagine myself staying in a rural place so long – and having not actually got into a car or visited a town in that period, I busy my days reading, writing and walking a bit. It’s been especially strange not to physically see friends and I can’t say I’ve fathomed ‘House Party,’ but my telephone device has certainly seen more Bob Hoskins-esque “It’s Good To Talk” action than ever before.
Whilst most people will tell you Netflix has been their best source of entertainment during this period and I will most certainly join them in commending ‘binge watching’ Ozark, I’ve found time to do things that I’ve always put-off such as clear out my iPhone’s address book and chuck out paperwork I’m never going to actually get round to dealing with. It’s been a time to read and reflect and an opportunity to listen to music a little more often and here follows a few other ‘lockdown discoveries’ of mine that you might find useful:
Harvey Nichols
Nobody would imagine that Patsy and Edina’s favourite shop, Harvey Nichols, would be the bargain food and drink store of the lockdown, but given they don’t charge for next-day delivery wherever you are in the UK and there’s no minimum spend, here is an unbeatable service. Unlike some greedy online booze retailers (some of whom have actually increased their prices and introduced preposterously high delivery charges to coincide with us all being stuck at home), you can get a bottle of the heather-hinted, 43% ABV Edinburgh Gin for just £32, a jar of highly addictive ginger and chilli jam for £3.95 or an utterly delicious asparagus and shrimp risotto that feeds two for just £5.95. Add half a glass of white wine and Bob’s Your Uncle and Fanny’s Your Aunt.
Podcasts and Radio Plays
I’ve become addicted to true crime podcasts such as Murder Mile (in spite of the most recent one I listened to being about the appalling murder of my late friend Robert Troyan in Mount Street Mayfair in 2013) in the last weeks. An especially gritty and somewhat grim example is The Clearing, an eight-episode serialisation based on the crimes of the American serial killer Ed Edwards (AKA ‘Wayne’ Edwards) that has been lauded by the Guardian as “an immense achievement.”
Equally gripping, if you haven’t heard it already (I’m listening to it for a second time), is BBC Radio 4’s rerun of GF Newman’s The Corrupted. Featuring a fictional dodgy MP interacting with real political figures from the past including Margaret Thatcher and Douglas Hurd, here is something for political geeks to get their teeth into before the ‘B-word’ again raises its ugly head once coronavirus fades into the background.
‘The Quiz’ on Facebook
Some of us were already playing before orders to stay indoors arrived, but the ‘Quiz Planet’ app on Facebook has proved a charming way to interact with friends from near and afar. Some of the questions do border on the inane and others have induced a Major Charles Ingram-esque cough on my part, but if you want to while away the hours, do sign up and if you want someone to thrash, try challenging me.
And Then… What’s Next?
Most of all, of course, what will really keep you going through all this is this: A day will soon come when you’ll again be eating, drinking and being merry with your nearest and dearest at your very favourite establishment. Whether you fancy fish and chips or a bottle of Chablis (or both), it’ll come and it’ll come not a moment too soon.
For now, do heed the words of the late Mr Hoskins: “What men call chatter, really does matter. It’s about being a friend. Having the time to listen. It’s what makes the world goes round.” Call a friend or, if you’re not a technophobe like me, ‘give’ them a Zoom.
A promoter of “causes many of us now take for granted,” Catford born campaigner and humanist activist Barbara Smoker believed in surviving “on her wits” and “making an extra bit on the horses.” She once “embark[ed] on a crusade around the neighbourhood, telling all the kids that there was no Santa Claus… [so that she could prove to them] they were being made fools of, and I was only saving them from this indignity” and amongst her many other pronouncements was to announce that “an eternity in heaven – that would be hell.” Pro-alphabet reformist Smoker also claimed to have manufactured the first ‘Make Love, Not War’ badges and in 2013 gave the following advice in The Oldie: “Don’t always be obedient. Obedience is overrated. You’ve got to work out your morality for yourself, not do everything you’re told. Obedience can be more of a vice than a virtue.” Amongst her written works were My Godforsaken Life and Good God! A String of Verses to Tie Up the Deity.
