Anthony Smart explores the background to ten of the world’s most expensive food and drink products
Whilst Aldo Gucci once said that “quality is remembered long after price is forgotten,” some of the most expensive food and drinks products out there are very, very expensive with good reason.
Topping the list of steeply priced foods and drinks are items that are made with scarcely available ingredients or produced in peculiar ways that might be labour or time intense, or indeed both.
If you can stomach the outlay involved, here are ten of the most expensive food and drink products you might wish to add to your shopping list:
Almas caviar (as much as £40,000 per kilogram)
The world’s highest value caviar is known as Almas and harvested from albino beluga sturgeon eggs taken from the South Caspian Sea. It is so highly priced mainly because it is considered the “rarest of the rare” caviars and the process of harvesting it is laborious.
Alba white truffle (approximately £8,800 per kilogram)
Another pricey treasure is the Alba white truffle, which originates from Piedmont in Italy. Valued for the depth of flavour it provides; it is in high demand, but very difficult to grow due to its unique climate and soil needs.
Matsutake mushrooms (approximately £1,760 per kilogram)
The Japanese value matsutake mushrooms (pine mushrooms) for their distinctive aroma and flavour. This especially hard-to-find fungus, which can go for £800 a pound (around £1,760 a kilo), are wild foraged, not farmed, and require very particular growth conditions. In 2020, they were added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species for the first time.
Kobe beef (approximately £352 per kilogram)
Kobe beef is raised in Hyōgo prefecture in Japan, using a particular breed of Wagyu cattle. This beef can be sold for £160 per pound (around £352 per kilogram) because of its fat marbling and tenderness, according to Lottoland’s guide. One factor that adds to its high price is the strict regulation of its production and its limited supply.
Elvish honey is also known as ‘Fairy Honey’ and considered “the densest, highest and most magical honey harvested in the north-east Black Sea. It is cultivated “high in the untouched mountains of Arhavi and produced by a colony of Caucasian wild bees that pollinate from medicinal, endemic herbs and plants.”Almas caviar is lauded as “boasting the rich buttery notes of fresh beluga, enhanced by a natural aroma that is entirely its own.” The albino beluga sturgeon must reach the age of 100 years before its eggs can finally be harvested and the result is said to be a “caviar of breathtaking beauty, with a brilliant ethereal white hue that sparkles like diamonds.”Matsutake mushrooms are prized in Japanese cuisine for their distinct, spicy aroma. Whilst abundant in the country until the 1940s, the annual harvest of matsutake in Japan itself is now less than 1,000 tonnes per year – which has resulted in their price rocketing.Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of crocus sativus. It is used as a seasoning and colouring agent in food and is the world’s costliest spice by weight.
Saffron (approximately £8,800 per kilogram)
Often referred to as ‘red gold,’ saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, going for roughly £4,000 a pound (£8,800 a kilogram). It has a premium price because harvesting saffron is very labour-intensive, needing thousands of crocus flowers for a small number of saffron threads.
Bluefin tuna sushi (as much as £250,000 per fish)
At the top end of sushi cuisine, particularly in Japan, is bluefin tuna. This beautiful fish can touch six feet in length and weigh hundreds of pounds. With individual fish going for upwards of £250,000 at auction, the prices have rocketed because of overfishing and endangered species status. Seafood lovers will appreciate the deep flavour and texture.
Kopi luwak coffee (approximately £1,100 per kilogram)
Kopi luwak is the priciest coffee in the world, costing approximately £500 per pound (£1,100 per kilogram). Made from coffee beans that are consumed and then excreted by civets, this speciality coffee is fermented in the digestive system of these animals, which adds to its flavour.
Ibérico ham (between £400 to £5,500 per leg)
Ibérico ham is Spanish cured ham made from free-range Ibérico pigs fed on acorns during the ‘montanero’ period (October to February). Prices can range from £400 to more than £5,500 depending on grade and quality and the process of ageing can take a number of years. Its umami taste is rich and is in demand for gourmet goods.
Elvish honey (around £4,500 per kilogram)
This ‘elixir’ is harvested under challenging conditions in Turkey and can reach a price of around £4,500 per kilogram. The steep cost is largely due to the specialised environment in which this ‘precious nectar’ is produced on the north-east Black Sea and the laborious process of harvesting it; honey hunters need to work extremely hard to access the hives and walk for eight hours to reach the ‘safeguard tree’ once per year.
Densuke watermelon (upto £5,000 each)
The Densuke watermelon, prized for its unique black skin, is only cultivated on Hokkaido Island in Japan. As there are only about 10,000 harvested each year, these watermelons can fetch as much as £5,000 each at auction.
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.
Matthew Steeples takes a look at a £36 million Kensington mansion formerly owned by disgraced business tycoons Alan Bond and Lord Black; its former chatelaine was known for stating “I have an extravagance that know no bounds”
Sir Winston Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames once described the buccaneering businessman and media tycoon Lord Black of Crossharbour as “London’s biggest bore unhung” whilst his wife, Lady Black – better known as the author and journalist Barbara Amiel – was suggested to be just a “rich bitch” by Sarah Sands in a “case for the defence” article in the Independent in October 2006.
“Poster boy for the 80s” turned fraudster and jailbird Alan Bond (1938 – 2015) was an English-Australian businessman equally Marmite-like in being liked or loathed and now a Kensington mansion owned for a time by both subsequently disgraced businessmen is once again for sale.
14 Cottesmore Gardens, formerly known as 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens, was purchased by Alan Bond’s Satellite Group for £7 million in the 1980s and sold by administrators of that business to Conrad Black and his wife for the knockdown sum of just £3.5 million in 1992.
Plain old Mr and Mrs Black (as they then were) lavished further millions – some of which came from the company Hollinger International, Inc., which ultimately resulted in their downfall – on the double fronted 19th century mansion and used it for entertaining on a lavish scale. Guests, including the likes of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, Joan Collins, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, Peter Mandelson and Tony Blair, were said to flock to the parties they gave there, but in 2005 these gatherings of upto 400 people at a time came to an almighty end.
Forced to sell at a bargain basement price of just £13.1 million on an ask of £17.5 million as the Canadian born billionaire faced jail time in America, Lord and Lady Black’s tenure was over and the residence saw its “arriviste torch” passed to Juan and Adriana Villalonga, a couple described as “a Mexican telecom czar and his beauty-queen wife.” Of what came next, The Globe And Mail’s Paul Waldie pointedly penned in February 2007: “[They] quickly erased many of the features that the Blacks prized.”
Once again for sale as of April 2023, the value of 14 Cottesmore Gardens has again been deemed to have substantially risen. Knight Frank offer the 12,310 square foot, five-storey residence at a punchy price of £36 million and laud it as “imposing” and “presented in good order throughout.” They add that a “pre-planning consultation” has found that further accommodation could be added that would take the internal space to more than 15,000 square feet; business barons with deep pockets only need apply.
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.
Pictured Top – 54-foot wide 14 Cottesmore Gardens is described by selling agents Knight Frank as “offering lateral living so often requested but so hard to find in central London.” They neglect to mention that with its hedges cut back to the minimum, the place actually looks extremely forlorn.
Flamboyant Lord and Lady Black dressed as Cardinal Richelieu and Marie Antoinette for a party at Kensington Palace in 2000. For a time, the couple employed 17 butlers (if Tom Bower is to be believed) and had two private jets and homes – aside from the 19th Cottesmore Gardens mansion – in New York, Palm Beach and Toronto. “Guests packed into their parties at Cottesmore Gardens,” Bower remarked in his 2006 book the couple, adding: “Amiel was a big spender… Under the control of senior butler Andrew Lightwood, second butler Peter Wilson and a succession of third butlers, Amiel’s life in Kensington had become what her constantly changing staff called ‘bizarre.’ Each recruit was taken by Lightwood on an introductory tour of the house, ending on the roof. ‘Make sure the landing lights are on at all times,’ instructed Lightwood solemnly, ‘because Madame takes off from here on her broomstick looking for cats. She needs the lights to guide her return.’ His face would crack into a smile. ‘Most important, take care that she never sees you. She hates seeing any of us.’ Amiel’s eccentricity demanded that her staff hid whenever she approached, diving into cupboards if necessary, and never entered her quarters when she was present. Every day, all the bed linen was changed and subjected to ‘the penny test.’ A coin was dropped onto the sheets. If it failed to bounce they were not drawn sufficiently tight. Every cushion was arranged to a precise pre-ordained position, and each towel placed exactly as Amiel had predetermined. ‘Andrew!’ she screamed down the telephone on one memorable occasion, ‘the towels are in the wrong place!’ Lightwood, as Amiel knew, was in New York, but he was expected to telephone the staff in the house in London to rectify the error. ‘You f**king pillock!’ she yelled at another member of staff for reading her ‘Daily Mail’ before it was delivered to her.”Barbara Amiel Black (or ‘Lady Black’ as she prefers to be known) in her drawing room at Cottesmore Gardens (pictured). Of her, Sarah Sands on Lord and Lady Black in the ‘Independent’ in October 2006 opined: “Conrad and Barbara in their monstrous, glamorous way, knew how to throw parties. The talk was of geo-politics and hemlines. Nowadays, we scorn their extravagance and doubt the source of their wealth with prune-faced hindsight. Meanwhile, everyone is sucking up to Russians…. Barbara would disingenuously begin her midnight calls to me by saying in her low, breathy voice: ‘I hope I am not disturbing you.’ She would then offer little glimpses of her own home life. I remember her mentioning that Conrad Black was upstairs playing with his fleet of toy gun ships in the bath… I remember her examining an exhibition of doll’s houses at the Chelsea Flower Show and sighing how restful it would be to live in this cosy little home. How she envied people in small houses. The burden of wealth was one of her more dangerous fantasies. At one of her Gatsby-style parties in Kensington, she flinched at the elaborate canapés on offer: ‘Really, all I want is a sausage,’ she said, piteously. Then, she ran a hand down her inconceivably expensive dress and whispered: ‘I hate these parties, I am so shy.’ Later, I was invited to her boudoir, where she lay on cushion surrounded by her women friends. She was Kensington’s Cleopatra, surrounded by maidens such as the designer and Forte daughter Olga Polizzi, the political thinker Tessa Keswick and the writer Miriam Gross.”The very same drawing room at 14 Cottesmore Gardens today. The décor is now somewhat more modern and less ‘classical country house-ified.’ It’s certainly more Soho Farmhouse than Alberto Pinto in style; it is currently a space that the former Meghan Markle would feel more at home than say, perhaps, the likes of Lord and Lady Black’s chum Ghislaine Maxwell and her fellow noxious nonce Ponzi scheming paedophile boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein. Mr Pinto was responsible, it should be noted, for the designs of most of Epstein’s residences.The front elevation of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens during the era it was owned by Lord and Lady Black.Multiple entries for Lord and Lady Black during the time they owned 14 Cottesmore Gardens appeared in the ‘Little Black Book’ address book often attributed as being that of the friends and associates of Jeffrey Epstein, but that featured more of the contacts of Ghislaine Maxwell in fact. In October 2020, Barbara Amiel took revenge on the pension pot plunderer’s padeophile sex trafficker daughter by featuring her in her “score-settling” memoir ‘Friends & Enemies: A Life in Vogue, Prison, & Park Avenue.” Maxwell had “dumped” Lady Black when Lord Black was being investigated for fraud. She wrote of their last meeting: “We were friends – so putting on my ‘So good to see you’ face, I headed for her. She bolted. Turned that sharp tight little turn when you really want to get away. And that was it.” Of the clear lover of plastic surgery Lady Black, in October 2020, Sarah Sands remarked in ‘The Mail on Sunday’: “She had a bohemian, almost masculine, view of opportunistic sex. She describes, for instance, accompanying an early love in his white Triumph sports car ‘in which once or twice I had performed fellatio to the fascination of passing truck drivers, all for fun.’”After getting out of the clink in 2012, Lord and Lady Black decided to go back on the ‘razzle-dazzle’ and posed for photographers before heading back to London to party with friends. In May 2019, the rambunctious peer arrogantly announced he’d be returning to the House of Lords after President Donald Trump pardoned and praised him. Commenting, of this pardon, Lord Black declared: “I’m not bitter… Officially in the United States, I’ve never been charged and I won in the end. It was a war and there are casualties in wars. I lost the time, I lost a lot of money, but as you can see my standards of living isn’t bad… The truth is, these, last 15 years, I haven’t been as interested in British politics as I was before – in the Thatcher years. It could be quite interesting again, in fact it is as of right now – it’s very interesting… It’s my good fortune that at a time when it is feasible, it happens – by happy coincidence – that it is a time of great fermentation in British public affairs.” Surprisingly, he doesn’t seem to have turned up on occasions since.The previous owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens, Alan Bond (1938 – 2015), will forever be remembered as “Australia’s most notorious corporate criminal.” Born in Hammersmith, London, Bond’s first crime occurred when he was charged with theft aged 14 in Fremantle in Australia and whilst he is remembered for bankrolling the successful challenge for the 1983 America’s Cup, it is for causing the then biggest corporate collapse in Australian history that he will be go down in history. Former Miss Mexico Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros (at the time Adriana Villalonga) bought the house in 2005. She divorced the Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga in 2009 and married the French businessman Emmanuel Schreder in Ibiza in June 2013. In August 2014, the magazine ‘Quién’ featured the model and television presenter on its cover and at that time she described her new husband as “the love of my life.”Madrid born Juan Villalonga became the joint owner of 14 Cottesmore Gardens with his then wife Adriana Abascal – the couple were married between 2000 and 2009 – in 2005. He is listed on Companies House as being a director of the now dissolved Medikidz Foundation at the address between August 2009 and November 2013. Married since 2011 to a photographer named Vanessa Von Zitewitz, Mr Villalonga was a partner at McKinsey & Company in the 1980s, CEO for Credit Suisse First Boston and Bankers Trust in Spain in the early 1990s and CEO of Telefónica from 1996 to 2000. He was named as one of the best performing chief executive officers in the world by ‘Harvard Business Review’ in 2010 and is also linked to addresses in Monaco.
The Names & Numbers – 14 Cottesmore Gardens (formerly known as ’12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens’), Kensington, London, W8 5PR, United Kingdom
April 2023 – Offered for sale for £36 million ($44.4 million, €40.9 million or درهم163.2 million) through Knight Frank. Valued on Homipi at an upper sum of £28.558 million ($35.250 million, €32.440 million or درهم129.456 million).
2009 – Mr and Mrs Villalonga divorce and subsequently Adriana Abascal married Emmanuel Schreder, a French businessman, in Ibiza in June 2013.
2005 – Sold by Lord and Lady Black for £13.1 million ($16.2 million, €14.9 million or درهم59.4 million) to Spanish businessman Juan Villalonga Navarro and Mexican model, Miss Mexico winner and television presenter Adriana Abascal López-Cisneros Villalonga.
October 2004 – Placed for sale for £17.5 million ($21.6 million, €19.9 million or درهم79.3 million) according to NZ Herald.
January 2004 – Valued at £14 million ($17.3 million, €15.9 million or درهم63.5 million) according to The Globe And Mail. At the time, the “mansion” in “the upscale Kensington neighbourhood” was described as having “10 bedrooms, 6 bathrooms and a swimming pool.”
Featured also in The Guardian in an article by Chris Tryhorn. Quoting Lord Black, he shared: “At a certain price, anything is for sale. [It has] been shown to people in the not-too-distant-past.”
Going further, Tryhorn added: “Artwork from the 18th and 19th centuries lines the walls, and there is plenty of storage space for the extensive wardrobe and shoe collection of Lord Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, who famously declared once that her ‘extravagence knows no bounds.’ … It was originally two homes and one of the two original front doors is now a ‘deliveries’ entrance. He has used it in the past to host dinners with butler and maid service that was part-paid by Hollinger.”
Also in 2004, in a profile in The Spectator, Peter Oborne wrote:
“Every year the Blacks threw two parties, one at Christmas and one summer event, at their double-fronted 11-bedroom mansion in Cottesmore Gardens. Everybody who mattered at the time went: Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Goldsmith, James Hanson, Arnold Weinstock, Jacob Rothschild, royalty, the playwright Tom Stoppard.”
“Some of these, injudiciously as it turned out, agreed to join the main Hollinger board. The luckier ones – Peter Carrington, Robert Salisbury – got away with being made directors of TheTelegraph. As the Tories faded out, Labour ministers started to arrive, the indefatigable Peter Mandelson, David Blunkett and other ministers eager to ingratiate themselves with the Tory press. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent were assiduous in attendance. In London, the Nineties belonged to the Blacks. They were London’s most glamorous power couple.”
“There had been a time when both Blacks had kept their feet on the ground. This ceased to be the case. One evening Barbara Black rang Charles Moore panic-stricken from her Kensington home. There had been a last-minute drop-out from one of the famous Black dinner parties. ‘I’m short of a woman,’ she told Moore. Moore surveyed the newsroom. His gaze alighted on the journalist Eleanor Mills, by chance the stepdaughter of the Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell.”
“An hour later, hastily groomed, made-up and brushed, Mills was sipping pre-dinner drinks in Cottesmore Gardens. Then disaster struck. A male guest, Max Fisher, dropped out. Mills was approached by Conrad Black. ‘Finish your drink and skedaddle,’ he told her. Barbara Black then told her to go to the kitchen and out through the servants’ door, where the driver would pick her up and take her home.”
2001 – Conrad Black is elevated to a life peerage in the United Kingdom at the suggestion of Tony Blair. He sat on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords until 2007 as The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG, but took a “leave of absence” between 2012 and 2019.
28th May 1996 – The Royal Borough of Kensington And Chelsea ordered that 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens “shall be known and described” simply instead as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.
Mid 1990s – The Blacks set about renovating 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens with the help of J. E. Evans Associates. Of the work in October 2006, The Sunday Times shared a segment of Tom Bower’s 2006 hatchet job Conrad and Lady Black that read: “Amiel vowed to create a palace that would attract celebrity worshipers of a power couple. Part of the first floor was to be removed to create a huge ground floor reception area.”
1992 – 12 and 14 Cottesmore Gardens sold by the administrators of the affairs of Alan Bond through estate agents Savills to media tycoon Conrad Black and his Watford born journalist wife Barbara Amiel Black for “well under the asking price” for a sum of £3.5 million ($4.3 million, €4 million or درهم15.9 million).
Mr Bond had been granted mortgages valued at £16.2 million ($20 million, €18.4 million or درهم73.5 million) on the property by Bell Satellite Services on the property along with two others at 4 and 16 Belgrave Mews in London, SW1 previously according to a report published by Financial Review in March 1990.
1991 – Rented to an American businessman for £6,000 per week ($7,400, €6,800 or درهم27,200 per week).
1990 – Placed in the hands of administrators of Mr Bond’s and placed for sale through Savills for a bargain basement sum of £3.8 million ($4.7 million, €4.3 million or درهم17.2 million) according to Financial Review.
1980s – Sold to Alan Bond’s Bell Satellite Group for £7 million ($8.6 million, €8 million or درهم31.7 million).
Circa 1905 – Walter Tapper is said to have “designed a library with handsome Arts and Crafts plasterwork (now removed) at the rear of the building.”
1869 – In their current marketing blurb, Knight Frank suggest: “There has been a house on the site of 12 – 14 Cottesmore Gardens since at least 1869. The current house has been altered, extended and most notably joined over the subsequent century and a half. With the local planning department strongly opposed to further amalgamation of homes, opportunities to acquire a house of this width will be rarer still in the future.”
1850s to 1860s – Built “under the direction of David Howell, of Serjeants Inn, Fleet Street.” Mr Howell was described in 1853 as an “articled clerk to a solicitor, lately carrying on business as a solicitor.” The architecture was lauded as: “Designed in a bold classical manner, with rather fleshy consoles and modillions… and bands of Vitruvian scroll between the bases of the ground-floor windows.”
More photographs of the £36 million mansion…
An entrance hall where power and privilege have most certainly mingled previously.The 54-foot wide drawing is lauded by selling realtors Knight Frank as “arguably the best room in the house” and “double aspect.” They add: “[It has] six windows overlooking the street and additional views over the private garden to the rear.”The columns where Barbara Amiel Black once posed for photographs remain, but the subsequent owners eliminated much of the 1990s ‘brash’ that had been installed by a Watford born woman whose excess clearly offended so many.This dining room, where Conrad Black hosted presidents and prime ministers, is now somewhat diminished. The table for eight looks completely out of place and a future owner would do well to install something a little grander.A double height entertaining space was installed at the insistence of the loftier-than-lofty Lady Black in the 1990s and it remains today. However, it is now currently being used for more casual affairs such as Netflix viewing rather than being the scene of something that you’d more likely find in the ‘House of Cards’ in fact.A new owner might reinstate the grandeur of the past; sadly, however, this seems unlikely and the purchaser is more likely to be a footballer or Internet tycoon than a super-connected business tycoon.This currently very dark and very depressing study would most certainly not appeal to the very clearly very, very bright yet very, very pompous The Right Honourable The Lord Black of Crossharbour KCSG – a man who is said to count Julius Caesar and Napoleon Bonaparte as “his military heroes.” Of him in July 1997, Mark Honigsbaum in the ‘Independent’ remarked: “Although Black’s grandfather had briefly been a business partner of Harold Harmsworth, the original Viscount Rothermere, it was from his father, George Montegu Black Jr, that Black learned the art of corporate warfare, the importance of historical perspective and that gambling provides a disappointing rate of return compared to the Dow Jones index… The young Conrad was precocious. At the age of eight he sank his life savings of $60 into a single share of General Motors. He also became obsessed with Napoleon, and would astound his father’s friends by reeling off details of campaigns. Another story has him washing dollar bills and hanging them out to dry on a line outside his father’s home in Toronto. The last is apocryphal – Black says he slipped in the mud and was cleaning his change – but the image of the young capitalist, wise beyond his years, is accurate. His childhood tutor, the historian Laurier LaPierre, once asked Black why he always seemed to have the air of someone waiting for something to happen… A few years ago, for instance, the rumour went round Fleet Street that Black had bought Napoleon’s preserved penis at an auction. Black denied it, but many remain convinced that Bonaparte’s body part sits in Black’s collection of military curios… Black is no philanderer and is devoted to his second wife, the former ‘Sunday Times’ columnist Barbara Amiel. They are said to be intellectual soul mates and the parties at their four-storey mansion in Kensington are famous for bringing together a cross-section of the great and good.”One could not imagine the likes of the late great Baroness Thatcher, for example, liking the idea of sitting in this extremely depressing and dark waiting area. A new owner would do well to obliterate a décor scheme that could have only been favoured by a completely colour blind banker.A room currently described as a ‘cinema room’ measures 28’6” by 21’6” and is situated at the rear of the house. One can imagine Conrad Black having sat here for hour upon hour watching historical dramas about Napoleon with the likes of chums such as the acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts, the gambling tycoon John Aspinall and the politician and diarist Alan Clark, but a new owner will be more likely next showing episodes of ‘Succession’ – based on ‘The Telegraph’ tycoon’s rival Rupert Murdoch – than viewing historical works one most definitely suspects.Dining whilst the staff cook would NEVER have been on the agenda in the era that pomposity reigned whilst Lady Black was chatelaine of 14 Cottesmore Gardens.A 2,000 square foot entire floor fit for a tycoon… The master bedroom suite of the house takes up the entirety of the second floor of the building. It incorporates not only the principal bedroom, but also a “his” dressing room and a “her” dressing room as well as a sitting area, a bathroom, a shower room and storage rooms. It has direct lift access and is bigger than the average Brit’s entire house.A dressing room in the house where Barbara Black opened up to ‘Vogue’ and displayed “closets overflowing with dazzling evening gowns, designer handbags and 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes. ‘I have an extravagance that knows no bounds,’ she famously declared. Unfortunately for Lady Black, the article was closely perused at investment company Tweedy, Browne, a Hollinger International shareholder.”This playroom certainly did not exist in the era that Lord and Lady Black owned the property. It would be more likely crammed with books or stuffed with Manolo Blahnik shoes than toys from Toys ‘R Us. A new owner may likely reinstate it as an additional bedroom or office or games room perhaps.The pool room measures 43’9” by 26’9” and is no doubt where Lady Black spent many an hour relaxing.The garden to the rear was where Lord and Lady Black hosted their annual summer party (with guests “spilling” into their drawing room also). In surprisingly Tardis-like fashion, the duo were able to supposedly squeeze in upto 400 guests at such occasions. Amongst those said to have enjoyed hospitality there were Joan Collins and of such, magazine publisher Nicholas Coleridge wrote: “If you get a kick out of milling about with present and former prime ministers, cabinet ministers, minor royals, dukes, editors, vastly rich Americans, distinguished historians, gossip columnists, playboys and lots of pretty ‘it’ girls, then this was the place to be.”The existing floor plan of the property illustrates the vast scale of the building offered. A buyer, Knight Frank observe, has additional options and “a pre-planning consultation has been carried out with RBKC by leading architects Studio Indigo.” They add: “[It] would completely reconfigure the house adding an additional basement floor and taking the internal space to more than 15,000 square foot. The resulting house would have a 40-foot by 41-foot south-facing rear garden.”A plan of the site as presented in 1996 when 12 and 14 became known just as 14 Cottesmore Gardens.
Pointless prattler Lady Victoria Hervey yet again cashes in on her connections with the deceased nonce Jeffrey Epstein and his mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell
Fresh from having spouted a bag of bollocks about coronavirus and admitting she “had no idea what was really going on” with her ex-lover Prince Andrew and a potential lover who thought her “too old” Jeffrey Epstein, contradictory cretin Lady Victoria Hervey is putting herself about on the interview circuit to bang on about Ghislaine Maxwell.
Going further and plainly after as much as she could ‘cheque in’ for her tacky tales, the ultimate ‘TwIt Girl’ and dimwitted dope Lady Victoria reminisced also about Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘little black address book’ and claimed her incarcerated chum was “very pally” and “at ease” with Bill Clinton also.
Described by the by contrast lovely, late Tara Palmer-Tomkinson as “unpleasant” and “a right snob” previously, cash craving Lady Victoria cryptically concluded:
“Ghislaine always struck me as someone full of life and was always jetting around somewhere fabulous. She always had this air of mystery. She never gave away too much but she gave away enough you wanted to find out more.”
What must be remembered is this: Ludicrous lush Lady Victoria Hervey hasn’t actually seen Ghislaine Maxwell in years. Of their last meeting, she previously ridiculously and completely incorrectly remarked: “I don’t think anyone is going to find her. She’s gone far away. She’s a bit like a James Bond character. She’s quite a unique person and I don’t believe anyone is going to find her… I don’t think we will ever see her again, it’s going to be like Robert Maxwell continued; she will continue that family mystery.” Nobody will be hiring her as a clairvoyant anytime soon. Next!
Pictured top: Party princess turned pokey inmate Ghislaine Maxwell (left) and her blowjob educated subject Lady Victoria Hervey munching on an ice cream (right).
Classic clangers from former ‘It Girl’ Lady Victoria Hervey
“I am Lady Victoria Hervey – it doesn’t get more British than that.”
“Fuck BLM [Black Lives Matter].”
“Unless it’s champagne, I can’t handle it.”
“I’m an A-list celebrity and this is a C-list party.”
“I do have a day job.”
“My career always goes much better when I haven’t got a man.”
“A baby is easy – you hand them over to a nanny!”
“I’m kind of into star signs and I want my baby to have a sign that’s compatible with mine. It’s to plan though… We’ll just have to see… We’ll do the embryos and then I’ll figure out which month I’d like the baby to be born.”
“I’m not stupid. I’m not a dumb model.”
“[I aim to become] the next Kate Winslet – but with class.”
“I have had four past lives, three of them as a man. I was a composer in 17th-century Paris, I made materials in India and in Ancient Greece I was a famous politician. In Ancient Egypt I was keeper of the oils for the Pharaoh’s wife, and I love oils so it all kind of fits.”
“I feel I’ve aged 100 years in lockdown. I’ve had Botox, of course.”
“What annoys me is when these families have got like 12 children and we’re paying for these kids… They work out that they make more money being on the dole than having a job, they just laze around.”
“The real irony of this is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.”
“Travelling is in my blood, and so is liking luxurious things and spending.”
“I haven’t given up on men, there are a few of them around, but I keep leaving every city I meet them in.”
“Everyone from Europe wants to buy houses in LA.”
“I was too old for Jeffrey Epstein… [He seemed] very charming… He was a very well-liked guy.”
“I’m not one of those kind of girls, I don’t like going to dinners with ten models invited… I was very young and impressionable, Jeffrey was a very charismatic man.”
“I haven’t seen [Ghislaine Maxwell] since September [2018] at a friend’s baby shower… I don’t think anyone is going to find her. She’s gone far away. She’s a bit like a James Bond character. She’s quite a unique person and I don’t believe anyone is going to find her… I don’t think we will ever see her again, it’s going to be like Robert Maxwell continued; she will continue that family mystery.”
“I had no idea what was going on [with Jeffrey Epstein]… It’s extraordinary it’s the case, it’s a wild story.”
“I suddenly thought, I’m just Victoria Hervey… Horrible.”
“I don’t want to make enemies.”
Most people wouldn’t brag about being linked to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, but Lady Victoria has gone as far as to brag that he rejected her.Lady Victoria (or ‘Lady V’ to those who consider this noxious nuisance a mate) has suddenly become an expert on Ghislaine Maxwell. One is simply left wondering how much she’s been paid for what is frankly not so relevant testimony about the mucky madam.
‘Tatler’ magazine called out for suggesting a Chelsea restaurant that closed down in August 2016 as a “hot spot” post ‘Lockdown 3.0’ ending in May 2021
A “tattler” is an “observer or spectator… a gossip who tells tales,” whilst ‘THE’ Tatler is defined by the Oxford Learners’ Dictionary as “a British magazine, published once a month and containing articles about upper-class and upper-middle-class social events, fashion and the arts.”
Given the Condé Nast lifestyle publication’s staff – amongst them previously the current editor of the Daily Mail, Geordie Greig, and the ex-editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Tina Brown CBE – have variously included many Oxbridge alumni, one would assume they’d be a little better at fact checking than the notoriously sloppy seconds employed by the MailOnline (which is rated 1 out of 5 by the Microsoft Edge browser given its propensity to share fake news), but instead a recent edition of the monthly society bible featured a complete balls-up.
“[Brasserie Gustave at 4 Sydney Street, London, SW3 6PP is] located at the exact point where South Ken meets Chelsea (and on a site that has seen more restaurants than Ramires has had yellow cards), this French bistro is a keeper. If the art-deco posters look a bit hackneyed, not to say banal, the food is anything but. It’s fresh and lively, classic French dishes prepared with punctilious attention to detail. Confit de canard is superb and you won’t find a better plate of kidneys in London. Great wines too, managed with gusto by experienced sommelier Richard Weiss.”
Whilst of their thirteen selections, the loathed by Dan Wootton magazine prattled: “We’ve eaten our way around Chelsea’s top restaurants… We’ve got you covered,” a comment on OpenTable from as long ago 22nd August 2016 reads: “I made a reservation and got there and the restaurant was closed.” Plainly, anyone with half a brain would have realised five years ago that Brasserie Gustave turned out actually to be anything but “a keeper.”
In the time since, Tatler’s editorial team also missed their very own one-time contributor Giles Coren’s visit to 4 Sydney Street on 15th July 2017. At that time, he lauded “pan-Asian” Zheng Chelsea as “the sort of places foodies go in quest of the new and wonderful.”
Pictured top: 4 Sydney Street has been various restaurants over the years including Carpaccio, Sette, Marco Pierre White’s Sydney Street Grill, Brasserie Gustave and most recently Zheng Chelsea.
The magazine’s May 2020 feature on Brasserie Gustave – a restaurant that closed in August 2016.In August 2016, an OpenTable user commented: “I made a reservation for [Brasserie Gustave] on Open Table and got there and the restaurant was closed.”The front elevation of Zheng Chelsea, 4 Sydney Street, Chelsea, London, SW3 6PP.The interior of the restaurant as it used to be during the era that Brasserie Gustave (left) occupied the site and as it has been since circa 2016 as “pan-Asian” Zheng Chelsea (right). Of food there, in July 2017, Giles Coren remarked: “Food this good and this unusual would normally never be found in Chelsea… Chelsea is not absolutely the last place in the entire world that I would go looking for brilliant authentic Malaysian cooking, but it comes close. What with the well-upholstered complacency of the locals, the lack of any significant oriental population, the high throughput of tourists and idle shoppers in need of plasticky chain food, the sky-high rents and concomitant historical lack of any decent restaurants here at all, Chelsea is perhaps the second last place in the known universe that I would go in expectation of fiery, original, challenging but entirely successful Straits Chinese cuisine.”The society go-to title was previously accused of a “swathe of inaccuracies and false misrepresentations” in May 2020 by Kensington Palace after it published an article about one-time friend of its current editor, Richard Dennen (pictured together right), the Duchess of Cambridge titled “Catherine the Great.”
Boxy “Town Hall classical style” dictator crib ‘The Fountains’ on infamous The Bishops Avenue, N2 for sale for £3 million less than it listed for in 2012; this time it is destined for flattening
When we featured a 12,602 square foot house on The Bishops Avenue – a street often nicknamed ‘Billionaire’s Row” and a place where the Greek fashion tycoon Aristos Constantinou was shot dead on New Year’s Day 1985 with six bullets – in May 2015, it was for sale for £15 million.
Standing on a 0.65-acre plot, ‘The Fountains’ – originally named ‘Deans Cote’ and more simply known as just ‘39 The Bishops Avenue’ – has simply been left to rot in the time since and has now been placed on the market, but this time listed as just “land for sale.”
Gone, here, are the day of deviant dignitaries and dodgy despots entertaining in this house – built in 1926 and mocked more recently as “very boxy” and of a “Town Hall classical style” – and now, though much of the same furniture remains six years later, Knight Frank offer it for £12 million.
In spite of the £3 million reduction at a time when prices for houses with land has elsewhere risen, the seller has also spent time and money to gain planning permission to flatten the house and replace it with a larger 23,695 square foot “grand new build residence.”
Of the proposals, Knight Frank remark:
“The designs elevate the quality of the internal accommodation, offering increased lateral volume and a luxurious sense of space throughout.”
“The proposed residence comprises six-bedroom suites and a new lower ground floor with staff quarters and a range of additional amenity and leisure facilities including swimming pool, gym, cinema, catering kitchen and secure car parking.”
“The proposed landscaping for the private rear gardens includes a sensitive restoration of the historic water feature and pavilion.”
In 2014, whilst the Guardian revealed that of the 66 houses on the street, 16 were derelict and rotting, local estate agent Trevor Abrahmsohn bragged of it in 2006: “Among the wealthiest circles in the world, The Bishops Avenue is better known than Buckingham Palace. It’s a significant demonstration of status. If you live there, you don’t need to explain to people that you’re rich.”
When the house was marketed in 2012, Knight Frank made specific reference to the house having “majilis” or “private places where guests, usually male, are received and entertained.” Goodness knows, however, who was received in this airport sized room, but it certainly looks like a place that would have suited Saddam Hussein a treat.
The Numbers – The Fountains, 39 The Bishops Avenue, Hampstead Garden Suburb, London, N2 0BA, United Kingdom
April 2021 – Offered for sale for £12 million ($16.6 million, €13.9 million or درهم61 million) with planning permission to demolish and replace through Knight Frank’s Hampstead office.
May 2015 – Offered for sale for £15 million ($20.8 million, €17.3 million or درهم76.2 million) through Knight Frank and Glentree on behalf of executors of persons unnamed.
Today, instead of lauding its gaudy past, Knight Frank share this mockup of an even larger mansion that could replace the existing 1926-built structure.Another mockup shows the proposed replacement from the rear.The current entrance hall is somewhere the 1980s soap opera ‘Dynasty’s’ Alexis Colby (played by Joan Collins) would certainly feel in ecstasy.The entrance is dominated by balconies and plenty of gold paint.Acres of marble were used throughout the existing structure.There’s plenty of filthy shagpile too.The dining room today retains the very same table that was there in 2015. It’s certainly got enough seats for even the likes of Mohammed bin Salman even to host an interrogation with David Cameron and Lex Greenskill.A corridor leading to the main “majali.”The “majali” has been cleared of furnishings, but retains a few tacky chandeliers and columns.The decrepit kitchen is an area that would not exactly appeal to Nigella Lawson or Delia Smith even.The master bedroom has fallen into decline and features a carpet dotted with brown stains and a filthy looking pair of beds.Another bedroom resembles something out of an OAP home.The master bathroom has retained its frankly hideous murals.The “majalis” from above with an overgrown ‘patio’ separating them.The garden is somewhat neglected, but not nearly in as bad a condition as those of some of the neighbouring mansions.Supposedly, these fountains are of historic value. At the moment, they’re just a tip.The existing floor plans.The proposed plans for the ground and basement levels include a new swimming pool, gym and cinema room.Plans for the first floor and a new second floor.Barratt Homes on steroids – The Fountains, 39 The Bishops Avenue, London, N2 as it was in 2015.
Barrister Rebecca Sabben-Clare’s attempt to muzzle the media by citing the Cliff Richard case rather than muzzling her snarling dog shows her to be an utter disgrace
Those close to the seemingly supposedly “exceptionally bright” yet plainly actually just irresponsible barrister Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC ludicrously claimed Toby, her “snarling” terrier-cross, to be “sweet” and a “friendly pet” in the wake of it savagely causing the death of a “defenceless” seal nicknamed ‘Freddie Mercury.’
Just like giraffe slayer Merelize van der Merwe, who attempted to justify being gifted the “opportunity” to mercilessly slay an innocent giraffe by her husband for Valentine’s Day, wealthy and “fearless” Sabben-Clare opted to try to silence those outraged in the wake of the incident rather than taking responsibility for what the beast she owns had done.
A selfish self-preservationist rather than a seal conservationist, Sabben-Clare – who lives in a £6 million ‘mansion’ near the scene of her dastardly dog’s sick savagery – didn’t stick around for long to help at the scene of the mauling and later pompously declared: “I left for my own safety and that of my dog… There was nothing that I could do.”
Meanwhile, immediately concerned for her own reputation, Sabben-Clare “instructed lawyers Schillings to bully the media into not naming her.” Of this anything but selfless course of action, Guido Fawkes remarked: “She cited the Cliff Richard case to invoke a supposed right-to-privacy in an attempt to keep her name out of the story.”
Going further, Guido Fawkes continued:
“Rebecca Sabben-Clare set legal dogs Schillings on the press yesterday afternoon to try and cover-up her name, when that didn’t work after the Mail Online named her, Rebecca Sabben-Clare switched tactics and cooperated with a soft-soap PR puff piece telling the Standard:”
“I am heartbroken by this terrible accident. As an animal lover, I fully understand the dismay that has been expressed. I apologise unreservedly for what happened. In hindsight I wish, of course, that the dog had been on a lead but at the time that did not seem necessary.”
“Yet another example of the rich and powerful trying it on with lawyers to muzzle the press. Shame Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC didn’t muzzle her dog. Didn’t work and Schillings have lost again…”
Continuing further of this rotten ratbag, Roll On Friday yesterday reported that Sabben-Clare’s chambers, 7 King’s Bench Walk, had issued a statement about the totally avoidable yet utterly sick incident involving a dangerous dog that should now be put down. Their unnamed spokesman attempted to distance themselves and remarked:
“7 King’s Bench Walk is deeply saddened by the death of a seal by the side of the Thames following an incident involving a self-employed member of Chambers. This was a tragic accident which unfortunately resulted in the death of a lovely wild animal… Please be aware that Rebecca took her own advice in relation to this matter.”
One clear point arises out of this debacle that need never have happened: If Rebecca Sabben-Clare had kept her dog on a lead and controlled it in an area where there were supposedly notices about the seal’s presence, this incident would not have occurred. She should now face the consequences and her dog ought, at the very, be least taken away from her before it harms another animal or a child even.
To join the 44,400 people who’ve already supported our Change.org petition seeking to get the giraffe slayer Merelize van der Merwe banned from Facebook, please click here.
Responding on Twitter, editor of ‘The Steeple Times’ Matthew Steeples remarked: “Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC, whose dog savaged an innocent seal because she let it run wild, should hand herself in at her nearest police station and she should hand her bloody dog in also. Shame on her for thinking she can PR her way out of this. The woman is a disgrace.”Furthering her PR campaign, one of Rebecca Sabben-Clare’s neighbours later arrogantly blubbed: “He has no history of this and is super sweet with our dogs. I don’t know the breed. But she (Rebecca) is a nice person. It could happen to anyone.” The injuries to the now tragically deceased seal, Freddie Mercury, prove quite to the contrary.
Lady Victoria Hervey shows herself to be a contradictory cretin by selling PPE but refusing to wear a mask herself; she fails to mention her ex-lover Prince Andrew or links to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
In June 2020, we made Lady Victoria Hervey our ‘Moron of the Moment’ after she stupidly stated “f**k black lives matter” and yesterday this one-time chum of mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell went and slammed her non-woke wellies in the proverbial again in an interview with the Daily Mail’s Francis Hardy.
A short-lived lover of non-sweating Prince Andrew, yet rejected (she claims) as “too old” by his now croaked paedophile ‘bestie’ Jeffrey Epstein, the brainbox with more knowledge than scientists that is Lady Victoria told Hardy of COVID-19:
“It’s completely hyped! The biggest worldwide conspiracy that ever happened.”
“I’m not going to lie, I never wear [face masks]… The security guard in [a] shop called me over and told me I had to leave because I didn’t have one on. I stormed out… I believe in natural immunity… [It’s] Bill Gates’ goal to bring out this vaccine to depopulate the world.”
Going further and aside from declaring: “I’m not going to be a lab rat,” Lady Victoria – who herself ran a business selling PPE at the start of the pandemic – excused the fact that no sane man would want her by adding: “It’s really hard to have relationships in LA.”
This half-witted wench then banged on about getting herself a sperm donor, “cried” about Lady Gaga’s dogs being abducted (but made no mention of the poor dog walker who himself got shot) and sadly for Brits, announced that soon she’ll be returning to our shores.
God help us all and please now, Los Angeles – Keep ‘Lady Twit Girl,’ we’ll be forever grateful.
Pictured top: Lady Victoria Hervey with the deservedly currently incarcerated alleged sexual abuser and trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. The charming delight that was the late Tara Palmer-Tomkinson described the former as “unpleasant” and “a right snob.”
Wally of the Week – Lady Victoria Hervey pictured with the Duke of York. That even ‘Randy Andy’ ultimately decided her not to be for him speaks volumes.
Classic clangers from former ‘It Girl’ Lady Victoria Hervey
“I am Lady Victoria Hervey – it doesn’t get more British than that.”
“Unless it’s champagne, I can’t handle it.”
“I’m an A-list celebrity and this is a C-list party.”
“I do have a day job.”
“My career always goes much better when I haven’t got a man.”
“A baby is easy – you hand them over to a nanny!”
“I’m kind of into star signs and I want my baby to have a sign that’s compatible with mine. It’s to plan though… We’ll just have to see… We’ll do the embryos and then I’ll figure out which month I’d like the baby to be born.”
“I’m not stupid. I’m not a dumb model.”
“[I aim to become] the next Kate Winslet – but with class.”
“I have had four past lives, three of them as a man. I was a composer in 17th-century Paris, I made materials in India and in Ancient Greece I was a famous politician. In Ancient Egypt I was keeper of the oils for the Pharaoh’s wife, and I love oils so it all kind of fits.”
“I feel I’ve aged 100 years in lockdown. I’ve had Botox, of course.”
“What annoys me is when these families have got like 12 children and we’re paying for these kids… They work out that they make more money being on the dole than having a job, they just laze around.”
“The real irony of this is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.”
“Travelling is in my blood, and so is liking luxurious things and spending.”
“I haven’t given up on men, there are a few of them around, but I keep leaving every city I meet them in.”
“Everyone from Europe wants to buy houses in LA.”
“I was too old for Jeffrey Epstein… [He seemed] very charming… He was a very well-liked guy.”
“I’m not one of those kind of girls, I don’t like going to dinners with ten models invited… I was very young and impressionable, Jeffrey was a very charismatic man.”
“I haven’t seen [Ghislaine Maxwell] since September [2018] at a friend’s baby shower… I don’t think anyone is going to find her. She’s gone far away. She’s a bit like a James Bond character. She’s quite a unique person and I don’t believe anyone is going to find her… I don’t think we will ever see her again, it’s going to be like Robert Maxwell continued; she will continue that family mystery.”
“I had no idea what was going on [with Jeffrey Epstein]… It’s extraordinary it’s the case, it’s a wild story.”
“I suddenly thought, I’m just Victoria Hervey… Horrible.”
“I don’t want to make enemies.”
Wally of the Week – Lady Victoria Hervey defended Prince Andrew on ‘Good Morning Britain’ in November 2019. At the time, she ludicrously claimed her other mate Ghislaine Maxwell would “never be seen again.” Nobody anywhere will be calling upon her psychic powers ever again on that basis.
EXCLUSIVE –Ghislaine Maxwell apologist Brian Basham leaves a curious comment on ‘The Steeple Times’ as he part of his campaign to try to free the mucky madam from the clink
With just 164 followers on Twitter, “socialist and vocal republican” PR man Basham – best known for his involvement in the British Airways ‘Dirty Tricks’ scandal – last week left a comment on our aforementioned article containing three links from a domain that curiously “has just been registered.”
Plainly, as he seeks to step up his efforts to get croaked paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s bestie back into her socialite circle, Basham is going into overdrive. Of the links, one went to a piece by the Catholic Herald columnist Brendan O’Neill – a wack job best known for telling high profile sex abuse victims to effectively “shut up” and urging the public to riot in support of speeding up Brexit – arguing that Maxwell should be presumed “innocent until the court demonstrates otherwise.”
Going further, openly extremely anti-woke O’Neill justified his claim by stating: “[Ghislaine Maxwell] is in many ways the ideal hate figure in these woke, unforgiving times. She’s wealthy. She’s the daughter of a disgraced tycoon (Robert Maxwell). She rubbed shoulders with allegedly iffy men and women who have more money than morals. In some people’s minds, she has come to symbolise the rot the heart of the moneyed elites, the cancer of white privilege and rich-people arrogance.”
Basham’s other links included one to The Hill that ludicrously attempted to argue that the Department of Justice have run an “inflammatory” press campaign against Maxwell and another that featured a report about Fox News’ also anti-woke correspondent-at-large Geraldo Rivera calling out her being denied bail in July as “copping out to the mob” and a “political decision.”
According to the article, Rivera – whom previously called Donald Trump “brave” for sending “good wishes” to Maxwell – also added: “They are doing this to put pressure on her” before bleating: “They are punishing her before conviction… She is not Jeffrey Epstein. I think this a terrible, punitive decision.”
Elsewhere, last week, Air Mail featured news of Maxwell’s attorney yet again moaning about her being “excessively and invasively searched” whilst the New York Post described her legal team “invoking the murder of New Jersey judge Esther Salas’s son” as an “odd reference” as part of their attempt to get the most definite flight risk out on bail.
In a filing, the lawyers bizarrely hinted at a security risk and stupendously stated: “Many of the people who want to support Ms. Maxwell’s renewed bail application are older and do not have the financial means to hire a personal security detail to protect themselves.”
Pictured top: Brian Basham (left) and (right) Ghislaine Maxwell in an embrace with the now “in hiding” alleged sex ring scout paedophile Jean-Luc Brunel (AKA ‘Le Fantôme’ ‘The Ghost’).
Brian Basham has said little thus far on Twitter about his involvement in an attempt to ‘break’ mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell out of the clink, but he did use the medium to share a tweet from an account that seeks to trash the reputation of alleged victim Virginia Giuffre.Completely ignoring the fact that nobody has been to prove it to be anything other than genuine, in August 2019, Brian Basham tried to hint that the image of Prince Andrew getting randy before supposedly romping in the bathtub with Virginia Giuffre at Ghislaine Maxwell’s house at 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, London, SW1X 8ES on 10th March 2001 is a fake.
Another petition on the site, created two days ago by someone named Sophia Mepham, that was actually first brought to our attention by a former social associate of ‘Sir Shifty’ Philip Green, however, has rocketed to 190,000 signatures in just hours.
The campaign to “Strip Sir Philip Green of his knighthood” is one we urge readers to sign by clicking here. It is accompanied by the following missive:
Sir Philip Green’s net worth is £930m according to the Sunday Times rich list, although other reports say it’s even higher. His retail empire has just collapsed, taking along with it employees financial stability and part of their hard earned pensions.
Sir Phillip Green is a British businessman, whose wife is the owner of the investment group Taveta Investments. This said investment group owns the retail company ‘Arcadia Group’ for which Green is Chairman. It is made up of fashion brands such as Topshop and Dorothy Perkins, in total eight high street retailers.
Sir Philip Green was made a Knight Bachelor in the 2006 Queen’s Birthday Honours “For services to the Retail Industry”.
Now, it is 2020 and for a number of years the Arcadia Group has continued to spiral in to financial turmoil, ending in the Arcadia Group going in to administration on 30th November 2020. Putting 13,000 jobs at risk, along with over 10,000 of the employees pensions pots at risk of being cut.
This said pension pot has an estimated deficit of £350m, which at the time of writing both the industry and MP’s have called on Green to plug the shortfall, whilst he sits on his £100m yacht, in Monaco (the tax haven he lives in with his wife, not to be confused with where Taveta Investments is registered – in another tax haven, Jersey).
Sir Philip Green has mis-managed the Arcadia Group by not providing the resources it requires (both financial or otherwise) to stop the company going in to the brink of financial ruin for years. He is responsible for putting peoples livelihoods in jeopardy.
Adding to it now, the uncertainty around him plugging the deficit of the pension pots. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has said he ‘stands ready’ to help the employees at risk of job losses at Arcadia. However, when a man has become so incredibly wealthy from a retail empire, (allegedly avoiding tax), he should not be seeking help from the official lifeboat scheme – the Pension Protection Fund or the government to use taxpayers money to fund the deficit.
Other holders of a knighthood that have been revoked include, Fred Goodwin who is the former RBS boss. He was knighted in 2004 for ‘Services to the Banking Industry’ but his title was revoked because he let the bank to the brink of collapse in 2008. The Cabinet Office based their decision on the fact that the catastrophe required a £45billion bailout from the taxpayer.
Green does not deserve a knighthood ‘For Services to the Retail Industry’, the only service this man has provided is to help Arcadia Group’s 13,000 employees have an uncertain future. He too, much like Fred Goodwin, has left the Arcadia Group, which is owned by his company Taveta Investments on the brink of collapse.
To get a knighthood stripped we need to get the Forfeiture Committee to consider the honour be removed. The Committee’s recommendations for forfeiture are submitted through the Prime Minister to the Queen, who will then approve it.
By signing this petition, we can get this issue in the laps of the Forfeiture Committee and strip Sir Philip Green of his knighthood.
Shameless and Shocking – Whilst 13,000 employees of Arcadia Group face Christmas and beyond in penury, tubby turd Sir Philip Green and his title-obsessed wife Tina continue to live-it-up on their 295-foot long yacht, Lionheart. The petition to strip this grubby duo of their titles deserves everyone’s support.
