Handbag created by Louis Vuitton to “celebrate” the marriage of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry to be auctioned for a crazy sum
Handbags with connections to famous women often sell for crazy sums and in December 2015, The Steeple Times featured one used by Margaret Thatcher on her last visit to Downing Street. It sold for a staggering £47,500 ($60,000, €53,200 or درهم220,000) against a low estimate of just £1,000 ($1,260, €1,121 or درهم4,629) at Christie’s and now another made to “celebrate” the wedding of the then Meghan Markle to the then Prince Harry is being auctioned.
Offered with an estimate of £12,000 to £18,000 ($15,100 to $22,700, €13,500 to €20,200 or درهم55,500 to درهم83,300) in spite of not even being in perfect condition, the 2018 Louis Vuitton ‘Petite Malle’ handbag is number 13 of 21 made. It features a Union Jack flag, has a blue and black leather lined interior and comes with a dust bag and box.
Of the item, Sophie Higgs, designer collection specialist at Fellows Auctioneers, remarked: “We are delighted to announce the auction of this extremely rare handbag… In keeping with the wedding itself, the handbag has been shaped by the wealth of history that feeds all Louis Vuitton trunks, yet it flies a path of its own.”
Given the supposed frostiness with her sister-in-law, one thing’s for sure: The Duchess of Cambridge most certainly won’t be putting in a bid. ‘MeGain’ fans (if there are any left), fastest fingers at the ready – The online sale is open and closes on Monday 8th June.
The bag is described as being “in a very good condition, like new, with only one minor scuff to the top left and lower corners.”It comes with a strap and its original box.
Twerp of Twitter, ‘Shady Steph’ – a washed-up wastrel who’ll not be giving Albert Einstein a run for his money any day soon – posted the comment: “Shoot the looters” on Monday, but deleted the remark after being quite correctly reminded she’d been arrested for stealing £1,033 ($1,300) of clothing from Neiman Marcus in May 2006. Whilst in custody this rotten ratbag was also found to be in the possession of drugs.
Reported to Twitter for “inciting violence” and called out a “worthless good for nothing tw*t,” pointless pillock Pratt did not stop there. Further examples of this dumb blonde’s recent social media ‘activity’ follows.
Poor lamb – Pratt highlighted her first world problems in May. She couldn’t find an airline willing to take her and her pooch.Shopped out – In April, this alleged-no-longer-a-junkie tried to claim she’d found a new addiction: Amazon. Anyone got a polygraph machine handy?Music’s not her forte – In March, madam shared news of someone we’ve never heard of writing a song about “the horrible coronavirus.” Her sentiments made sense to just about no one.We’re sure the Queen was touched – In January, Pratt claimed to be “in complete denial” about Prince Harry and his wife quitting royal duties. The reality car wreck most likely hankers after the dastardly duo becoming her new ‘besties.’Cleaned out – In November last year, ‘Shady Steph’ shared news that she cleans her house before her cleaner arrives. Anyone surprised? Anyone guessing she might have a lot of white stuff to hoover up?
Wiltshire manor house once owned by the Duchess of Cornwall and considered as a home by the Duchess of Cambridge’s parents again for sale
Described as a “royal love nest for the Middletons” by The Telegraph when last marketed for sale in March 2011, Bolehyde Manor (pronounced according to the paper: “Bow lea Hyde”) in Wilshire was home to the Duchess of Cornwall, as plain old Camilla Parker Bowles, from 1973 until 1986.
Considered, but subsequently discounted by Carole and Michael Middleton as a home prior to their purchase of the £4.7 million The Manor at Bucklebury (featured in The Steeple Times in June 2012), Grade II* listed Bolehyde Manor at Allington, near Chippenham was at that time offered for £4.76 million according to the Daily Mail’s Richard Kay.
Kay lauded the “14th-century pile near Chippenham” as having “everything an aspiring lord (and lady and the manor could wish for” and reported it as having been “not just where Prince Charles retreated when his marriage crumbled, intriguingly it was also where he courted Lady Diana.”
According to the royal biographer Christopher Wilson – quoted in an article in the Daily Express in May this year – “in 1979, there was very little pretense about the intensity of the relationship between Prince Charles and Camilla. Most of the week he would be staying at Bolehyde Manor, sometimes Andrew Parker Bowles would come home for the weekend and Prince Charles would stay. But there was a very curious ménage à trois between these three.”
Whether the house sold in 2011 is unknown, but this week it has again been placed for sale through agents Savills. They are marketing the manor at a sum £1 million lower for £3.75 million and with it comes 80.13 acres.
Aside from the main 4 reception room, 8-bedroom main house, there is a 3-bedroom annexe and in addition the property has three additional cottages, stabling and outbuildings. There is a tennis court and swimming pool with the grounds and the majority of the land is devoted to organic farming.
One thing is, for sure, the former Meghan Markle won’t be putting in a bid in spite of Bolehyde Manor having glorious gardens that have opened under the National Garden Scheme.
The Names & Numbers – Bolehyde Manor, Allington, Chippenham, Wiltshire, SN14 6LW, United Kingdom
June 2020 – For sale for £3.75 million ($4.71 million, €4.21 million or درهم17.31 million) through Savills.
March 2011 – Offered for sale for £4.76 million ($5.98 million, €5.35 million or درهم21.96 million) by the Earl and Countess Cairns.
1986 – Sold for £600,000 ($754,000, €674,000 or درهم2.8 million) by Andrew and Camilla Parker Bowles to Simon and Amanda Cairns.
1973 – Andrew Parker Bowles moves in along with his then wife Camilla.
1927 – Sold to a Mrs Mallet du Cros “in very indifferent repair” by the Gale family according to Country Life. She “restored and modernised it.”
1635 – Sold to a yeoman named John Gale.
Mid 17th century – Built on the site of an earlier house occupied by one Thomas de Bolehyde, a tenant of the Abbot of Glaston-bury.
Pictured top: Carole Middleton, Bolehyde Manor and the Duchess of Cornwall.
The interior features traditional English country house style decoration.This study is currently lined with plenty of reading material.Original features including panelling abound throughout Bolehyde Manor.A pleasant courtyard garden is to be found to the rear of the house.To the front is a formal lawned area.Three cottages come with the house as well as an annexe also.The gardens have previously been opened to the public under the National Garden Scheme.They are quite delightful.A plan of the 80 acres currently offered with Bolehyde Manor.
Dippy Debbie McGee yet again confirms her status as the ultimate airhead in boasting about her connections to ‘Randy Andy’ and is met with a denial from a royal source
Right now, most people would keep quiet any connection to Prince Andrew. Aside from his antics in Pizza Express (Woking branch), the disgraced royal is “in financial hot water following the Epstein scandal” according to Tatler’s amusingly named Hope Coke and he’s been “royally dumped” by everyone from Barclays to the University of Huddersfield.
With his dimwit on-off live-in ex-wife forced to take up hawking crappy books yet again to fend off other creditors, Prince Andrew’s woes continue to mount and now ‘The Lovely Debbie McGee’ has gone and stuck her oar into the thick of it. Of course, as always with “a sandwich short of a picnic” Debbie, it wasn’t meant nastily, but, as ever with her, the intervention was anything but relevant.
In this morning’s Daily Mail, a decidedly short-of-real-stories reporter called David Wilkes shared vitally important news that the late Paul Daniels’ wife now has a podcast titled Spill The Tea with Debbie McGee. He also revealed that on it, she’d bragged that Prince Andrew had flown the magician in “one of Her Majesty’s helicopters” from Stoke-on-Trent to Windsor Castle.
“Muggins, Me, McGee” – who also fascinatingly told of how she’d “knocked over a glass of wine last week” and “burnt the edges of her salad leaves the other day” on the podcast too – reported that she did not get to go along for the ride and was instead forced to drive the couple’s car to London. She, thus, luckily avoided an encounter with the Duke of York’s non-sweating hands, but was “sad” that she didn’t get a lift in the Queen’s car – which her husband got to hitch a lift in from Windsor to The Savoy Hotel also.
In response, a “royal source” flatly denied ‘Dim Debbie’s’ claims and remarked: “If this story is true it did not involve one of Her Majesty’s helicopters.” The poor dear plainly conjured up this story from the bottom of her tea leaves, but at least it wasn’t as sordid as when she revealed she put a “disturb mask across her private parts” whilst naked and waiting for her husband to come to bed. Now there’s a sexual story that definitely should not be repeated.
Rare photograph of Winston Churchill dining with Edward VIII to be sold as part of a sale on the eve of the 80th anniversary of him becoming Prime Minister
Offered as part of the ‘Churchill in Charge – 80th Anniversary’ sale that concludes tomorrow, Wednesday 20th May, Sotheby’s New York is auctioning online a photograph signed by both Winston Churchill and Edward VIII.
Part of a collection built up over 37 years by Chartwell Booksellers, the independently owned Manhattan bookstore “home to the world’s finest selection of rare Churchilliana,” the framed 10-by-8-inch image was taken on the 28th February 1925 at a farewell dinner for Frank Kellogg, the retiring American Ambassador to Great Britain at the Hotel Victoria, London.
In a reversal of roles, Edward, Prince of Wales is the one whom appears to be scowling in the picture whilst Winston Churchill, for once, is the one smiling.‘The Steeple Times’ has previously featured items of Churchilliana available at auction. In January 2014, an unsmoked cigar and a cigar stub collected by Sir Winston Churchill’s care nurse whilst he was in the Middlesex Hospital in London in July 1962 sold for £812 ($993, €906 or درهم3,648).
Also in the image alongside ‘Our Smiling Prince’ (as Edward, Prince of Wales – as he then was – was nicknamed) and ‘Our Scowling PM’ (as the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Churchill became known) are Ambassador Charles Kellogg (US ambassador from 1924 to 1925) and William Grenfell, Baron Desborough.
Of the lot and the evening the photograph was taken, Sotheby’s remark:
The dinner was convened by The Pilgrims of Great Britain society, whose motto appears on a framed sign behind the table: “Hic et Ubique” (“Here and Everywhere”). The Pilgrims society was founded in 1902 “to promote good-will, good-fellowship, and everlasting peace between the United States and Great Britain.”
Winston Churchill was serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer to Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin at the time of this photograph. Baron Desborough was an athlete of renown in Great Britain, as well as a politician, and the president of the Pilgrims society. His wife, known as “Ettie,” was one of England’s great society hostesses, a leading figure in the social group “The Souls,” entertaining luminaries at their country house, Taplow Court, such as H.G. Wells, Vita Sackville-West, Oscar Wilde, and, of course, the Prince of Wales and Winston Churchill. The couple lost two sons in the trenches during World War I, including Julian Grenfell, a noted war poet.
The Prince of Wales would ascend to the throne upon the death of his father, King George V, in January 1936. He and Winston Churchill were longtime friends. Churchill almost destroyed his own political career attempting to ward off abdication and save Edward’s crown. In the end, he failed. Edward VIII renounced the throne on December 9, 1936 to marry his commoner love, Wallis Warfield Simpson.
A starting bid of £12,245 ($15,000, €13,695 or درهم55,088) has been set for the photograph along with a high estimate of £19,588 ($24,000, €21,907 or درهم88,140). As of this morning, there have been no bids for the lot.
Anne Diamond is right to call out the Duchess of Sussex’s mint-making collaboration with Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s ‘Finding Freedom’ as annoying, daft and delusional
Yesterday, in the Mirror, Anne Diamond launched what some termed a “brutal attack” on the Duchess of Sussex and her collaboration with her favourite mouthpiece PR people, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.
Diamond, whom branded ‘MeGain’ “either clever, cynical or both” and suggested the public will “all be daft enough to buy [Scobie and Durand’s book Finding Freedom],” rightly argued that the exercise is nothing but an attempt to sure up a “nest egg.”
Going further of this “laughing all the way to the bank” excuse for a “F*** Off Fund par excellence” for the former Miss Markle, Diamond rightly labelled this tripe “futile” and “annoying.”
Anne Diamond is spot on. This tome of “self-serving conceit” deserves to be pulped.
‘Randy Andy’s’ ex-wife Sarah Ferguson excels (again) in sharing videos of coronavirus bailout money grabber Sir Richard Branson’s son on her not so popular YouTube channel
You’d have thought Sarah Ferguson – ex-wife and live-in comedy sidekick of he who doesn’t sweat (unless he’s in the Woking branch of Pizza Express or allegedly grubbing around doing a bit of groping in the mansion of a now dead paedophile) Prince Andrew – would have kept her gob shut for once, but no, as ever, this weird whackjob just could not help herself.
Sarah Ferguson seems to think reading stories to children on YouTube will help redeem her reputation; the investors and creditors owed millions quite rightly think otherwise.
As part of her crassly titled “Fergie & Friends” (does she actually have any left?) stories series, Sam Branson read from a book titled: I Am Human: A Book of Empathy. Somewhat laughably, the tale about “finding my way and choosing my path” (something Fergie most definitely isn’t terribly good at) had only received 12 likes on YouTube by Monday morning and given any chance of forgiveness for the ‘Duchess of Dork’ – whom also is facing legal actions from Chinese investors whom she took over £500,000 from – is all but over, she’d perhaps have done better to have parked this particular episode.
Also last week, self-declared “spokesperson, best-selling children’s author, businesswoman, wellness advocate, producer and global humanitarian” (is there anything she can’t turn her money snatching hands to?) Ferguson joined LinkedIn. God only knows why she took such a course of action as frankly no one in their right mind would employ this train wreck. Frankly, instead, the well-known toe sucking wastrel would have done better to have simply done something else: She should have given up on the idea of ‘work’ (not that she knows what such even is) and taken ‘Randy Andy’ and retired together Sotogrande. If she did that, perhaps poor old ‘Brenda’ might get out of supposedly once again having to pay off yet more of the on-off couple’s bills and the non-sweater could save a dime and enjoy yet another freebie on the golf course.
In throwing out major elements of her argument against Associated Newspapers yesterday, the Duchess of Sussex’s defeat marked not just a battle loss, but the start of a worse stage for her war
‘MeGain’ should quit whilst she’s (just about) still ahead. Whilst public support for her is still just about there in some quarters as, frankly, distaste for the Mail and its parent operation remains high, this ‘I don’t want to be a royal anymore but I want everything that went with being a royal’ looks increasingly isolated after having major part of her case against Associated Newspapers deservedly struck out yesterday.
In delivering his ruling on Friday, Mr Justice Warby pointedly remarked that parts of the duchess’s case were “irrelevant” and “inadequately detailed.” He went further and totally ignored her claim of “dishonest behaviour” and now, according to Mark Stephens, a libel and privacy expert at the law firm Howard Kennedy, will be forced to pay a bill of upto £250,000 in costs as a result of her totally “ill-informed” claim.
Worse still, the Duchess of Sussex now faces the prospect of her five friends – whom most curiously still remain unnamed at this stage (raising the question of: “Do they actually exist?”) – being dragged into the witness box. In addition, yet more embarrassment and costs will follow for the royal family she once so used to crave being part of and as a result we today join those telling this mendacious madam: “Enough is enough. Put a stop to your nonsense before it is too late.”
Alongside a cat (yes, a cat) named ‘(Frederick Albert) Hitler’ as his barman, the landlord of the “maddest pub in Britain” Steve Cotten is not known for being the most involved of hosts. On TripAdvisor, whilst one grumbler pointed out that his attitude to diners is: “If you want to eat, bring your own food… Or use the kitchen yourself,” Devon Live noted in February 2020 that Prince Harry and Damien Hirst are “fans” of the “off-grid,” Fawlty Towers-esque The Poltimore Arms in South Molton, Devon. The pub has no website, no television, no Wi-Fi, no fruit machines and no telephones and is powered by solar panels, but for lovers of craft ales and locally produced spirits, a woman going by the name ‘The Real Ale Girl’ operates a “secret weapon… emporium” selling such in a back room.
Summing up his refreshingly no-nonsense approach to running his business, Steve Cotten once commented: “I just make it up as I go along. I might not know how to run a pub but I know what’s wrong with every pub I’ve ever been in. There’s no landlord anywhere, nobody talks to each other. I involve the whole community – everyone knows it’s not my pub, it’s everybody’s pub… We are a dark and cold and miserable boozer – and that’s what people like about it… They all know you can do what you want here, use it for what you want, come here on your own at any time of the day or night and help yourself to a tea or coffee. Everybody will talk to everybody… You can discuss any topic under the sun here, nothing is taboo… Everyone has a go serving behind the bar, we all have a laugh and everyone joins in… No one else talks to them like crap like I do.”
Frankly, one is simply left asking: “Why aren’t there more places like this?” Cheers to Steve Cotten.
Montreal born “archetypal billionaire,” “fashion mogul” and “Ferrari fanatic” Lawrence Stroll arranged £536 million of funding to save Aston Martin, much of which came from his own very, very deep coffers, in early 2020. Without him, the firm that has manufactured James Bond’s favourite motorcar since 1913 would likely have gone bust for the eighth time after a disastrous flotation “that left the city shaken, not stirred” in 2019. According to Bloomberg, he’s famous for “[taking] over a brand that’s either niche, or in trouble, or both, and beef it up for half a dozen years. Then exit with a tidy profit,” but given his personal interest in both vintage and F1 cars (he led the consortium that bought the Force India F1 team in 2018) this “petrolhead” may allow passion to rule profit for once. Father of two Stroll is based in Geneva and has homes in London, New York, Quebec and on Mustique. He counts Michael Douglas and Sarah, Duchess of York amongst his friends and once remarked of people complaining about his cars and helicopters: “I can appreciate that some people are opposed to noise. And I can understand their desire for tranquillity, in which case they should not move in next to racetracks, airports or ski hills.”
