Tag: royalty

Win a Knightsbridge Flat (with a Shady Past)

Competition to win a Knightsbridge flat for £10 per ticket neglects to mention its former occupier, a convicted ‘gay sex plot’ royal blackmailer who died in 2016

Increasingly, with sellers unable to offload prime properties due to Theresa May’s inability to secure any kind of Brexit deal and the ongoing effects of former Chancellor George Osborne’s increases to stamp duty, those with luxury flats and houses are turning to raffling them.

An example of such comes in in the form of a ground and first floor maisonette on the corner of Walton Street and Beauchamp Place in London’s Knightsbridge. Extending to 1,063 square foot and including a large reception room, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, the aforementioned fully furnished property is ambitiously being touted as being worth £3.2 million in spite of having sold for just £1.4 million in 2007 and £575,000 in 2000.

The ground floor sitting room of the flat; the property has been marketed for rental at a price of £2,750 per week in times past

Bisexual ‘royal blackmailer’ Ian Strachan lived in the flat for a period following his release from jail

Now marketed in a competition by a company named Your Laddr – run by a former Alexander McQueen merchandiser named Santa Agolli – for £10 a ticket, Flat 1 at 132 Walton Street, SW3 is being promoted without mention of one of its most recent occupants, a controversial and now deceased ‘royal blackmailer’ who’d sought £50,000 for a set of recordings from various national newspapers in 2007.

Tried under the name of Paul Aðalsteinsson (other aliases included Paul Adalsteinsson, Paul Stein and Charles Goldstein), Grimsby trawlerman’s son turned “playboy” Ian Strachan lived at 132 Walton Street after being released following serving a sentence of five years for a gay sex blackmail plot against an unnamed, married member of the royal family. He subsequently had his left leg amputated following a 30-foot fall from a balcony in Imperial Wharf, SW6 in 2013 and then spent 10 months in jail in Dubai in 2015 after crashing an Audi R8. He died aged just 40 of a drug overdose in South Kensington on Christmas Eve 2016.

The winner of Flat 132, Walton Street will have their stamp duty, legal fees and council tax for one year paid as part of the prize. In addition, they will be ‘given’ a 2017 Jeep Wrangler Black Hawk with 800 miles on the clock, a cash amount of upto £4,000 to cover insurance for one year and a cash payment to cover a Kensington and Chelsea parking permit for one year also. Hopefully they’ll have better luck than the tragic Mr Strachan; may he rest in peace.

To enter the competition, click here.

Flat 1, 132 Walton Street, Knightsbridge London, SW3 1RE – The Numbers

August 2018 – Prize draw remains open indicating that ticket sales must be rather slow.

December 2017 – Offered in a raffle for £10 per ticket with a minimum of 380,000 tickets needed to be sold. This would equate to a return of £3.8 million ($4.9 million, €4.2 million or درهم17.9 million) in ticket sales.

November 2007 – Sold for £1.436 million ($1.845 million, €1.581 million or درهم6.776 million).

October 2000 – Sold for £575,000 ($739,000, €633,000 or درهم2.713 million).

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August 29, 2018
Elvira Mullens Barney (1904 – 1936)

Though considered one of society’s “Bright Young Things,” the “morally dubious” daughter of Sir John and Lady Mullens was just a tempestuous coke addict who got away with murder.

Separated from her supposedly violent American singer husband, John Sterling Barney, and living with an “extravagant, bisexual waster” named Michael Scott Stephen in 1932, Elvira Mullens Barney gave a dinner party at her “prodigally furnished” Knightsbridge home – known as the ‘Love Hut’ – at 21 William Mews on the 30^th May that year. Early the next morning, shouts of: “Get out, get out! I will shoot you! I will shoot you!” were heard in the mews followed by: “Chicken, chicken, come back to me. I will do anything you want me to.”

Undoubtedly the inspiration for Eveleyn Waugh’s character Agatha Runcible in Vile Bodies and possibly also Elvira in Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, Mullens Barney’s single shot at close range with a .32 Smith & Wesson revolver killed her lover in the doorway of their bedroom. On her arrest, she launched into an “uncontrollable violent outburst and paroxysm of rage” and “slapped a policeman in the face when he suggested she put on a warmer fur coat.” She is said to have then added: “I’ll teach you to say you will take me to a police station. Now you know who my mother is you’ll be a little more careful in what you say and do to me!”

Placed in a private cell at Holloway Prison with a “telephone, powder-puffs and a grand tea-gown” whilst awaiting trial at the Old Bailey, Mullens Barney was ultimately surprisingly cleared of both murder and manslaughter on 5^th July 1932. As he left court, the judge at the trial, Mr Justice Humphreys exclaimed: “Most extraordinary! Apparently we should have given her a pat on the back” whilst Mullens Barney was said to have headed to a celebration party and shouted: “I am the one who shot her lover – so take a good look at me” as she took to the dance floor.

To escape public and press outrage, “spoilt child of fortune” Mullens Barney moved to France. She was found dead on Christmas Day 1936 after “a typical long night of drinking and taking cocaine” in a hotel room in Paris with signs of haemorrhage around her mouth. Her sister, Avril, meanwhile made her third husband divorcé Ernest Simpson (whose ex-wife Wallis had become wife to Edward VIII in 1937) in 1948 and was killed in a car crash in Mexico in 1978.

August 24, 2018
Warped Walker vs. Magnificent Markle

Kushner-Trump mouthpiece Andre Walker’s attack on Meghan Markle was an utter disgrace; it is time that this warped weirdo was called out for what he truly is

Unsurprisingly yesterday, the self-declared “fat Northern bruiser” turned Jared Kushner’s London based mouthpiece Andre Walker appeared on Sky News to defend Donald Trump’s “right” to retweet far right fake news shared by Britain First’s deputy leader Jayda Fransen.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, slug-like Walker – an extremely sad excuse of a man who’ll forever be linked to his associations with the scandal linked to the ‘Tatler Tory’ Mark Clarke, the suicide of a Conservative activist named Elliott Johnson and his previous position at Steve Bannon’s bigoted Breitbart – decided to brand Prince Harry’s fiancée “a black woman in Buckingham Palace… [who] will have to bite her lip rather than supporting her old acting friends in the causes they love” in an article for the Kushner owned New York Observer.

Going further and referencing those describing Meghan Markle as “just another Hollywood liberal who will speak out on a few issues she cares about while ignoring the needs of the country,” Walker argued “she will face the merciless wrath of the British public” over having once tweeted “lamenting the resignation of David Cameron as Prime Minister” and declaring her “opposition to Brexit.”

Bizarrely referencing how “no one wants another Royal [sic] divorce” and stating: “After all, she did not make her first marriage work,” truly negative Walker plainly illustrated his belief that this is a union that will not last. He bizarrely also concluded: “In their first television interview [Prince Harry and Miss Markle]… It felt like the two of them had been sent to remind the world that the British Royals [sic] like all black people, especially the ones they rule!” He is wrong and the world should celebrate the fact that Prince Harry is to marry Meghan Markle, a lady of conviction and stature.

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Meghan Markle shared an image of a poster that read: “If EU leave me now, you take away the biggest part of me” after the Brexit referendum in Britain in July 2016

November 30, 2017
An Excess of Alexa

‘Mail on Sunday’ get a little beyond carried away with their latest toady description of Alexa Chung

‘Fashionista’ Alexa Chung, as we’ve suggested previously, is probably a perfectly nice person. However, though she’s lauded by the metropolitan elite, nobody in Newcastle likely gives a damn and frankly, on that basis, we cannot fathom why she generates so many column inches.

In an article in today’s Mail on Sunday, ‘showbiz reporter’ Lily Waddell listed Miss Chung as:

“Fashion royalty”

“The belle of the ball”

“The biggest designer name of the moment”

“A style maven”

“A starlet”

And finally: “A fashion genius”

We would go as far to suggest that this is quite possibly the worst example of toadiness we’ve seen in months. Could Ms Waddell have been after a free outfit?

October 1, 2017
Pritikin’s Folly

Kitsch San Francisco mansion turned private museum that houses everything from Hitler memorabilia to a portrait turned down by Prince Philip for sale for £9.5 million

The collection of a former advertising executive turned San Francisco based bon viveur named Robert C. Pritikin – better known as ‘Bob’ to his friends – includes everything from Hitler’s Swastika armband and his personal world globe (supposedly acquired by American soldiers at the end of the Second World War) to a portrait of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh of which the royal once proclaimed: “I bloody well wouldn’t hang it on the walls of Buckingham Palace.”

Pritikin houses these items – and others including a replica electric chair, a mural featuring the cult leader Jim Jones, an exact replica of Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’ and an original J. M. W. Turner painting – in a totally eccentric neo-classical mansion in the Glen Park area of the city. He built the property in 1987 and though it provides 9,966 square foot of accommodation it is primarily designed as an entertaining space and museum rather than a conventional family home.

Bob Pritikin with the portrait Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh so loathed

The mansion-cum-museum Pritikin built in 1987 for his collection is now for sale

Artworks in the building include a mock electric chair

There also many murals inside and outside of Chenery House

Now offered for sale for £9.5 million ($12.5 million, €10.4 million or درهم45.9 million) by the equally flamboyant realtor Joel Goodrich, Chenery House – or plain old 47 Chenery Street – has hosted guests including Liberace and Mickey Rooney. The building is dominated by a top floor swimming pool with glass retractable roof, a vast ‘showroom’ with adjoining display rooms but also comes with 5 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms. There is a 4-car carport, a garden cottage and a three unit building with two 2 bedroom units and one 1 bedroom unit.

Hidden from the street at its entrance and adjoining the Fairmount Elementary School on another, Chenery House stands on a 1 acre plot crammed to the brim with art pieces, murals and statues. It was offered by Pritikin to the City of San Francisco as an official mayoral residence in 2004 but after they declined he has since rented it for weddings and events.

In 2014, of living there, Pritikin remarked: “It’s a fun place to live. I would build the exact same house if I had to do it again, and in the unlikely event that I kick the bucket I intend to have my ashes buried here.” Though that will now unlikely happen, this true eccentric’s spirit will no doubt live on in spite of whoever eventually purchases what has to be one of America’s most whacky compounds.

September 9, 2017
Rent Like A Royal

Grade I listed house in Richmond Old Deer Park, Surrey that is owned by the Crown Estate and was originally a royal observatory to rent for £450,000 per year

A Grade I listed house set on 6.6 acres of World Heritage Site and Grade I listed land in the middle of the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Course has been listed to rent for £37,500 per month ($48,300, €41,000 or درهم177,300 per month).

Extending to 6,157 square foot in total but quite manageable in terms of the accommodation provided, The King’s Observatory in Old Deer Park, Richmond upon Thames was designed by the Scottish-Swedish architect Sir William Chambers (1723 – 1796) and used by King George III (1738 – 1820) to house his extensive collection of scientific instruments. It features the oldest cupola in the world specifically constructed to allow astrologists to “track the rare phenomenon of Venus crossing the sun.”

Owned by the Crown Estate, the building was used as a classroom for royalty, was converted to provide a home for the Meteorological Office from 1910 to 1980 and became the offices of Hill Samuel Bank and then Autoglas until 2011. Plans were approved to convert to a single residence in 2014 but features including a cinema, games room, gym, underground swimming pool and garaging for 16 cars were not actually constructed.

The King’s Observatory – which was built in 1769 – is offered by Knight Frank and includes 5 reception rooms, 4 bedroom suites and a large roof terrace.

August 21, 2017
A Con and A Cabriolet

One-off 1971 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI cabriolet to be auctioned; originally commissioned by a British playboy turned jailbird with connections to Princess Margaret but only actually completed in 1993

A 1971 Rolls-Royce Phantom VI all-weather cabriolet with bodywork by the renowned Italian automotive stylist Frua is to be auctioned this month.

Offered with an estimate of £308,000 to £462,000 ($400,000 to $600,000, €340,000 to €511,000 or درهم1.5 million to درهم2.2 million), this truly unique, one-of-one design was amazingly the final Rolls-Royce Phantom VI completed in spite of the model remaining in production until 1991. This mammoth beast of a car, surprisingly, however, has just 72 miles on its clock and is thus described as “as brand new.”

The car’s first owner, Robert ‘Bobby’ Buchanan-Michaelson, was a bit of a playboy but sadly he never got to actually drive or be driven in it. A “member of Princess Margaret’s inner circle of friends,” this Cambridge graduate was a member of the “Mayfair mammas’ lists of the season’s most eligible bachelors” until “exchanging his Edwardian hacking jacket for prison grey” in 1954 after being jailed for 12 months for an import/export fraud according to a report in Sydney’s World’s News in August that year.

Some years after being freed, ex-con Buchanan-Michaelson took part in the 10,000 mile 1968 London to Sydney Marathon in a Mercedes-Benz 280SE. In a book about the adventure he was described as both a “successful and wealthy businessman, employing a cook, a butler, a maid and a chauffeur” and as an “accomplished sportsman.” Also listed as a lavish spender, Buchannan-Michaelson was later bankrupted in November 1977 – though at the time he lived in grandeur at both at Churchbury Manor at Fairford, Gloucestershire and 26 The Vale, in Chelsea, London, SW3.

In 1970, in the period between the international car race and his bankruptcy, Buchanan-Michaelson commissioned Rolls-Royce to build him a Phantom VI. After delivery to Jack Barclay Ltd. In June 1971, the vehicle’s chassis was sent to Frua of Torino, Italy to have bodywork fitted but for some reason work stopped and it was not until 1977 – and by now with a new American owner, James Leake, and new drawings of its eventual form – that the project continued.

With Pietro Frua (1913 – 1983) retiring soon thereafter and Mr Leake’s death in 1983, the chassis passed to new ownership and it was only eventually completed as a finished motor vehicle in 1993.

That year, the four-door ‘state cabriolet’ was displayed at the Geneva Motor Show and its boxy look must have surely either have wowed or horrified visitors. It is described as having “an elaborate multi-position convertible top allows the car to be configured as a sedanca de ville, landaulet or fully open convertible.” The interior is trimmed in burled walnut with sterling silver inlays and amongst other luxuries are front and rear heating, air-conditioning, fresh-air ventilation systems, a television, a video player, a radio and a cocktail cabinet. Underneath the seats is a portable Davidoff cigar humidor and even a matching silk-lined ladies’ vanity case. What more could anyone ever need?

RM Sotheby’s will sell the Frua Phantom VI at their Monterey sale in California on 19^th August and term it: “The last word in modern opulence.”

August 8, 2017
Diana’s Drive

Up-armoured Rolls-Royce used by the late Diana, Princess of Wales to be auctioned in Auburn, Indiana

A 1987 Rolls-Royce Silver Spur I commissioned by the British Foreign Office as part of the British Embassy vehicle pool in Washington D.C. that was used by Diana, Princess of Wales on two occasions is to be sold with an estimate of £35,000 to £42,000 ($45,000 to $55,000, €38,000 to €47,000 or درهم165,000 to درهم202,000).

Just as questions about the late royal’s safety in the Mercedes-Benz in which she made her tragic final journey in Paris in 1997 are again raised, the up-armoured car to be offered is to be sold by Auctions America at their 31^st August to 3^rd September sale in Auburn, Indiana.

The Balmoral Green with tan hide vehicle features laminated polycarbonate in place of glass windows, Kevlar and steel plate in the body, two Motorola mobile telephones and an exterior telecom (as the windows do not roll down). It has 60,300 miles on the clock and also has air conditioning and a working sunroof.

Used first by the then Princess of Wales on 4^th October 1990, the car took her first to a Royal Gala to benefit the London City Ballet at the Department of Commerce in Washington, D.C. and then also to a home for HIV positive children, TERRIFIC, Inc.’s Grandma’s House^®, in what was termed an “historic visit.”

August 6, 2017
Done With Diana

Enough is finally enough with press coverage about the late Diana, Princess of Wales

Diana, Princess of Wales has been dead twenty years. It is thus ludicrous that her family continue to have to put up with an endless barrage of articles raking over outdated nonsense about her and though it most definitely suits our government as they can bury yet more bad news about Brexit, the media truly should realise that enough is finally enough.

Whether the late royal said or did one thing or another is quite irrelevant to anyone alive today and though the history books may take note for the future, daily news reporting should move its focus to issues that actually affect our daily lives. The time to stop over-reporting on this saga passed surely in 2007; that it is still going in 2017 is simply outrageous.

July 30, 2017
Five of the Best – ‘Star Cars’ at Silverstone

A selection of five cars owned and previously owned by ‘personalities’ to be auctioned at the Silverstone Classic Sale in July

On the 29^th and 30^th July, Silverstone Auctions will sell both classic and contemporary cars at their Silverstone Classic Sale in Northamptonshire. Amongst them are five cars owned or previously owned by the Sultan of Brunei, the actor Rowan Atkinson, the singer Lulu, the television chef Gary Rhodes and the musician Elton John.

1996 Aston Martin DB7 i6 Volante – £28,000 to £32,000

($37,000 to $42,000, €32,000 to €37,000 or درهم‎‎135,000 to درهم‎‎154,000)

Supplied new to the Sultan of Brunei and kept by him until 2005, this British Racing Green and Chancellor red leather interior Volante is being marketed as a “future modern classic.” It comes with a “huge history file” as well as its royal pedigree.

2015 Land Rover 90 Celebration Heritage Edition – £38,000 to £45,000

($50,000 to $59,000, €43,000 to €51,000 or درهم‎‎183,000 to درهم‎‎217,000)

One of the last 400 traditional Land Rovers made and offered on behalf of its current owner Rowan Atkinson CBE, this example has just 2,260 miles on the clock. The actor and comedian is selling as he has recently upgraded to the 110 four-door version.

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5-litre coupé – £100,000 to £120,000

($131,000 to $157,000, €114,000 to €137,000 or درهم‎‎481,000 to درهم‎‎578,000)

Delivered new to then wife of Maurice Gibb, Marie McDonald McLaughlin Gibb (AKA ‘Lulu’ and now Lulu Kennedy-Cairns OBE), this “last of the line classic” was kept by the Boom Bang-a-Bang singer for three years. It has had two additional owners since and needs its air conditioning recommissioning.

2006 Ferrari F430 F1 – £125,000 to £155,000

($164,000 to $203,000, €143,000 to €177,000 or درهم‎‎602,000 to درهم‎‎746,000)

Owned by television chef Gary Rhodes from new and having covered just 558 miles in its 11-year life, this Ferrari is capable of a top speed of 196 miles per hour and 0-62 miles per hour in just 3.7 seconds. It has been serviced four times and is described as “a unique opportunity to buy a real collector’s piece.”

1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona – £525,000 to £575,000

($688,000 to $753,000, €600,000 to €657,000 or درهم‎‎2.5 million to درهم‎‎2.8 million)

Owned by Sir Elton John from 1973 to 1975 and supposedly bought off the back of the success of his Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, this Daytona has covered 81,675 miles from new and is said to be “presented in excellent order.”

For more details about the auction and viewing, click here.

The Wing Building, Silverstone Circuit, Northamptonshire, NN12 8TN.

July 16, 2017