Since her twenty-one-month year old son Ben went missing on the Greek Island of Kos in July 1991, Ms. Grist-Needham has tirelessly campaigned to try and find him. Unlike with other cases, little help has been given by the authorities or charities. A volunteer named Scott Morrison has set up a website at http://www.helpfindben.co.uk and it truly deserves the support of each and every one of us.
A German who used many aliases but whose biggest pretence was to give the impression he was a member of the Rockefeller family. The Man in the Rockefeller Suit gives the best account of his exploits but it is for the 2009 parental kidnapping of his child, Reigh Storrow “Snooks” Mills Boss, by a Harvard graduate named Sandra Boss that he is best known. Jailed for four to five years after being convicted for kidnap, he was subsequently also charged with the 1985 murder of a Californian man named Jonathan Sohus. Whilst this fantasist of the first order rots in the clink, his former wife has built a new life in Knightsbridge, London.
This British actress is best known for playing Joy Adamson in the true-life film Born Free alongside her real-life husband, Bill Travers (1957 – 1994). She’s also starred in the Ring of Bright Water, The Camomile Lawn and Swallows and Amazons but it is for her work as a wildlife campaigner that McKenna is best known. She co-founded the Born Free Foundation in 1991 with her husband and along with Ace Bourke and John Rendall helped release Christian, a lion who lived at World’s End in Chelsea, into the wild in Africa. His story has since become one of YouTube’s biggest hits.
Best known for her role as Flick Scully on the soap Neighbours, this Australian born actress, singer and model struck gold when she married the British property tycoon Nick Candy. Her foray into music as Holly Valance brought success with Kiss Kiss but she subsequently fell out with her manager and had to pay him $350,000 in damages. She’s now most likely to be found on London’s social circuit or out shopping.
She called the Conservative Party the “Nasty Party” in a speech in 2002 and now Theresa May makes for a pretty nasty Prime Minister herself. Gaffe prone May failed to appeal to the police in May 2012 when they heckled her at the Police Federation conference and was too busy hosting a party with Lady Meyer later that month to deal with problems at Britain’s borders. Ken Clarke once described her as “childlike”, Joan Collins has made a fool of her on Twitter and it is for dressing like Worzel Gummidge that this hectoring vicar’s daughter is known best. Please, someone, just shoe her out.
A review of Arthur’s Cafe, Kingsland Road, E8
Arthur Woodham was born on Christmas Day 1927. He and his family have run a traditional British café in Kingsland Road, Dalston since 1935.
Arthur is a truly fascinating gent who likes and maintains a routine. I met him at La Brasserie in South Kensington one Saturday last year and in the time since we’ve become firm friends and meet each week. When another of the group who regularly gather at the happy hour asked what made him come to South Kensington for drinks, Arthur jovially replied: “I don’t drink in my manor.”
The oldest cafe in the Kingsland Road, Arthur’s itself attracts a wide and varied clientele of builders, locals and old ladies. The actor Ade, who appeared in Guy Ritchie’s Snatch, is often to be spotted here and others include the businessman Stephen Annett, who ventures over from Kensington for breakfast from time to time. Arthur welcomes all with a cheery smile and his family, equally, are hospitable in the extreme.
At Arthur’s Cafe, no toast is served after 11.30am and no chips are served before noon. Serviettes and glasses are placed on the tables at 11.30am also and at this juncture Arthur puts on a fresh jacket. Here indeed is a well-run business where sequenced order reigns.
The menu is simple but the ingredients used are of the highest quality. A particular highlight of the full English breakfast had to be the sausages. Arthur proudly told us that these come from a butcher who also supplies Marks & Spencer and frankly they were amongst the finest I’d tried in an age. Equally, Arthur’s mustard was powerful and punchy and I must highly commend that as well as the delicious crusty bread.
Tea at Arthur’s Cafe is very much of the builder’s variety: robust, rich and strong brown in colour. A note of sophistication comes also in the form of the San Pellegrino Aranciata orange juices that are also available.
We’ll leave the final word with Arthur himself:
“I like it, this is my life. You’ve got to like it to keep in it. I meet people. I speak to people. In the cafe, if you like it, you make a lot of friends.”
Arthur’s Cafe, 495 Kingsland Road, Dalston, London, E8 4AU. Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7254 3391.
Watch a video feature by Cavan Clerkin on Arthur’s Cafe at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHh3FNG8OU
Steven Berkoff is a titan of the stage and a might with a pen. He’s best known for playing the darkest of characters but in reality he’s charm personified. Berkoff beat Julie Burchill in a libel case in 1996 and finds it “flattering” to play evil characters. He lives on the river in a converted warehouse in Limehouse with his delightful partner, the Danish pianist Clara Fischer, and often sports the snazziest loafers in town.
The daughter of the composer Andrew Lloyd Webber lives in New York and is a contributor to MSNBC. Her Single Girl’s Guide was published in both the UK and America and her debut show Touched… For The Very First Time was a mighty success in the West End in 2009. Described as a “petite polymath,” Imogen Lloyd Webber digitally published The Twitter Diaries in May 2012. Turning tweets into a novel, this co-written e-book has been lauded as: “Bridget Jones tries social networking.”
This former army officer boldly led a coup d’état in Equatorial Guinea in 2004. He was imprisoned for 34 years but received a presidential pardon from President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in 2009. This Old Etonian’s account of the episode, Cry Havoc, is a great read and he now lives peacefully in Hampshire with his wife and seven children. Here is a top dollar chap who took the rap whilst others who were involved got off scot-free.
Gregory Barker worked for Roman Abramovich at the Sibneft Oil Group and as Energy Minister, took his daschund, Otto, to work at the Houses of Parliament. A Conservative Member of Parliament between 2001 and 2015, Barker lives between Notting Hill and Sussex and is widely cited as the architect of David Cameron’s “green conservatism”.