Tardis-like hidden house in Knightsbridge once home to ‘airhead’ Donna Air – who once amusingly asked The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” – for sale for £14.5 million (or 383% more than it was ‘worth’ in 2003)
Update, Thursday 4th April 2024 – Internal images removed at insistence of Annabel Edney, associate PR, Savills.
The ‘cheap wing’ of one of Knightsbridge’s landmark churches, St Saviour’s, has gone on sale for a not-insubstantial sum of £14.5 million after the more ‘expensive wing’ was marketed for the very punchy sum of £55 million in 2019 and the still somewhat punchy sum of £44 million in 2020.
The deceptively Tardis-like Hastings House in Walton Street is a ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’ home from the pavement. It is entered through a small door to the side of a church that was reduced in size to accommodate the vast 12,102 square foot St Saviour’s House and the new-build in 1999 property of 5,261 square foot now offered by agents Savills.
Actress and presenter Donna Air – who once hilariously asked the siblings that formed The Corrs: “Where did you all meet?” during an interview – numbers amongst the well-known ‘names’ to have lived in the house. This likeable lady shared the property with her wealthy conservationist then partner Damian Aspinall and even operated her even more hilariously named company (since dissolved) Airhead And Money Limited from the address.
Occupied also variously by a fast-living, Bugatti driving oil trader named Pierre Andurand and the controversial Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro, the three-storey residence is centred around a “serene” private courtyard and includes 2 reception rooms, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms and a rather impressive roof terrace.
Savills describe the freehold house as “opulent” and laud “one of the crowning jewels of the residence,” its underground pool, as a “hidden gem” in the basement; perhaps Sharon Corr and her siblings could hold a reunion there.
Actress and presenter Donna Air and conservationist Damian Aspinall with James Middleton – Air’s partner between 2013 and 2018 – and Victoria Fisher – whom Aspinall married in 2016. Aspinall and Air were an item between 2000 and 2007. Donna Air’s most famous moment on the telly box was summed up in an interview with Sharon Corr of the Celtic pop band The Corrs. Of the encounter, Corr stated: “We did a live television interview with Donna Air. Her opening question was: ‘So, where did you all meet?’ I looked at my brother and sisters and our hearts sank. If that was the opening question, it could only go downhill from there. It was clear that she knew absolutely nothing about us.”Oil trading tycoon Pierre Andurand and sports tycoon Pierandrea Semeraro have also both been listed at the address in Companies House records. How long each of the men lived at the property is unknown.
The Names & Numbers – Hastings House, Walton Place, Knightsbridge, London, SW3 1SA, United Kingdom
March 2024 – Offered for sale as an “ultra-cool freehold house” by William Duckworth-Chad and Alex Christian of Savills for £14.5 million ($18.3 million, €17 million or درهم67.2 million) – an asking price 123% higher than the asking price 20 years ago in March 2004 and 383% higher than the quoted worth in May 2003 – and described by Robb Report’s Abigail Montanez as a “stately London home hiding in plain sight… in the affluent Knightsbridge neighbourhood.”
April 2012 – Richard Compton Miller for The Standard bizarrely contradicts previous evidence and suggests Damian Aspinall and Donna Air “recently moved into [the] converted church.” It can only be assumed he was regurgitating somewhat outdated parish news.
April 2010 – Listed as the address of French “entrepreneur” Pierre Andurand on his appointment as a director of Andurand Events Limited company. The company ultimately was dissolved on 28th June 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.
Aixe-en-Provence born Mr Andurand is listed on Wikipedia as a “businessman and hedge fund manager” who was educated at the University of Oxford. This twice married “leader” of Andurand Capital has variously been listed as a “star trader,” an “oil trading wildcard” and someone who operates with “no set risk limits.” World Top Investors list this kickboxing enthusiast as “the comeback kid, the hotshot trader living the jock-bro dream, driving a Bugatti supercar, a Knightsbridge townhouse, and a trophy wife Russian model.”
23rd January 2007 – A planning application submitted by the Italian sports manager Pierandrea Semeraro concerning the property is approved.
Mr Semeraro is listed on Wikipedia as having been the president of the Sports Union Lecce from 2006 to 2010. He was subsequently banned and disqualified after an investigation into a football betting scandal.
November 2006 – Planning application submitted to make various alterations to Hastings House by a firm named Stanhope Gate including the addition of skylights.
April 2004 – Described by the Daily Mail’s Adam Helliker as being the “weekday… converted church” home where “daughter of a bus mechanic from Newcastle” who “has, by all accounts, rather taken to the life of luxury” Donna Air “busies herself with acting lessons, acupuncture, shiatsu and stints with her personal trainer.”
March 2004 – Featured once again by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan after going on sale for the far higher than he’d previously mentioned sum of £6.5 million ($8.2 million, €7.6 million or درهم30.1 million) through the rather ritzy realtors Aylesford.
Of it, Flanagan enthused:
“Behind a discreet doorway on an exclusive Knightsbridge street lies this 5,250 sq ft home, which the estate agent describes as ‘one of London’s hidden gems.’”
“You’d never guess the house was built in the 1990s as you wander through its elegant Italianate central courtyard to the neo-classical cloisters and drawing room. One clue, however, is the basement swimming pool and bar, which has a more modern – if a little Footballers’ Wives – look… ‘There’s an amazing ‘party pad’ feel to it,’ says a spokesman.”
May 2003 – Described by The Observer’s Ben Flanagan as worth £3 million ($3.8 million, €3.5 million or درهم13.9 million) in a feature that mentions it being the home of actress Donna Air and zoo owning tycoon Damian Aspinall.
28th July 2000 – Listed as the correspondence address of “presenter” Donna Air’s amusingly named “radio and television activities” company, Airhead And Money Limited. The company ultimately was dissolved on 1st March 2011 after a compulsory strike-off.
4th September 1998 – Full planning permission granted for the construction of Hastings House by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea. Of the planning history of the unlisted property then to be constructed, the council noted separately: “The subject site was formerly included within the ground of the St Saviour’s Church, which is a listed building, however following planning permission which was granted in August 1997 for the erection of the subject building, the subject site has been formally renumbered in 2001 as Hastings House and is considered as a separate planning unit to St Saviours Church.”
‘Brand new’ 1994 Jaguar XJS V12 convertible with just 153 miles on the clock to be sold for the same price as when it was actually ‘brand new’ 32-years ago
In 1994, nineteen years after the first Jaguar XJ-S – later changed to ‘XJS’ – went on sale, “the XJS remained a handsome and contemporary car, especially in convertible form.” Of a car lauded as a “comfortable grand tourer,” Jaguar Heritage continued: “Customers obviously thought so… An incredible 4,633 4.0-litre convertibles were sold.” A total of 115,413 units of the vehicle were made between 1975 and 1996 of which 30,946 topless XJS were produced between 1988 and 1996.
Priced new at a base of around £46,000 ($58,000, €53,000 or درهم213,000) then – or the equivalent of around £91,000 ($115,000, €106,000 or درهم421,000) now, according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator – when ‘brand new’ in 1994, an example most unusual is to be sold at auction next month.
The odometer read 152 miles when photographed, but the catalogue listing states 153 miles. On this basis, the car has averaged an astonishing 4.8 miles per year in its life to date; at a speed of 60 miles per hour, one could travel 4.8 miles in just under 5 minutes.In June 2018, ‘ThisIsMoney.co.uk’ reported that a 1990 Jaguar XJS V12 HE coupé with just 840 miles on the clock was being offered at auction with an estimate of £35,000 to £40,000. Rob Hull for the paper shared: “So, you might assume it is worth a fair whack by today’s standards? And you’d be right, the sale price is tipped to hit £40,000. But once you adjust for inflation it’s only valued at half the price the first owner would have paid for it. It highlights that if you do the sums and adjust for inflation, stashing a car away is not always a sure fire investment… Even allowing for it selling at the top end of the £40,000 estimate, with the impact of inflation taken into account this untouched gem has halved in value.” The car, registration G179 XAE, was eventually hammered down by Silverstone Auctions – now known as Iconic Auctioneers – for £42,188.
The aforementioned – chassis number SAJJNADW3EN179778 and engine 314000000395 – was originally commissioned by the Scottish Business Achievement Award Trust, but according to auctioneers Bonhams, “apparently the deal fell through and the car was never delivered or registered.” It has since belonged to “two major collections where it has been on museum display.”
Astoundingly, the Regency red coloured with barley hide, Bordeaux carpets and black hood vehicle – which has been with the current owner since 2014 – has covered delivery mileage only and its odometer reads just 153 miles. It has only been driven when moved between secure storage facilities and is “as new” other than “some minor paintwork retouching to the front panels.”
Bonhams will sell what is considered “a thoroughly appreciated classic” by Classics World at their Goodwood Members’ Meeting sale on 14th April. They offer it with a staggering estimate of £80,000 to £100,000 ($101,000 to $126,000, €93,000 to €117,000 or درهم370,000 to درهم463,000) and as Jaguar Heritage conclude of the model: “Drive to a party in an XJS convertible and you’d arrive in more ways than one. That is still the case;” though in the case of this particular XJS you’d be the first to drive it anywhere glamorous.
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 and watch his current nightly show on YouTube at 8.30pm daily.
The interior is reflective of the model being what has been described as “a personification of 1980s excess” and it being “a favourite of the ‘gin and Jag’ set.” These after all were cars that appeared in ritzy series such as ‘Howards’ Way’ and ‘Lovejoy’ and which were driven primarily by glitzy ladies such as Jan Howard and Lady Jane Felsham.The engine of the vehicle is clearly “as new” and described as “running and driving” but “will require recommissioning before extended use.” The XJS has a current MOT, but no registration document.An image of an immaculate wheel illustrates how the convertible offered is well and truly in a condition just as when it left the factory.The car’s tool kit has clearly never been used.A view of the example offered from the rear. Of it, Bonhams remark: “The ultimate and most expensive Jaguar of its era, the V12-engined XJS Convertible nevertheless represented exceptional value for money and, given its proud pedigree, peerless road manners and exceptional specification, is no less of a bargain today.”The front of the vehicle. It is described by Bonhams as “in effectively ‘as new’ condition throughout apart from some minor paintwork retouching to the front panels.”
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.
As he faces a £400 million fraud trial, coffin dodging skinflint Bernie Ecclestone has slashed the price of one his gin palaces, Petara; the 190-foot yacht is now on sale for the bargain basement price of ‘just’ £16 million
Previously valued at a rather punchy sum of £30 million ($37.32 million, €34.50 million or درهم137.6 million), ex-F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone’s 190.9-foot motor yacht ‘Petara II’ – named using a combination of the names of his two daughters by ex-wife Slavica Radić, Petra and Tamara – is now been hawked for ‘just’ £16.95 million ($21.09 million, €19.50 million or درهم77.46 million) with EU VAT paid.
Offered by Burgess Yachts, the diminutive, dwarf-like businessman’s ‘gin palace’ was built in 2005 by Protesksan Turquoise in Turkey and is described as having “one owner from new” and subject to “very light private use only.” It has six cabins for upto twelve guests and includes a large full-beam garage complete with a hydraulic car lift, city car, toys and tenders.
‘Petara’ is capable of a maximum speed of 18 knots and has a range of 5,000 nautical miles; it has a crew of fourteen and currently lies in the West Mediterranean under a United Kingdom flag.
92-year-old Ecclestone – whose family supposedly nicknamed him ‘The Grinch’ – currently awaits trial for allegedly orchestrating a £400 million ($497 million, €460 million or درهم1.8 billion) fraud against His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC). It is due to begin in London on 15th November 2023.
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.
In reducing the price of his £30m yacht 'Petara' to 'just' £16m, is skinflint Bernie Ecclestone playing an 'ace' card or is he showing desperation as he prepares for his £400m HMRC fraud case on 15th Nov 2023? #BernieEcclestone#yacht#ginpalace#fraud#HMRC#crime#truecrime#F1
This morning on Twitter, Matthew Steeples asked: “In reducing the price of his £30m yacht ‘Petara’ to ‘just’ £16m, is skinflint Bernie Ecclestone playing an ‘ace’ card or is he showing desperation as he prepares for his £400m HMRC fraud case on 15th Nov 2023?” By 11:30am on Thursday 18th May 2023, the majority of respondents favoured the answer: “Yes; time is up jail next.”92-year-old Bernie Ecclestone arriving at court on 19th April 2023; the bungling buffoon and apologist for the evil tyrant President Vladimir Putin looked in worse condition than even at his last appearance back in January 2023.92-year-old Bernie Ecclestone’s third wife and latest ‘baby mama’ Fabiana Flosi-Ecclestone accompanied him that day; the current Mrs Ecclestone curiously chose the name ‘Ace’ for her child – one is left wondering if the billionaire former F1 chief will be hoping for an ace in the pack when he faces his trial for allegedly orchestrating a £400 million fraud against His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) on the 15th November 2023.In February 2020, ‘The Steeple Times’ reported on croaked paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s chum (and his wife Sarah, Duchess of York’s financial sponsor) Prince Andrew having Bernie Ecclestone over to Royal Lodge, Windsor to celebrate his birthday. Whether this man “with qualities that would make Leona Helmsley look generous” brought Sloppy Giuseppes from Pizza Express (Woking branch) for the bash remains still unknown and whether he has entertained the Duke of York on ‘Petara’ is unknown.At the 31st birthday party hosted for Naomi Campbell by her then lover Flavio Briatore on 19th May 2001 in St Tropez, France, Bernie Ecclestone (pictured top right) got to hang out on a gin palace with not only the since convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell but also the woman Prince Andrew paid £12 million to in spite of having never met – Virginia Roberts (now known as Virginia Giuffre). The now former F1 boss and alleged fraudster featured in the infamous address book credited to Epstein but most likely was actually a contact of the mucky madam Maxwell primarily.The 91-year-old father of four and son of a Suffolk fisherman has previously been quite rightly deservedly slammed for his support for the world’s worst living leader, President Vladimir Putin. Calling such a tyrant “a good guy” and someone he’d “take a bullet for” about sums this nasty little piece of toerag up for what he is – an utter braindead berk.
BOG OFF BERNIE! BERNIE ECCLESTONE’S WORST MOMENTS
A poisonous penny-pinching dwarf and well-known as a “coffin dodger,” Bernie Ecclestone – a bestie of the man who paid £12 million to a woman he claims never to have met Prince Andrew – couldn’t give a damn about anything other than money. He’ll mouth off in support of anyone who might help him get just a little bit more, but really should just be told to bog off!
On President Vladimir Putin:
“[He] should be running Europe… He should be in Brussels running Europe… We should get rid of Brussels and he should just be in charge.”
“Honestly, I think the guy who be running Europe, impressed me more than anything, is Mr Putin because he’s a guy that says he’s going to do something and does it… [He’s] a first-class person.”
“He does what he says he’s gonna do, he gets the job done. I mean people don’t understand exactly what he wants to do… He wants to put Russia back to what it was.”
“I was with [Putin] after the [2014 Sochi Winter] Olympics on the top of the bloody mountain… We had a meeting, just the two of us, and we came out and we were walking along and people were coming up to him asking for an autograph… That’s what people think of him.”
“If someone had a machine gun and was prepared to shoot Putin, I would stand in front of him because he’s a good guy. He’s never done anything that isn’t doing good things for people.”
On President Putin’s intolerance to gay people in Russia:
“When I was at school, if you did something wrong, the teacher used to say: ‘Go and get the punishment book and the cane. Go to your headmistress and get a few whacks or something.’ That’s what he does.”
On President Donald Trump:
“I think he’d be fantastic [as President of the United States of America]. I’m sure he’s much more flexible than most of them. If he’s made a mistake, he’s more likely to say: ‘It was a good idea at the time.’”
“He has done a lot of good things for the world.”
On Adolf Hitler:
“Apart from the fact that Hitler got taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not, he was in the way that he could command a lot of people, able to get things done… He wasn’t a dictator.”
On Jewish people:
“They have a lot of influence everywhere.”
On black people:
“In a lot of cases, black people are more racist than what white people are.”
Of democracy in the United Kingdom:
“If you have a look at a democracy it hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries – including this one.”
Of his crackpot suggestion that the now late Max Mosley, son of the late Fascist Oswald Mosley, might have been Prime Minister of Great Britain:
“[He would have done] a super job… I don’t think his background would [have been] a problem.”
On Brexit:
“I’m 100% an outer.”
On his wealth:
“I’ve got enough I can do with my money.”
On following the rules:
“I never stopped breaking the rules.”
Asked if immigrants had made a contribution to the UK:
“They have not.”
On who is worth speaking to:
“Anyone who doesn’t speak English isn’t worth speaking to… I’d rather get to the 70-year-old guy who has a lot of cash.”
On journalists:
“I can’t remember a single occasion when I have been kind to a journalist.”
On social media:
“I think the change that is currently taking place is very short-lived, as these social media people are starting to think it is not as good as they thought.”
On waiters and prostitutes:
“Waiters are like hookers, never around when you want them.”
On women:
“You know, I’ve got one of those wonderful ideas… Women should be all dressed in white like all the other domestic appliances.”
“What I would really like to see happen is to find the right girl, perhaps a black girl with super looks, preferably Jewish or Muslim, who speaks Spanish.”
On women participating in Formula 1:
“I don’t know whether a woman would physically be able to drive an F1 car quickly, and they wouldn’t be taken seriously.”
On Lewis Hamilton:
“I don’t find him particularly engaging… He’s not particularly you would say black.”
On the corrupt criminal and disgraced banker Gerhard Gribkowsky:
“Dear old Gribkowsky… I don’t blame him because I would have probably done the same if I could have done it. He found the weak spot, found some leverage and used it. You can’t blame somebody for doing that.”
On the individuals who kidnapped his mother-in-law:
“If I get upset, how could it help?”
On his business career and his family’s Bambino Holdings offshore trust:
“I’ve got the highest position there is. So high that when I look down, I can’t see anything.”
“Maybe the most serious thing I regret was giving my shares to my ex [Slavica Radić], because when she them all in a trust for her and the kids, I lost control.”
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.
Matthew Steeples examines whether the recent suicide by gunshot of “the envy of Wall Street” billionaire Thomas H. Lee was in any way linked to a clear association with Bill Clinton and a possible one with Jeffrey Epstein
Thomas H. Lee did not appear in the 95-page infamous ‘Little Black Book’ associated with Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell. Now, however, after his apparent ‘suicide’ this billionaire financier has not only described as “considerate, generous and unpretentious” and a “constant presence” in her life by Hillary Clinton, but also as having “links” to Jeffrey Epstein.
Sparking rumours of yet another example of the ‘Clinton Body Count’ – the much disputed conspiracy theory that as many as fifty people with close links to the Clintons have died in nefarious circumstances – Stephen M. Lepore for the DailyMail.com shared a photograph of Lee at a New York shindig with another billionaire named Robert Kraft and a couple named Glenn and Eva Dubin. Swedish Ms Andersson-Dubin dated Jeffrey Epstein prior to his 2008 conviction and continued to “socialise with [him] after his time in jail,” Bloomberg reported in 2019.
The 78-year-old Harvard graduate and founder of Lee Equity Partners and Thomas H. Lee Partners was best known himself for having bought the soft drinks brand Snapple Beverages in 1992 for £112 million ($135 million, €127 million or درهم496 million) and sold it for a 334% profit to Quaker Oats for £1.4 billion ($1.7 billion, €1.6 billion or درهم6.2 billion) in 1994.
Known also for being an “avid art collector,” father of five Lee also served as a trustee of Lincoln Center, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Brandeis University, Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University, Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, Harvard University, the Intrepid Museum Foundation, NYU Medical Center, and Rockefeller University.
In a statement currently opening the homepage of their website, Lee Equity Partners shared:
“It is with deep sadness that we announce the passing of our Founder and Chairman, Thomas H. Lee. He was a great partner and wonderful friend whose vision will continue to influence us for many years to come.”
“Tom’s determination, commitment and strategic vision will continue to inspire all of us at Lee Equity Partners. He was a leader, a friend, a partner, and our mentor. We know he will be proud as the firm continues on, with strength. We will work every day to meet the high standards he has set for us and the entire industry. On behalf of our employees, management teams and investment partners, we mourn his loss and extend our deepest sympathies to his family.”
Clearly illustrating that something might be amiss in the financial community, a member of the Wall Street Oasis forum last week remarked of Lee’s death:
“Self-inflicted gunshot wound. Wonder if he knows something about the future…”
Another added: “Perhaps another private equity guy with Epstein connections about to get exposed.”
Going further on Monday, Fortune shared an article with the headline: “Thomas H. Lee’s sudden death shocks partners at his $3 billion private investment firm – with a $1 billion fundraise in the balance.”
For the publication, Dawn Lim and Amanda Gordon added:
“Since then, Lee Equity’s executives have been forced to confront a difficult moment. In at least one conversation, they discussed the importance of reassuring clients that there’s no connection between his death and Lee Equity’s financial health or fund performance.”
“Lee’s death has ushered in a new level of public attention for a shop that manages £2.5 billion ($3 billion, €2.8 billion or درهم11 billion) and doesn’t have a formal media-relations team. It also comes at a critical juncture for the 40-person firm, which is raising a £833 million ($X billion, €942 million or درهم3/7 billion) fund just as investors have become increasingly reluctant to part with their cash amid volatile markets. The firm has raised the vast majority of that fund, other people said.”
“The suicide also presents a test for key partners Mark Gormley, Benjamin Hochberg, Yoo Jin Kim and Joseph Rotberg. They’re among eight executives who climbed the ranks to take bigger leadership roles and steered the firm into financial services and health care.”
“Some investors have taken comfort in the fact that succession is largely complete, people said. They pushed for the firm to spread its wealth more evenly among partners and had sway in the years after the financial crisis, when buyout firms struggled to raise new money. Lee’s cut of the profits was less than 10% for the firm’s last fund.”
“In recent days, several institutions extended condolences and provided expressions of support to the firm. Investors such as Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. committed money to the new fund. The firm’s backers have said they hope Lee’s death doesn’t rattle new investors.”
Returning to the story of the mystery surrounding the supposed ‘suicide’ also by gun shot of Bill Clinton aide turned Jeffrey Epstein associate and wannabe “international deal-maker” Mark Middleton, speaking exclusively to The Steeple Times this morning, Shaun Attwood provided comment to follow up by our two articles this week by Kirby Sommers and Matthew Steeples. The author of Who Killed Epstein? Prince Andrew or Bill Clinton? shared:
“Yet another ‘suicide’ in a long line of suicides #ClintonBodyCount. No surprises here when it comes to the Machiavellian behaviour of the Clinton crime family who’ve left a trail of corpses behind them from Arkansas when Bill was governor to the White House. It is a trail that continues to this day with Jeffrey Epstein and Jean-Luc Brunel.”
Separately, in developing news about the possible move of the “simple shooting party” bestie of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell that is Prince Andrew to Frogmore Cottage and possibly taking over Prince Harry and the former Meghan Markle’s home, Matthew Steeples and Shaun Attwood will be live at 7pm GMT on YouTube tonight to discuss this in the fourth episode of Meghan Markle Expose. Follow the link below to tune in.
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 – Former U.S. President Bill Clinton enjoying a jolly on the golf course with Thomas H. Lee and enjoying a bit of a bash at the White House with the sex trafficking fiends Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
This morning on Twitter, Matthew Steeples asked: “Was the suicide of billionaire friend of Bill Clinton and financier Thomas H. Lee in any way connected to matters about financiers linked to Jeffrey Epstein?” He accompanied the feature with the hashtags #ThomasHLee #ThomasLee #BillClinton #HillaryClinton #ClintonBodyCount #JeffreyEpstein #GhislaineMaxwell #EvaAnderson. As of 11:30am on Friday 3rd March, 50% of respondents favoured the option: “YES; Eva Andersson etc.”
To watch ‘Meghan Markle Expose – Part 4’ click this YouTube link. The 1 hour 15 minute episode first airs at 7pm GMT on Friday 3rd March 2023. Issues covered primarily focus on the ‘FORGXIT’ saga of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from Frogmore Cottage, but there is also discussion of Prince Andrew and his grifting wife, Sarah, Duchess of York – a woman who has still never confirmed if she repaid the loans she so disgracefully took from the since croaked paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.Mr Lee’s body was found in a bathroom at his office at 767 Fifth Avenue, New York at around 11am on 23rd February. The 78-year-old was pronounced dead shortly after. A “family friend and spokesperson” named Michael Sitrick later shared: “While the world knew him as one of the pioneers in the private equity business and a successful businessman, we knew him as a devoted husband, father, grandfather, sibling, friend and philanthropist who always put others’ needs before his own.” Just prior to the time of his passing, ‘Forbes’ estimated his worth at £1.7 billion ($2 billion, €1.9 billion or درهم7.3 billion).The now deceased billionaire (second left) partying with the billionaire businessman CEO of the Kraft Group Bob Kraft, the billionaire hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin and his “allegedly racy” wife Dr Eva Andersson-Dubin. Back in April 2022, ‘The Steeple Times’ featured the story of neighbours of the “decidedly dubious Dubins” slashing the price of their Upper East Side apartment from £25.1 million to £21.2 million. Of this news, a New York realtor told us: “1040 Fifth Avenue certainly has a perky past, but whilst Jackie Kennedy and Generoso Pope Jr. were unlikely bedfellows when they both lived there at the same time, the stench of the Epstein-Maxwell connections of Glenn, Eva and Celina Dubin is actually very off-putting to buyers. Who on earth would want to live next to them? It’s no wonder no one is biting-at-the-bit to snap up the apartment currently on offer and I can only suggest the sellers perhaps put off marketing until these two social misfits move off elsewhere.”In February 2021, ‘The Steeple Times’ shared an exclusive story courtesy of information supplied by the crusading author of ‘Ghislaine Maxwell: An Unauthorized Biography’ Kirby Sommers concerning Glenn and Eva Dubin. In it, we featured pictures of the vile paedophile Jeffrey Epstein with one of the couple’s daughters on his lap on his notorious sex trafficking private jet. We titled the article: ‘PLANE PERVERTED.’The house Mr Lee – who went by the self-assigned nickname ‘Tomcat’ as he believed he had “nine different lives” – shared with his second wife Ann Tenenbaum in East Hampton, New York. Of it, the ‘New York Post’ observed: “‘He was regarded as having one of the most admired houses in the Hamptons – Bill and Hillary Clinton were frequent guests, they would regularly stay there,’ the source told ‘The Post.’ The Clintons famously holed up at Lee’s East Hampton pad after the bruising 2008 Democratic primary. ‘He was a regular at Maidstone golf club,’ also, the source noted.”Both Hillary Clinton and her husband attended the New York funeral service for Brooklyn born Thomas Haskell Lee (27th March 1944 – 23rd February 2023) on Monday 1st March 2023 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. Remarking, Hillary Clinton commented: “Tom was a constant presence. “We’ve shared births and weddings and anniversaries, state dinners at the White House, lively parties from New York City to Martha’s Vineyard to the Hamptons during good times and tough ones. We’re here expressing our gratitude for years as friends, as colleagues and certainly as family members for his long, successful life.” Mr Lee leaves five children – Jesse, Zach, Nathan, Robbie and Rosalie as well as Ann Tenenbaum, the second wife he married in 1996.Ghislaine Maxwell with Jeffrey Epstein and President Bill Clinton at the White House on 29th September 1993. Allegations that Clinton and Maxwell had sexual liaisons that became a full-blown affair have abounded, but remain unconfirmed by either party Equally, Epstein and Clinton travelled together on multiple occasions and clearly shared a mutual liking for young girls also. The former POTUS was most certainly advised about the derelict and deviant actions of the nefarious former taxi driver turned financier, yet conveniently chose to ignore such and to instead accept the dirty devil’s dollar.
Bungling berk Boris Johnson is supposedly upsizing and has allegedly bought the £4 million Brightwell Manor in Oxfordshire; the lavish lush that is the former Carrie Symonds will need a big budget if she is to clad the colossal 10,508 square foot crib in £840 per roll Lulu Lytle wallpaper
In November 2019, Country Life’s longstanding property correspondent described a “rare part-moated manor house set in almost five acres of gardens and grounds at the heart of the picturesque Oxfordshire village of Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, on the eastern edge of the Vale of the White Horse” named Brightwell Manor as a “forever home.”
Featured in The Times in an article by Liz Rowlinson in November last year after it “had three viewings so far from Americans,” the part-Tudor, part-Georgian house and its annexe and guest cottage provides a total of 10,508 square foot of accommodation over three floors. It has a total of 9 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms and if The Guardian is to be believed, it has just been sold to the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his considerably younger than himself wife.
Brightwell Manor has been owned by the same family since 1971, so, if indeed the Johnsons are the purchasers, the former Carrie Symonds will need to spend a hell of a lot of money on Lulu Lytle wallpaper to bring it “upto scratch.” This is a place that needs a lot of work and no doubt, ‘Carrie On Regardless’ already has plans bring in also ‘Lady Doors-To-Manual’ Carole Bamford’s JCB diggers to help install a swimming pool in the 4.88-acre grounds.
Suitably for the Brexiteer buffoon Johnson – who got paid an £88,000 advance in 2015 for a book on Shakespeare that he’s never bothered to actually write – in their marketing blurb, the selling agents predictably claimed: “Of its many owners perhaps the most notable was the Reverend Doctor W. R. Inge, Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral and Knight Commander of the Victorian Order. He was a prolific author and used the family room as his study for writing.” Maybe now, this is a room that will become the place where the “pyramid of piffle” that will be Johnson’s memoirs might finally get written.
Described as a “village of picture postcard prettiness” and as “in estate agents’ jargon, this is a sought after village, but it is much more than a pretty face” on the local community website, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell – which flooded in 2014 and has a CAMRA award-winning pub named the Red Lion where Johnson will no doubt get smashed with his wife and the likes of Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone – has a population of around 1,500 people. It lies between the towns of Didcot and Wallingford, is 55 miles west of London is and close to Didcot Parkway train station – which has trains running to Paddington in just 37 minutes.
Offered for sale in November 2019 at a somewhat punchy price of £5 million by Hamptons International, the “magnificent Grade II listed Georgian village house” stands on the likely site of the long since vanished Brightwell Castle. It was relaunched to the market subsequently for a sum £1 million lower by Andrew Russell of agents The Country House Department in October 2022.
“[This is a] properly edge-of-village house, so that you can be involved in the village community, or you can keep to yourself, depending on what you’d prefer.”
“The property used to be moated all the way around, with about two-thirds of this moat remaining today. [It was the tallest house in the area at the time of its building and it was] not good form to build a house that was taller than the local church. To rectify this, the family who built it also added a red brick tower onto the local church, St Agatha’s, which reaches just higher than the façade.”
“I believe Brightwell Manor once owned all the land around, and it was a big apple farming estate, so some of those trees may be very old.”
Johnson also currently owns a Grade II listed property in Oxfordshire, The Old Farm House at North Weston, near Thame. He bought it with his then wife Marina Wheeler for £640,000 in 2003 and most memorably came out in an ‘Xchanging’ branded hoodie to serve journalists tea in August 2018 during the scandal about him comparing Muslim women to letterboxes.
Featuring what Country Life’s Carla Passino called “true blue tiles,” Johnson – who got to keep the £1.25 million crib as part of his February 2020 divorce settlement – placed the 2,659 square foot property for rent for a sum of £4,250 per month through Strutt & Parker in April 2021. It is not known whether he intends to keep The Old Farm House or whether he’ll still be able to continue to bed down at the Knightsbridge residence of Lord and Lady Bamford that he has most recently been calling “home.”
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
During his time married to Marina Wheeler, Boris Johnson lived much more modestly. Clearly, his ambitious and avaricious current wife Carrie would never contemplate living in a somewhat shabby former farmhouse.During their time in Downing Street, the Johnsons lived-it-up during lockdowns with their mates. Aside from boozing and bopping to ABBA with Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone, this grasping pair grabbed at least £30,000 of organic loot from their mate Lady Bamford’s Daylesford Organic. It was delivered by bike and van and no doubt, once in residence at their new mansion, they’ll be getting a hell of a lot more dropped off from the Gloucestershire emporiums of Daylesford.The Very Reverend William Inge KCVO FBA lived in the house for 30 years. He was born in Yorkshire, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times and was also a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 1921 until 1951. A “strong proponent of the spiritual type of religion,” Inge was nicknamed “The Gloomy Dean” because of his pessimistic views and of social welfare he claimed: “It penalized the successful while subsidising the weak and the feckless.” Boris Johnson will no doubt take inspirtation from this in his writing in what was once his study.
The Names & Numbers – Brightwell Manor, off Brightwell Street, Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, OX10 0RT, United Kingdom
February 2023 – Listed as “sold subject to contract” on Rightmove with the purchaser being Boris Johnson at a price of circa £4 million ($4.8 million, €4.5 million or درهم17.7 million), The Guardian reports.
November 2022 – Featured in The Times and touted as being an example as to “why Americans are buying up Britain’s country estates.”
November 2019 – Offered for sale for £5 million ($6 million million, €5.6 million or درهم22.1 million) through Hamptons International and featured in Country Life.
1971 – Sold for a sum unknown by William Inge’s sons to a family who continued to own it until its recent sale.
Of them, Penny Churchill observed: “They hadn’t been long installed in their new home when, one day, they saw walking up the drive the distinctive figure of a former Government Minister, who – figuratively if not literally – whipped out his cheque book and invited them to name their price.”
“However, having only just found the right house for them and their five children, they had little hesitation in declining their visitor’s generous offer. Now, 50 years on, a similar approach would perhaps be more favourably received.”
1954 – William Inge died at the house aged 93. He is buried in the graveyard St Agatha’s, the adjoining church to the property.
1950s – Extended by The Very Reverend William Inge KCVO FBA (1860 – 1954), its then owner. Of him, Penny Churchill observed: “[Inge was] an eminent theologian and writer, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature on three occasions. He served as Dean of St Paul’s from 1911 until 1934, when he retired to live at Brightwell Manor, dying there 30 years later.”
9th April 1952 – Listed Grade II by Heritage England.
1933 – Offered for sale for £2,000 or the equivalent of £11,300 today ($13,600, €12,700 or درهم50,000 today)
1910s and 1920s – Penny Churchill stated: “Brightwell Manor remained part of a thriving estate until the outbreak of the First World War, after which it was sold a number of times as casualties mounted. A report in Country Life on March 27, 1920, announced the sale of Brightwell with six acres of land, describing it as ‘an historical and commodious Georgian Residence of very attractive appearance, having extensive views over the famous Berkshire Downs. The pasture land here is of considerable value, letting readily at £4 an acre.’”
1600s – The earliest Tudor part of the house is constructed as a “modest farmhouse modest farmhouse on the surrounding farming estate, being gradually gentrified until, towards the end of the 18th century, the symmetrical Georgian front was added. A red-brick coach house, latterly converted to a two-bedroom cottage, was added in the 1840s,” Penny Churchill suggested.
Pictures of ‘Bungling Boris’s’ new country crib…
This ain’t Chequers, but it ain’t too shabby either.The drawing room, in its current condition, resembles something like that of the home of Polly Urquhart in the 1980s BBC bonkbusting classic ‘Howards’ Way.’ No doubt, Lulu Lytle will be drafted in to deck this room out in a somewhat more gaudy shade of gold.The dining room has tones of Liberal Democrat to it that the Johnsons will no doubt want to erase.This is presumably the room where ‘The Gloomy Dean’ wrote many of his works. Will it be the place where ‘Bosie The Clown’ is actually inspired to finally finish any of his?Perhaps the calamity formerly known as Carrie Symonds will take to the piano in this sitting room and bash out some of ABBA’s tunes when visited by the pugnacious pair she allegedly nicknamed “the gays” that are Henry Newman and Josh Grimstone.Another sitting room clearly has sofas that are more of the colour of Sir Keir Starmer currently. It also features a fireplace with a tiny painting above it that would be more at home in Phillip Schofield’s broom cupboard.The kitchen is decidedly basic and still present is a 1930s AGA stove; that presumably won’t be that off-putting to the Johnsons given that this pair of grifters can rely on Lady Bamford to supply them with freebies and ready-made organic meals from Daylesford whenever they want.This staircase hallway has been wallpapered with a print that will remind the former Prime Minister of that that adorns the Pugin-esque Palace of Westminster.If Mrs Johnson wants to inspire her husband to finally put pen to paper, she could cram these shelves with relevant literature.A bedroom for Boris? This wood-panelled sleeping chamber will likely become the ‘Baby Dada’ of children unknown’s place where he and his wife rest their wicked heads.Another of the many bedrooms features a sofa that was clearly bought at Ikea. Lulu Lytle will have that straight in the skip.The house adjoins St Agatha’s church. Will the former Prime Minister become a regular there and will he attend with a view to seek redemption for his many, many, many crimes whilst in office?The gardens are flat and vast and are noted for the apple trees planted generations ago. ‘Carrie On Regardless’ might be able to develop a sideline in making cider using them or perhaps she’ll start making apple pies.The moat of Brightwell Manor could prove useful if Boris Johnson is forced to face visits from the anti-Brexiteer Steve Bray or climate change campaigners such as Greta Thunberg.Aside from the main residence, the building comes with an annexe and cottage also. Perfect for when good old Dominic Cummings wants to come round for a weekend outing; it’d save him the drive to Durham, after all.The house, seen from the side, is all front and no trousers. The Georgian element that gives it grandeur is actually not the prime part of the property; a bit like Boris Johnson himself, in fact.Viewed from a drone, the nigh on 5-acre ‘estate’ backs onto open countryside and has a vast area of gravel to the front; perfect for visits from the convoys of limousines of oligarchs like Lord Lebedev.Set back from the village but near enough to the pub for ‘BoJo’ to escape his wine chucking wife when required, Brightwell Manor has the privacy from the press a former premier will require yet gives him the ability to walk down the drive to ‘pull a John Gummer’ with a BSE burger at the garden gate if ever that might be required.Tennis anyone? The former Prime Minister can perhaps woe his next love or lover on the property’s court.A floor plan of the new home of the most loathsome leader of the Conservative Party.Seen on GoogleMaps… This will no doubt soon get blurred for the sake of privacy.Heritage England’s map will no doubt be vamoosed also.
Whilst the Hamptons was the scene of “bidding wars” and “supermarket spats” over £275 bottles of Chablis during the 2020 coronavirus crisis, it’s become the scene of socialites being arrested in “wife beaters” for assaulting “glampin’ workers” in the 2022 cost-of-living-crisis
There’s always been something about the Hamptons that attracts big spenders and badly-behaved berks.
Here is a set of tony townships rife with money, mystery, mayhem and murder and further proof of the madness of this privileged place came this week when Libbie Mugrabi – a soppy “socialite” resident best known for bizarrely once comparing herself to the late Diana, Princess of Wales – opened up to accuse her workers of “glampin’ in the Hamptons” when she got arrested for allegedly violently attacking them.
Setting the scene, during the summer of 2020 coronavirus lockdowns, “überwealthy” residents of this southern fork of Long Island hired nightclub bouncers to “prevent others from using their roads.” To “protect [their] health,” they “compounded” – “buying [up] two and even three seven-and eight-figure homes on the same street, grabbing up surrounding acres for family members” – in order to avoid others.
At the time, Vanity Fair’s Stephanie Krikorian mused of “bidding wars” and “tears,” whilst, to the New York Post’s Jennifer Gould, founder of “upscale supermarket chain” Citraella Joe Guerra lamented: “I had one customer spend $8,000. You know when you see someone with a full shopping cart? Now they have five… [They buy] pretty much everything they can… Instead of asking for one or two steaks on a tray, a customer will buy the whole tray. Then they’ll move on to shrimp, and buy all the shrimp, and then they’ll buy all the salmon steaks. Instead of asking for a slice of lasagna, they’ll buy all of it. Then they’ll buy all of our root vegetables… Business is insane.”
When not “ransacking grocery stores in epic shopping sprees,” these very wealthy folk were to be found at what they themselves termed “quarantine mansions” and many of them did exactly the opposite to what was deemed sensible.
These irresponsible brats threw “Covidiot super-spreader parties” and even worse, in one instance – which has become one of The Steeple Times’ most popular ever stories – a self-declared “power broker” and “well-regarded [estate] agent” named Jonathan Davis got into a serious spat. His crime? This “privileged, preppy prat” and Nest Seekers employed realtor became a “pesky squatter” in a Sag Harbor “dream home” that he supposedly utterly trashed. Here was not a property agent helping a landlord, but instead one seemingly robbing them and wrecking their residence instead.
Confronted by Inside Edition’s cameras in June 2020, Mr Davis raged: “I’ve got no comments except: GET ORF THE GROUNDS!” whilst the landlady to whom he owed thousands, Paula Rosado, responded: “It’s horrific. It really is just horrific… This has been a complete nightmare for us, for our family emotionally and financially…. [His German Shepherd dogs] tear apart [everything] and urinate all over rugs and couches [sic].”
Of him, one fellow agent, Zachary Belil, later commented to The Steeple Times: “The kid is a little freak. He tried suing Compass for no reason” whilst social butterfly Lynn Wyatt added: “I dealt with him once. He has no manners and is an arrogant little f**k. Zachary Belil is a realtor I’ve heard good things about and though I have never dealt with him, I back him up – Jonnie Boy is a FREAK.”
Whilst Jonathan Davis is astoundingly still employed by Nest Seekers at their Bridgehampton office, Libbie Mugrabi has taken up his mantle and featured late last week in a New York Post article by Michael Kaplan as an “arrested socialite” after the Southampton Police Department had “charged [her] with menacing, criminal mischief and criminal possession of a weapon” last Tuesday.
Ms Mugrabi – the ex-wife of “billionaire art collector” David Mugrabi and a woman known for having described her marriage as a “gilded cage” during “New York’s nastiest divorce” in 2020 – Kaplan reported, got cuffed after attacking an “unnamed housekeeper” on 31st July “with a mop handle and a knife, and broke her cellphone” at her 10,000 square foot house in Water Mill.
Ordered now to appear in court on 6th December, Mugrabi showed no sign of remorse and raged to the paper:
“They should have been doing work on my house, but not living in my house. The night I came home, a lady was in my guest room – she was supposed to have been let go. I went to use the bathroom, saw her, and I got scared to death.”
“She started throwing stuff at me. She threw a cellphone and the bottom of a stringy mop at me. She was screaming like a crazy person and threw a bible at me.”
Turning to the “attack allegation leveled against her,” she conceded: “I’m not aggressive physically. I’m aggressive with my voice.”
Her mother, Jane Scher, who claims to have met the staff in question on another occasion, added: “These people had taken over Libbie’s house… They were in the pool and the hot tub and wouldn’t even give me a cup of coffee. I thought they had a better life than I do… Libbie told them to feed me. They gave me some kind of soup with ginger. It tasted OK. I was starving.”
Of the conduct of the police who arrested her, Mugrabi raged:
“[They] were aggressive for no reason. They attacked me and handcuffed me. I said they were twisting my wrist. They said: ‘It’s OK.’ I asked to read me my rights. They said: ‘We don’t read rights for this.’ … I don’t know what I did in Southampton except pay my taxes.”
Her friend, fashion consultant Marko Matysik, who was present during the 22nd November arrest and “watching from the terrace at the time,” whined:
“Next thing I knew, Libbie was in handcuffs. She was wearing a wife-beater and hot pants. I grabbed as many of her handbags and hand luggage as I could [in case she needed anything inside them] and got into the chauffeured Suburban and followed the police car…. They were very happy to have her in the jailhouse.”
Concluding, Libbie Mugrabi ignored the cost-of-living crisis that so many around the world are currently enduring. Instead, she moaned that after the “commotion” of the arrest she’d been forced to “postpone” a trip to Miami and had instead spent “some town in her Upper East Side townhouse.” The somewhat shamed but clearly not ashamed socialite finally bleated: “I had Thanksgiving in New York. I definitely would not have had it in the Hamptons. Right now, I’m scared to go there.” Now, get those damned violins a-playing.
Editor’s Note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party.
Pictured Top – The ritzy residential resort of the Hamptons attracts billionaires with bulging bank balances because of its idyllic charm (top), but it also appeals to brash Botoxed braggarts like Libbie Mugrabi (bottom right) and her mother Jane Scher (bottom left).
Libbie Mugrabi (pictured with her billionaire ex-husband) showed her clear belief that she’s always the victim when she told ‘Page Six’ in June 2021: “I had the same thing as [the late Diana, Princess of Wales] – I got married young. She was told what to do and wear. And so was I. You’re under control and under a rein. It doesn’t matter what’s fair or what you deserve… After divorce, you can breathe, free of the gilded cage. I married someone who thought he was better than me.” She got her ‘plastic-not-fantastic look’ in spite of having had a father who was a plastic surgeon and a mother who was a nurse.After her divorce, ‘Lovely Libbie’ briefly hooked up with Brock Pierce (pictured with her left and right in his acting days) – a former child actor who had appeared in Disney’s ‘The Mighty Ducks’ and who ran as an independent candidate in the 2020 United States of America presidential election. That didn’t last. “I didn’t know anyone at my wedding” at one point further admitted mother-of-two turned “trucker hat-seller” Ms Mugrabi before she arrogantly added in another of many self-grandiose interviews: “My artist friends compare me to Peggy Gugenheim… She was fast and furious and drove in her own lane and no one could keep up with her.” Of subsequent relationships, she’s first to admit they’ve been equally disastrous. “I got robbed by so many people since I got divorced. I’ve been robbed like 10 times… I’m open and I’m free, and I’ve had some really creepy people around me. Now I’m being much more careful. I’ve never been 41 before with money and all this stuff. It’s like a rebirth. You have to relearn everything,” she added. There’s maybe hope for this ridiculous woman yet.During their multi-million divorce in December 2018, things got very “nasty” between Mr and Mrs Mugrabi. Of the pair, unnamed ‘sources’ close to the couple tellingly remarked: “I didn’t know people like us did this… [Libbie and David] met in Aspen and six months later they got engaged… In those days, she was the sweetest, so nice… [David’s family] tried to take her in… They were living the highest life you can imagine: A lot of staff. A lot of nannies, a lot of cleaning people and chefs. Two homes, a lot of drivers and the [Mugrabi] family airplane… Libbie is a big fashionista. [David] didn’t like paying for that.” Of her having employed a personal secretary, “family friends” were supposedly “flabbergasted” and observed: “What? ‘Little Libbie’ who doesn’t even know her way around Bergdorf’s? I think [David] created a monster.” He most definitely did.In an undated video about her “brand” (whatever that might actually be), Libbie Mugrabi bragged: “The brand is since the pandemic and life change [sic]. It’s just happy, kind and cool, funny, spread love brand [sic]. For girls, for dogs, for women, for men, but it’s geared all towards growth; female empowerment but it can be used by blokes too.” She then banged on about ‘Tatler’ magazine having called her a “glamorous divorcee” – which she termed “nice, erm, kind” – and added: “I came up with the French version: ‘Divorcée glam’” – but failed to mention her alleged penchant for attacking her staff with mop handles and knives and breaking their mobile phones.Jonathan Davis of realty firm Nest Seekers developed notoriety during the 2020 coronavirus lockdowns not for helping his clients in the Hamptons get places to live. Instead, this rotten realtor became known as a “pesky squatter” who allowed his dogs to urinate and destroy a house he supposedly owed many thousands of dollars in rent on.Former editor of ‘The Sun’ David Yelland delighted in the story of the arrested socialite yesterday. On Twitter, the veteran newsman observed: “Here’s a splendid out of season Hamptons socialite story to cheer us all up… Libbie Mugrabi claims she is victim of housekeeper and Hamptons cops.” He clearly wasn’t out to show this birdbrained Botox advertisement any sympathy.One of the “gilded cages” in the Hamptons that a woman who believes herself like the late Diana, Princess of Wales calls home and the scene where Libbie Mugrabi allegedly assaulted one of her staff with a mop handle and knife in July this year.In a similar show of out-of-touch behaviour, in March 2020, another self-appointed Hamptons “philanthropist and socialite,” Jean Shafiroff, told the ‘New York Post’ that she was normally “accustomed to dining out on a nightly basis” whilst at her home in the ritzy enclave. The paper continued: “In the face of the coronavirus, she has taken the unfamiliar step of cooking for her husband, daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. And it’s not been cheap. ‘I’m spending $300 to $1,000 a day on food and supplies,’ she said. The money goes toward chicken and salmon steaks, some of which she freezes, as well as for cleaning supplies and food for her dogs. ‘I even bought the drugstore out of all its dental floss. I wanted to make sure I had enough, along with extra toothbrushes, soap, toothpaste and body lotions,’ she said. ‘If I have to be quarantined, I better look nice.’ Shafiroff also is buying canned goods like the rest of America, but only out of an abundance of caution. ‘I can donate them later,’ she said of the items like Progresso chicken noodle soup and Del Monte peas and carrots – brands ‘I had never heard of before.’ How the other half live; previously, in September 2017, Mrs Shafiroff wailed to ‘Page Six’ about how she’d been attacked by bees at the Hampton Classic horse show. In spite of not actually being stung, the attention seeker told the paper: “I tried to stand still and let them fly off but they wouldn’t get off my face. I was terrified. They must have liked my perfume (which was Nanban).” ‘Page Six’ concluded: “Bystanders tried to help the swarmed socialite by swinging at the bees who eventually buzzed off.”“Gym-bodied and catalogue-model-handsome” Thomas Gilbert Jr. personifies “the Hamptons gone bad.” In 2013, this Princeton graduate and son of hedge fund manager Thomas Gilbert Sr., founder of Wainscott Capital became the primes suspect of throwing a Molotov cocktail into his former roommate Peter Smith’s 300-year-old Sagaponack family home and burning it to the ground; in January 2015, he sent his mother out to get a sandwich and then shot his dad dead with a .40-caliber Glock pistol. Imprisoned to life with an earliest release date of April 2044, prisoner 19A3615 is now said to be dating Lila Chase, the niece of the actor Chevy Chase. An extra also in the 2013 short film ‘And After All,’ Gilbert Jr. was described as “delusional,” is said to have “avoided New York’s JFK airport at all costs” as he viewed it to be “severely contaminated and faked suicide during his trial by claiming he’d swallowed a battery. On being taken for an X-ray, he was found to be holding a battery over his stomach. It’s lucky that this lunatic and the definitely delusional Libbie Mugrabi didn’t meet; the pair might have gotten on like a house-on-fire.What’ll little miss ‘Divorcée Glam’ do next? Apologise? Unlikely… This motormouthed menace will more likely be found ranting and raving to yet another media title than mopping up her own mess. This Marie-Antoinette like woman might be an aspiring “extravagance knows no bounds” Barbara Amiel type figure, but she’s clearly not got the brains, brawn or beauty to pull off even that look. Next!
Dumber than dumb non-entity Lady Victoria Hervey morphs from ‘TwIt Girl’ to ‘InstaIdiot’ in a series of Instagram posts about her mucky madam mate Ghislaine Maxwell; she charmingly labels one victim she doesn’t even know a “complete whore” and another she claims to actually know a “drug addict slut and a f*ck up”
True to her predictably pathetic form, in a series of messages and stories on Instagram, pompous prattling pillock Lady Victoria Hervey has gone and stuck her cloven hooves in the proverbial yet again. Here, today, we present a supposedly aristocratic woman who mocks victims as “money hungry” whilst shamelessly taking wonga for media interviews herself.
Exposed by the journalist Lisa Tait of The Prince & The Pervert podcast on Twitter on Sunday, 45-year-old Lady Victoria – a wack job woman who has been on every news channel known to humanity banging on about Ghislaine Maxwell’s case in spite of not even having been called as a witness in that case and having previously claimed not to have even seen her so-called “friend” since 2018 – made herself out to be some kind of expert on the December conviction. Frankly, anyone rational realises this former bit of “toff totty” would have been about as much use giving evidence in that New York courtroom as a chocolate teapot.
Indulging in totally uncalled for and utterly vulgarly styled victim shaming, ‘Lady Herpes’ announced that she “could not do with the sob stories” and suggested that though she is of the view that “Ghislaine is obviously not a saint,” the victims themselves number a “complete whore” (whom she claims not to actually know) and a “total money hungry drug addict slut and a f*ck up” (whom she does claim to actually know).
Previously herself branded “unpleasant” and “a right snob” by the by contrast lovely and sadly late Tara Palmer Tomkinson, when realising she wouldn’t be winning any argument with the clearly intelligent Ms Tait, Lady Victoria – who also believes “charming, very well-liked guy” Jeffrey Epstein rejected her because she “was too old” (even he likely actually just couldn’t stand her) – then helpfully concluded: “I am so over this.” She then chucked the remainder of her toys out of her pram; whether that included one of ‘Grubby Ghislaine’s’ dinner party dildos remains unknown.
Mouthy moron Lady Victoria Hervey with the since convicted sex trafficker and abuser Ghislaine Maxwell and a handbag designer named Shizue Nobuta at a party hosted by Tamara Beckwith in Hollywood, California on 25th February 2004. In a documentary in June 2021, Lady Victoria claimed the pension pot plunderer’s decidedly deviant daughter liked to get more personal at dinner parties and would “demonstrate how to give a blowjob” to girls present, herself included.
‘InstaIdiot’ Lady Victoria Hervey’s Instagram Stories
Here are just a few of this noxious nitwit’s Instagram posts and missives – complete with her (unedited by us) appalling grammar, punctuation and spelling. They clearly illustrate that this wastrel woman’s aristocratic family didn’t bother to provide her with access to an exactly stellar education and amongst them are:
“This was about to go Live on Lorraine last week. Please can someone let me know what the age of consent is in the UK. I thought it’s 17. Some of these stories sound like a case study of Regret turning into Revenge. This story has been so blown out of proportion. Or has it. Nobody knows.”
“People are literally murdering people in LA and getting out of jail. It’s a real life gotham city blood bath. I know Ghislaine is obviously not a saint and should pay back the trauma caused to her ‘victims’ but lifetime in jail for touching a girls tit 20 years ago and taking them on yacht, private jet and shopping trips. Come on. This has become a witch hunt. Thoughts on this? What does she deserve?”
“And while I’m here I may as well let out some other thoughts. That Virginia Roberts is a complete whore. She was no innocent girl. At 15 she ended up in hospital with alcohol poisoning. She’s just a ghetto opportunist whose seriously mixed up. I really genuinely wanted to feel bad for these girls but the trial gave us nothing.”
“And yes drinking yourself into hospital doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a whore but it shows how mentally unstable you are.”
“I just can’t with the sob stories. Virginia was a classified train wreck. She wanted to go on those trips. In fact she’d do anything to be invited. During the recent trial her friend said she texted her after prince andrew and was boasting about it. Money hungry girls like her do not help the real people going through human trafficking.”
“You cannot compare Virginia to the character in my friends movie totally different girl was literally kept in a cage. Virginia was living the high life. I’m so sick of these me too girls cashing in and ruining it for the girls that really do need help and are desperate that are being killed and tortured.”
“Basically you cannot question a victim in today’s climate. So even though Virginia was of age and clearly became a co conspirator herself, we in the public are not allowed to question her or her motives.”
“Would she be suing these people if they were broke and molesting her in a trailer park? Which by the sounds of things she was dropping her knickers in al sorts of places. I also knew one of the other ‘victims’ who was also a total money hungry drug addict slut and a f*ck up. I’m so over this.”
Bird brained Lady Victoria – whose Motcomb Street, Belgravia shop closed with estimated debts of £350,000 in 2001 – has recently been sharing Instagram stories in which she calls Virginia Roberts Giuffre a “complete whore” and suggested she was “dropping her knickers in all sorts of places.”In a comment on another post, the late 6th Marquess of Bristol’s daughter predictably misjudged the importance of what is quite possibly the most significant sex trafficking scandal in decades given it involves, amongst others, three Presidents of the United States and the Queen’s “favourite” son and declared: “This story has been blown out of proportion… People are literally murdering people in LA and getting out of jail. It’s a real life Gotham City blood bath.” In response, one is simply left asking: “What planet is this washed-up wastrel on?” and wondering: “Is she on acid?”Lady Victoria hasn’t exactly shown herself to be up there on the rational scale whilst using Instagram. In one previous post, she banged on about filtering out “good versus evil” and “The Cabal” and claimed that Hollywood – where she lives is known for having threesomes and party crashing – is “like a bunch of mk ultra zombies [sic] walking around” and full of “dark satanic cults.” If that was actually true, it would be the perfect place for her.
What Do Social Media Users Make Of ‘InstaIdiot’ Lady Victoria Hervey?
Twitter users really do truly dislike the ultimate ‘TwIt Girl’ and of her in recent days comments have unsurprisingly included:
“Scurvy Hervey.”
“You’ll never see Lady Victoria on Mastermind.”
“Lady Victoria Hervey – A horse faced bint that makes me feel happy to have been born a mongrel without privilege.”
“Lady Victoria sounds like anything but a lady… Sounds more like a slag.”
“She’s been cocked more times than John Wayne’s gun.”
“How much publicity and TV time has ol’ Lady Victoria Hervey had out of this whole Ghislaine Maxwell sh*t? She’s swiftly becoming the new Paul Burrell.”
“Lady Victoria Hervey has been close to Ghislaine and Epstein, Ghislaine’s business partner Jemma Kidd, Prince Andrew and Flavio Briatore.”
“She is embarrassing herself with her bile and viciousness.”
“Has she any moral or ethical fibre in her body?”
“Unbelievable. Honestly, I can’t believe how much entitlement breeds stupidity and ignorance.”
“May I present Lady Victoria, friend of Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew. Apologist as well… Look how she spoke about a CHILD. This why survivors rarely come forward.”
“Lady Victoria Hervey… Normalised Jeffrey and Ghislaine’s network of girls and young women.”
“She’s a dickhead. Lady Victoria, friend of Ghislaine Maxwell. Apparently, Maxwell just touched a tit. Oh really, truly.”
“Lady Victoria Hervey… Sounds like a complete idiot implying that all men have impulses they cannot control FFS.”
“What a thoroughly disgusting Knightsbridge piece of trash. What a gutter-snipe. Drag a lump of cocaine through Harvey Nichols and you never knew what you’ll find.”
“She’s vile… Like perhaps Lady H needs to be looked into more. She clearly sounds like she knows ‘exactly’ what has [been] happening enough to make vile disgusting judgments.”
“Did you ever see Lady Victoria Hervey dashing in and out of the palace while she was dating Andrew? She has some very strident views.”
“She called Ghislaine Maxwell ‘scapegoat’ and the photo of Andrew and his victim ‘stupid.’ How out of touch with reality is she?”
“Tara Palmer Tomkinson was a nice girl and she had this numpty’s number.”
“It’s very simple. Lady Victoria is very, very, VERY thick.”
“Dear Lady Victoria Hervey – You’ve been skint for years, you use your title to bum around the world as a ‘guest.’”
Lady Victoria claims to have dated Prince Andrew in 1999, but according to ‘The Sun,’ quite predictably, “romance failed to blossom.” Twenty years later, attempting to cash in on her decidedly brief encounter, this tedious twerp went on ‘Good Morning Britain’ and tried to defend the royal. As was to be expected, she didn’t exactly excel in that role either.
That billionaire murderer Robert Durst effectively becomes an innocent man in death is utterly outrageous; that he has defeated justice is ludicrous and the key question now is: “Who gets his fortune?”
The beyond bonkers billionaire Robert Durst – who outrageously was allowed to die in a hospital rather than prison yesterday – was undoubtedly a serial killer. How many people he killed will forever now remain likely unknown, but without doubt this megalomaniac 78-year-old slayed not only his best friend Susan Berman in Los Angeles, California in December 2000 but also his neighbour Morris Black in Galveston, Texas in October 2001.
Deviant Durst, whose wife, Kathie, disappeared without trace in January 1982, will not be missed by anyone – not even his relatives; they came to a settlement with him in 2006 in which they bunged him £46 million ($65 million, €53 million or درهم239 million) as part of a likely since unfulfilled hope that he’d disappear and shut his almighty gob – amazingly now ‘technically’ will be in death an innocent man.
Speaking to The Guardian this morning, a former federal prosecutor with no involvement in the case, Neama Rahmani, commented:
“As the law is right now, Durst’s conviction will be vacated and it’s like it never happened. This is such a unique case. It’s really unprecedented that someone can be involved in three different murders in three states and escape justice.”
Going further of this crackpot crazy crossdresser, Westchester county district attorney Mimi Rocah added:
“After 40 years spent seeking justice for her death, I know how upsetting this news must be for Kathleen Durst’s family. We had hoped to allow them the opportunity to see Mr Durst finally face charges for Kathleen’s murder because we know that all families never stop wanting closure, justice and accountability.”
Expressing sympathy for the victims, John Lewin, the LA county deputy district attorney who prosecuted Durst for Berman’s murder concluded:
“It’s a shame when anybody loses their life, however, it’s important to keep in mind that Bob Durst lived to be 78 years old, decades longer than two of his victims. To the end he was hostile, unrepentant, and unremorseful. My thoughts and sympathies lie with his victims.”
Now, however, a new legal battle will likely ensue between this murdering monster’s ‘wife’ since 2000, Debrah Lee Charatan and his birth family. There are hundreds of millions at play and no doubt that’s the only battle we’ll now sadly actually see come to play in court.
Pictured top – Robert Durst with his ‘disappeared’ since 1982 first wife Kathie McCormack. He was ‘technically’ married to her until 1990.
The now forevermore only “suspected” serial killer came to wider public attention after ‘The Jinx’ went viral. During filming of the documentary, he declared to camera: “There it is. You’re caught! …. You’re right, of course. But you can’t imagine. … Arrest him … I don’t know what’s in the house … Oh, I want this … What a disaster … He was right. I was wrong. And the burping … I’m having difficulty with the question … What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” He subsequently chillingly added: “I did not tell the whole truth, nobody tells the whole truth.”Robert and Kathie Durst on their wedding day with one of their dogs. In total, during their marriage, the couple supposedly had seven dogs. All of them were named Igor and of them, in a “rare interview with the ‘New York Times’ in January 2015, Douglas Durst, the head of the family’s real estate empire, shared that his oddball brother had practiced “killing and disposing his wife” using the dogs. He declared: “Before the disappearance of my sister-in-law, Bob had a series of Alaskan Malamutes, which is like a husky. He had seven of them, and they all died, mysteriously, of different things, within six months of his owning them. All of them named Igor. We don’t know how they died, and what happened to their bodies. In retrospect, I now believe he was practicing killing and disposing his wife with those dogs.”This seriously sinister got away with killing Morris Black based on claiming self-defense in spite of dismembering his body. He was convicted of killing his friend Susan Berman in September 2021, but with his death this will now be voided thanks to a legal technicality as his case was under appeal. Sadly, this psycho will now never face trial for the death of his first wife, Kathie, and though he was potentially also linked to the disappearances of Lynne Schulze from Middlebury, Vermont in 1971 and Karen Mitchell from Eureka, California and Kristen Modafferi, who was last seen in San Francisco in 1997, he’ll never face justice for what he likely did to them either.The serial killer’s younger brother, Douglas, commented of his sibling in March 2015: “We hope he will finally be held accountable for all he has done.” Sadly, this monster’s death has ended the possibility of that.In mid-2002, Robert Durst signed over a power of attorney to Debrah Lee Charatan (pictured top with her “late” husband Steve Holm and lower right with her now deceased replacement for him). In 2006, he gave her around £14 million ($20 million, €16 million or درهم73 million) and to this date she continues to plug her trade online at BCBprop.com.
