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.
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!
Toothy tea leaf Angela Gulbenkian admits stealing £1.1 million and pleads guilty as fellow art crook Inigo Philbrick remains in the clink also
“Grifter heiress” Angela Gulbenkian once mused “life is art” on her Instagram page, but for her, after putting in a guilty plea “to scamming collectors out of art they never received,” she might opt to change that to “life is prison.”
Branded an “ultimate deceiver” alongside the equally audacious art broker Inigo Philbrick in The Steeple Times last June after legendary Chelsea interior designer Jane Morris of Percy Bass called out the crook for conning her firm also, Gulbenkian yesterday admitted two charges of theft at Southwark Crown Court.
Married to the great-grandnephew of the British-Armenian art collector and oil baron Calouste Gulbenkian – father of the legendary Nubar – this wicked wench used her surname to give herself a “veneer of respectability in her work as an art advisor” supposedly. She even used a fake familial foundation email to back up her “shady dealings” and exploited Instagram in a manner similar to Philbrick’s dopey baby mama and Made In Chelsea whining warbler, Victoria Baker Harber.
Sadly, however, for the many victims of this bleach blonde bimbo turned art lifter, it seems that those who handed Gulbenkian over a million pounds will find it hard to recover their funds according to Artnet. In an email provided to them, Metropolitan Police officer Duncan Graham declared: “A confiscation order was made for the amount stolen. At present no assets are present within the UK to realise this confiscation.”
Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Christopher Marinello of Art Recovery International, who is representing one of private jet loving Gulbenkian’s victims, added:
“[The plea] was not too surprising to us because we had her dead to rights. She signed a stipulation of settlement in 2018 where she acknowledged owing the money that she stole, and that she was going to pay it back, but of course she defaulted, so the trial would have been very quick.”
“We pursue these fraud cases vigorously, and I think it’s the only way you can do that. The art world is seeing a rise in fraud and we went after Gulbenkian and anything and everything she touched. We think that the way to take on these fraud cases is to be relentless, and that’s what we’ve done.”
Angela Gulbenkian (née Ischwang and deservedly nicknamed ‘Awful Ange’ by a former friend) – who has been on remand since being extradited from Portugal after failing to show up at court in May 2020 – will be sentenced on 28th July. She will subsequently potentially face trial over separate charges in relation to a case involving the sale of a Warhol portrait of Queen Elizabeth II at a later date. Long may this grubby grotbag rot!
Birds of a Cell – Bearded bullshitter Inigo Philbrick, a wannabe ‘Talented Mr Ripley,’ and toothy tea leaf Angela Gulbenkian share not only a love of art, but also the pleasures of the pokey currently. Philbrick, like ‘Awful Ange,’ was quite deservedly “grabbed” after he sought to evade justice by hiding out in Port Vila, Vanuata, South Pacific in June 2020 and then flown “under instructions from the FBI” to the United States of America. He now faces charges of theft, misappropriation, borrowing money against artworks he did not even own and selling overlapping shares of artworks and has been branded a “pillock” and “Ponzi schemer.” His victims number the Reuben family and art columnist Kenny Schachter.The crimes of both Gulbenkian and Philbrick have involved the works of pumpkin sculptures designed by Yayoi Kusama.A socialite who traded on the name of the late, great Nubar Gulbenkian and the billionaire family of the same name, ‘Awful Ange’ thought declaring “life is art” appropriate. Now, though this monstrous mess will quite rightly languish in the pokey for quite some period, members of the public should be warned that she is someone to most definitely avoid. Period.
Pointless prattler Lady Victoria Hervey yet again cashes in on her connections with the deceased nonce Jeffrey Epstein and his mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell
Fresh from having spouted a bag of bollocks about coronavirus and admitting she “had no idea what was really going on” with her ex-lover Prince Andrew and a potential lover who thought her “too old” Jeffrey Epstein, contradictory cretin Lady Victoria Hervey is putting herself about on the interview circuit to bang on about Ghislaine Maxwell.
Going further and plainly after as much as she could ‘cheque in’ for her tacky tales, the ultimate ‘TwIt Girl’ and dimwitted dope Lady Victoria reminisced also about Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘little black address book’ and claimed her incarcerated chum was “very pally” and “at ease” with Bill Clinton also.
Described by the by contrast lovely, late Tara Palmer-Tomkinson as “unpleasant” and “a right snob” previously, cash craving Lady Victoria cryptically concluded:
“Ghislaine always struck me as someone full of life and was always jetting around somewhere fabulous. She always had this air of mystery. She never gave away too much but she gave away enough you wanted to find out more.”
What must be remembered is this: Ludicrous lush Lady Victoria Hervey hasn’t actually seen Ghislaine Maxwell in years. Of their last meeting, she previously ridiculously and completely incorrectly remarked: “I don’t think anyone is going to find her. She’s gone far away. She’s a bit like a James Bond character. She’s quite a unique person and I don’t believe anyone is going to find her… I don’t think we will ever see her again, it’s going to be like Robert Maxwell continued; she will continue that family mystery.” Nobody will be hiring her as a clairvoyant anytime soon. Next!
Pictured top: Party princess turned pokey inmate Ghislaine Maxwell (left) and her blowjob educated subject Lady Victoria Hervey munching on an ice cream (right).
Classic clangers from former ‘It Girl’ Lady Victoria Hervey
“I am Lady Victoria Hervey – it doesn’t get more British than that.”
“Fuck BLM [Black Lives Matter].”
“Unless it’s champagne, I can’t handle it.”
“I’m an A-list celebrity and this is a C-list party.”
“I do have a day job.”
“My career always goes much better when I haven’t got a man.”
“A baby is easy – you hand them over to a nanny!”
“I’m kind of into star signs and I want my baby to have a sign that’s compatible with mine. It’s to plan though… We’ll just have to see… We’ll do the embryos and then I’ll figure out which month I’d like the baby to be born.”
“I’m not stupid. I’m not a dumb model.”
“[I aim to become] the next Kate Winslet – but with class.”
“I have had four past lives, three of them as a man. I was a composer in 17th-century Paris, I made materials in India and in Ancient Greece I was a famous politician. In Ancient Egypt I was keeper of the oils for the Pharaoh’s wife, and I love oils so it all kind of fits.”
“I feel I’ve aged 100 years in lockdown. I’ve had Botox, of course.”
“What annoys me is when these families have got like 12 children and we’re paying for these kids… They work out that they make more money being on the dole than having a job, they just laze around.”
“The real irony of this is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.”
“Travelling is in my blood, and so is liking luxurious things and spending.”
“I haven’t given up on men, there are a few of them around, but I keep leaving every city I meet them in.”
“Everyone from Europe wants to buy houses in LA.”
“I was too old for Jeffrey Epstein… [He seemed] very charming… He was a very well-liked guy.”
“I’m not one of those kind of girls, I don’t like going to dinners with ten models invited… I was very young and impressionable, Jeffrey was a very charismatic man.”
“I haven’t seen [Ghislaine Maxwell] since September [2018] at a friend’s baby shower… I don’t think anyone is going to find her. She’s gone far away. She’s a bit like a James Bond character. She’s quite a unique person and I don’t believe anyone is going to find her… I don’t think we will ever see her again, it’s going to be like Robert Maxwell continued; she will continue that family mystery.”
“I had no idea what was going on [with Jeffrey Epstein]… It’s extraordinary it’s the case, it’s a wild story.”
“I suddenly thought, I’m just Victoria Hervey… Horrible.”
“I don’t want to make enemies.”
Most people wouldn’t brag about being linked to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, but Lady Victoria has gone as far as to brag that he rejected her.Lady Victoria (or ‘Lady V’ to those who consider this noxious nuisance a mate) has suddenly become an expert on Ghislaine Maxwell. One is simply left wondering how much she’s been paid for what is frankly not so relevant testimony about the mucky madam.
‘Tatler’ magazine called out for suggesting a Chelsea restaurant that closed down in August 2016 as a “hot spot” post ‘Lockdown 3.0’ ending in May 2021
A “tattler” is an “observer or spectator… a gossip who tells tales,” whilst ‘THE’ Tatler is defined by the Oxford Learners’ Dictionary as “a British magazine, published once a month and containing articles about upper-class and upper-middle-class social events, fashion and the arts.”
Given the Condé Nast lifestyle publication’s staff – amongst them previously the current editor of the Daily Mail, Geordie Greig, and the ex-editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Tina Brown CBE – have variously included many Oxbridge alumni, one would assume they’d be a little better at fact checking than the notoriously sloppy seconds employed by the MailOnline (which is rated 1 out of 5 by the Microsoft Edge browser given its propensity to share fake news), but instead a recent edition of the monthly society bible featured a complete balls-up.
“[Brasserie Gustave at 4 Sydney Street, London, SW3 6PP is] located at the exact point where South Ken meets Chelsea (and on a site that has seen more restaurants than Ramires has had yellow cards), this French bistro is a keeper. If the art-deco posters look a bit hackneyed, not to say banal, the food is anything but. It’s fresh and lively, classic French dishes prepared with punctilious attention to detail. Confit de canard is superb and you won’t find a better plate of kidneys in London. Great wines too, managed with gusto by experienced sommelier Richard Weiss.”
Whilst of their thirteen selections, the loathed by Dan Wootton magazine prattled: “We’ve eaten our way around Chelsea’s top restaurants… We’ve got you covered,” a comment on OpenTable from as long ago 22nd August 2016 reads: “I made a reservation and got there and the restaurant was closed.” Plainly, anyone with half a brain would have realised five years ago that Brasserie Gustave turned out actually to be anything but “a keeper.”
In the time since, Tatler’s editorial team also missed their very own one-time contributor Giles Coren’s visit to 4 Sydney Street on 15th July 2017. At that time, he lauded “pan-Asian” Zheng Chelsea as “the sort of places foodies go in quest of the new and wonderful.”
Pictured top: 4 Sydney Street has been various restaurants over the years including Carpaccio, Sette, Marco Pierre White’s Sydney Street Grill, Brasserie Gustave and most recently Zheng Chelsea.
The magazine’s May 2020 feature on Brasserie Gustave – a restaurant that closed in August 2016.In August 2016, an OpenTable user commented: “I made a reservation for [Brasserie Gustave] on Open Table and got there and the restaurant was closed.”The front elevation of Zheng Chelsea, 4 Sydney Street, Chelsea, London, SW3 6PP.The interior of the restaurant as it used to be during the era that Brasserie Gustave (left) occupied the site and as it has been since circa 2016 as “pan-Asian” Zheng Chelsea (right). Of food there, in July 2017, Giles Coren remarked: “Food this good and this unusual would normally never be found in Chelsea… Chelsea is not absolutely the last place in the entire world that I would go looking for brilliant authentic Malaysian cooking, but it comes close. What with the well-upholstered complacency of the locals, the lack of any significant oriental population, the high throughput of tourists and idle shoppers in need of plasticky chain food, the sky-high rents and concomitant historical lack of any decent restaurants here at all, Chelsea is perhaps the second last place in the known universe that I would go in expectation of fiery, original, challenging but entirely successful Straits Chinese cuisine.”The society go-to title was previously accused of a “swathe of inaccuracies and false misrepresentations” in May 2020 by Kensington Palace after it published an article about one-time friend of its current editor, Richard Dennen (pictured together right), the Duchess of Cambridge titled “Catherine the Great.”
Matthew Steeples suggests that Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial being delayed is not surprising given new charges against the mucky madam; it is now time Prince Andrew spoke to the FBI, he adds
The fact of the matter in this development, however, is that the new charges brought against Maxwell recently not only extend the timeframe in question from 1994 to 1997 to 1994 to 2004 – key to the period in which the mucky madam was especially involved with the likes of Prince Andrew – but also increased her number of “minor” accusers from 3 to 4 victims. Here, now, we have before us a wicked wastrel of a woman facing a likely far worse fate and, frankly, thus, a small extension to allow her to “prepare” can be considered reasonable.
In other legal correspondence yesterday, the Honorable Alison J. Nathan stated “the Court declines to take further action at this time” in response to Maxwell’s lawyers claiming that paperwork supposedly destined for their client had been interfered with by her jailors. Dismissing yet more distraction technique by the ‘Bouncing Czech’s’ deviant daughter, Nathan also added that the trial delay must be “no longer than necessary” and after ordering both sides to quickly work towards a new proposed trial date quite rightly added:
“No [further] additional delay is necessary or in the interests of justice… Importantly, any victims and the public more broadly have a strong interest in trial proceeding without undue delay.”
Pictured top: Ghislaine Maxwell looking smug. No doubt, today, she’s feeling such at having her trial delayed, but isn’t she just delaying the inevitable? Someone sane, would seek a plea deal, but this mendacious minx has the same attitude as her fraud father and will remain arrogant to the end.
Maxwell Delayed – On Friday, I appeared on Shaun Attwood’s YouTube channel to discuss Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘black eye’ and other recent developments in the case. Also featured was author, sex abuse survivor and advocate Kirby Sommers and a gentleman named Charlie Robinson.Maxwell Delayed – Now, after a period of mourning for his late father, it is jolly well time that ‘Randy Andy’ faced the music and went to answer the questions of the FBI about his involvement with his ‘bestie’ Ghislaine Maxwell and the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. On Saturday, the ‘Daily Star’ reported that the “Queen [is] ‘trapped in Catch 22’ with Prince Andrew ahead of Ghislaine Maxwell trial” and reported royal commentator Daniela Elser claimed: “Her Majesty is in ‘dangerous territory’ regarding how [she] manages the fallout of the Duke of York’s ties to the disgraced late financier and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.” Elser added: “The public wants to see Andrew disciplined and forced to pay more of a price for his abysmal choices however having lost his royal job, patronages and reputation what else is there to take away? Short of Her Majesty forcing him to mow the acres and acres (literally) of palace lawn every week or pushing him out of a speeding Range Rover in front of the US Embassy and leaving him to the FBI, royal hands are tied.”Maxwell Delayed – Ghislaine Maxwell used to pose naked at Jeffrey Epstein’s mucky mansion in Palm Beach; now after supposedly faking photos at burger joints, the alleged vegan is posing with black eyes. How times change for this daughter of the pension plunderer Robert Maxwell.Maxwell Delayed – Last week, this not-seen-before image of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein with Bill Clinton emerged. Given the multiple interactions between the former POTUS and the deviant duo, Clinton must, like Prince Andrew, be squeamish about what will be said about his ‘involvement’ at any forthcoming trial.Maxwell Delayed – Responding to the delay to Maxwell’s trial, Kirby Sommers tweeted: “This ‘trial’ is going to go sideways.”Maxwell Delayed – Going further, Sommers added: “[Her] legal strategy is to wear down the prosecution. Wear down the victims… And try to get out of jail. No way she’s releasing names. And no way does she want to stand trial.”Maxwell Delayed – Referencing another element to the case, Sommers linked to a ‘Maza Inside’ article about a former friend of Maxwell who’ll be giving evidence against the alleged mucky madam. She quoted that ex-friend as saying: “[Maxwell] told me she could get into anybody’s pants and that girls are like candy.” Going further the unnamed “wealthy Californian woman” added: “This woman was worse than Jeffrey Epstein. She has no conscience. I wondered about a lot of things with her, sometimes.”Maxwell Delayed – Elsewhere on Twitter, echoing the late Caroline Aherne’s words to Debbie McGee in character as ‘Mrs Merton’ Malcolm Finch told his 4,200 followers: “Peter Mandelson used to spend his time hanging around Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s Palm Beach mansion. I wonder what attracted Peter Mandelson to billionaire Jeffrey Epstein?” In May 2020, ‘The Steeple Times’ reported on the late Paul Daniels’ wife Ms McGee “boasting about her connections to ‘Randy Andy’” and in June that year we also explored the somewhat curious relationship between ‘Prince of Perv’ Epstein, ‘Prince of Darkness’ Mandelson and ‘Princess of Pugnacious’ Maxwell.
As her lawyer issues an image of her with a black eye, mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell’s history with fakery should lead anyone rational to question whether its current or genuine even
In the wake of its release yesterday, one has to ask: “When was the supposedly ‘new’ photograph of Ghislaine Maxwell with a black eye under her eye actually taken and is it actually genuine?”
Responding to the snap being shared on the official ‘RealGhislaine’ Twitter handle, one user remarked of the allegedly fake image: “Absolute trot!” whilst another added: “Perhaps she slipped manicuring her eyebrows with clippers.”
Miss Maxwell’s history with fake imagery and manipulation relating to such has previously illustrated her dishonesty in this area.
The photograph of alleged vegan Ghislaine Maxwell munching on a burger in Los Angeles in August 2019 that was released by her associate was widely debunked later as a fake.
A photograph that Prince Andrew claims to be faked – taken in Miss Maxwell’s house in 2001 – has never been proven to be anything other than real.
Like her fraudulent father, anything but honest Ghislaine Maxwell also has a history of using pseudonyms and called herself “Jen Marshall” or “Janet Marshall” when buying ‘Tuckedaway’ in November 2019.
Our conclusion: “Is Ghislaine Maxwell a woman whose word and images can be trusted in any regard or is she just an utter fake?”
Like the case of the boy who repeatedly cried wolf, grubby groaner Ghislaine Maxwell and those close to her also have a history with visual media that would make even the most sympathetic individual doubt what they have to say in that context. As a result, the latest potentially fake image – released by her lawyer and on her ‘RealGhislaine’ Twitter handle – of the incarcerated alleged teenage trafficker with a black eye should be treated with the contempt it deserves.
Aside from her and Prince Andrew having utterly failed in their efforts to get anyone to believe the 2001 photograph of the randy royal with his “chubby fingers” around the waist of the then 17-year-old Virginia Roberts at her Kinnerton Street house to be anything but genuine, the ‘Bouncing Czech’s’ daughter has many other links to the misuse and manipulation of imagery.
Firstly, it must be remembered that the mucky madam was likely involved in leaking that infamous “too perfect” photoshopped image of herself at an In-N-Out Burger restaurant in Los Angeles in August 2019. Aside from this wicked woman – whom bangs on about being vegan constantly now – “planting herself for a double-double” burger, that image was subsequently debunked by The Cut. For them, Bridget Read stated:
“The intrepid Daily Mail checked out the location of the burger joint in Hollywood where Maxwell was allegedly spotted by a regular last week and found some odd discrepancies. Notably, a bus stop in the background of the shot shows an advertisement for the movie Good Boys – which the company that operates the ad space said has never been there. The bus stop currently displays an ad for a local hospital, which it says has been there since July 28. Maxwell was supposedly photographed at the In-N-Out on August 12.”
Fake Maxwell – Prior to her arrest at the curiously named ‘Tucked Away’ using the invented name ‘Jen Marshall’ or Janet Marshall,’ woman-of-multiple identities Ghislaine Maxwell’s associates allegedly released most likely faked images of her at an In-N-Out restaurant.Fake Maxwell – This anything but fake photograph of “chubby fingered” Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell on the first floor landing of 44 Kinnerton Street, Belgravia, London, SW1X 8ES on 10th March 2001 quite rightly remains in the public domain in spite of the royal claiming it to have been a doctored creation.
“Questions about Maxwell’s lunch outing have fed into the already robust set of conspiracy theories around Epstein, his high-profile acquaintances, and his death. Why was a second smartphone on the In-N-Out table? Why did Maxwell never stick a straw in either her soda or her shake? Why did the diner who supposedly photographed her have such a nice camera, with a lens that took a very clear photo? It doesn’t help that the In-N-Out employees at that location have been forbidden, supposedly by their employer, to talk about Maxwell’s visit.”
“If Saffian did indeed leak the photo of Maxwell, it was likely to try and throw the FBI off her scent… If the In-N-Out photo is indeed doctored, Maxwell could be anywhere and could show up anywhere she pleases. What’s next? Some predictions: eating a hot dog on the steps of the Met, posing with a cactus at Joshua Tree, riding a unicycle at Burning Man, or painting her nails on the C train.”
Secondly, Miss Maxwell and her now deceased paedophile ex-lover have been repeatedly accused of covert surveillance of high-profile guests – including potentially the film director Woody Allen, President Bill Clinton, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Barclay’s chief Jes Staley and the Duke of York – at the homes they shared. With holes in ceilings where technology for such was installed found in Epstein’s Lenox Hill, New York townhouse, for example, the clear indication is that information gathered was used to blackmail those targeted into doing whatever this deviant duo wished.
Thirdly and most relevantly, the most ‘recent’ image of Miss Maxwell – a woman accused of having snapped sleazy images of naked people at Epstein’s now demolished Palm Beach perv pad in addition – shared by lawyer Bobbi Sternheim yesterday of the disgraced socialite allegedly sporting a black eye should now be questioned in the same way as that of the supposedly spurious In-N-Out snapshot.
“Last night, she was confronted by MDC staff due a visible bruise over her left eye. The ‘black eye’ is depicted in Exhibit B. Despite 24/7 camera surveillance (except when guards elect to exert authority in an intimidating way off-camera, as they did in Saturday’s bathroom incident), no guard addressed the bruise until Ms. Maxwell, who has no mirror, caught a reflection of her aching eye in the glean of a nail clipper.”
“At that point, MDC staff confronted Ms. Maxwell regarding the source of the bruise, threatening to place her in the SHU if she did not reveal how she got it.”
“While Ms. Maxwell is unaware of the cause of the bruise, as reported to medical and psych staff, she has grown increasingly reluctant to report information to the guards for fear of retaliation, discipline, and punitive chores. However, there is concern that the bruise may be related to the need for Ms. Maxwell to shield her eyes from the lights projected into her cell throughout the night.”
“The MDC routinely places inmates in the SHU if they have engaged in physical altercation with other inmates or to protect inmates who are the subject of abuse. It would be ironic if the MDC follows through with its threat to place Ms. Maxwell in the SHU: It would signal that Ms. Maxwell needs protection from the very staff so intent on protecting her, since she has no contact with anyone but staff.”
Frankly, given said image is unaccompanied by any kind of source information or date, it should be treated with the same skepticism as to anything related to a woman who once answered: “[I am a citizen of] TerraMar,” when asked what country she was from by the FBI.
Pictured top: The undated, unsourced, potentially fake image released by Bobbi Sternheim showing Ghislaine Maxwell sporting what they claim to be a black eye (left) and the subsequently debunked ‘fake’ image of Ghislaine Maxwell at a Los Angeles, California In-N-Out burger diner in August 2019 (right).
Brothers in Coats – Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein
Elsewhere yesterday, a beady eyed reader pointed out to The Steeple Times something that surprisingly utterly everybody else has missed about the 2010 photograph of ‘Randy Andy’ walking in New York’s Central Park with the then already released from jail for two years already paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Both men are clearly wearing identical coats and frankly anyone with half a brain will now enquire: “Why? What are they? Creepy, copycat blood brothers?”
What next? Perhaps ‘Mucky Maxwell’s’ PR peddler Brian Basham could launch a sideline fundraiser by selling a limited edition run of the coats on RealGhislaine.com. Cha-ching!
Barrister Rebecca Sabben-Clare’s attempt to muzzle the media by citing the Cliff Richard case rather than muzzling her snarling dog shows her to be an utter disgrace
Those close to the seemingly supposedly “exceptionally bright” yet plainly actually just irresponsible barrister Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC ludicrously claimed Toby, her “snarling” terrier-cross, to be “sweet” and a “friendly pet” in the wake of it savagely causing the death of a “defenceless” seal nicknamed ‘Freddie Mercury.’
Just like giraffe slayer Merelize van der Merwe, who attempted to justify being gifted the “opportunity” to mercilessly slay an innocent giraffe by her husband for Valentine’s Day, wealthy and “fearless” Sabben-Clare opted to try to silence those outraged in the wake of the incident rather than taking responsibility for what the beast she owns had done.
A selfish self-preservationist rather than a seal conservationist, Sabben-Clare – who lives in a £6 million ‘mansion’ near the scene of her dastardly dog’s sick savagery – didn’t stick around for long to help at the scene of the mauling and later pompously declared: “I left for my own safety and that of my dog… There was nothing that I could do.”
Meanwhile, immediately concerned for her own reputation, Sabben-Clare “instructed lawyers Schillings to bully the media into not naming her.” Of this anything but selfless course of action, Guido Fawkes remarked: “She cited the Cliff Richard case to invoke a supposed right-to-privacy in an attempt to keep her name out of the story.”
Going further, Guido Fawkes continued:
“Rebecca Sabben-Clare set legal dogs Schillings on the press yesterday afternoon to try and cover-up her name, when that didn’t work after the Mail Online named her, Rebecca Sabben-Clare switched tactics and cooperated with a soft-soap PR puff piece telling the Standard:”
“I am heartbroken by this terrible accident. As an animal lover, I fully understand the dismay that has been expressed. I apologise unreservedly for what happened. In hindsight I wish, of course, that the dog had been on a lead but at the time that did not seem necessary.”
“Yet another example of the rich and powerful trying it on with lawyers to muzzle the press. Shame Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC didn’t muzzle her dog. Didn’t work and Schillings have lost again…”
Continuing further of this rotten ratbag, Roll On Friday yesterday reported that Sabben-Clare’s chambers, 7 King’s Bench Walk, had issued a statement about the totally avoidable yet utterly sick incident involving a dangerous dog that should now be put down. Their unnamed spokesman attempted to distance themselves and remarked:
“7 King’s Bench Walk is deeply saddened by the death of a seal by the side of the Thames following an incident involving a self-employed member of Chambers. This was a tragic accident which unfortunately resulted in the death of a lovely wild animal… Please be aware that Rebecca took her own advice in relation to this matter.”
One clear point arises out of this debacle that need never have happened: If Rebecca Sabben-Clare had kept her dog on a lead and controlled it in an area where there were supposedly notices about the seal’s presence, this incident would not have occurred. She should now face the consequences and her dog ought, at the very, be least taken away from her before it harms another animal or a child even.
To join the 44,400 people who’ve already supported our Change.org petition seeking to get the giraffe slayer Merelize van der Merwe banned from Facebook, please click here.
Responding on Twitter, editor of ‘The Steeple Times’ Matthew Steeples remarked: “Rebecca Sabben-Clare QC, whose dog savaged an innocent seal because she let it run wild, should hand herself in at her nearest police station and she should hand her bloody dog in also. Shame on her for thinking she can PR her way out of this. The woman is a disgrace.”Furthering her PR campaign, one of Rebecca Sabben-Clare’s neighbours later arrogantly blubbed: “He has no history of this and is super sweet with our dogs. I don’t know the breed. But she (Rebecca) is a nice person. It could happen to anyone.” The injuries to the now tragically deceased seal, Freddie Mercury, prove quite to the contrary.
Anne Robinson’s appointment as the ‘Countdown’ host is a breath of fresh air and the carping ‘woke’ should pipe down about it
In spite of a somewhat soppy iNews journalist named Benjamin Butterworth getting in a terrible tizzy yesterday and ludicrously suggesting her to be someone who played on “cynical tropes” and “brutality,” Anne Robinson’s appointment as the first female host of Countdown is actually a breath of fresh air.
Whilst the ‘woke’ whingebags amongst us will undoubtedly bleat about ‘The Queen of Mean’s’ supposed “vindictiveness” towards single mothers and gay people being unacceptable in this age, the ‘sweet pea’ that is actually the most charming delight in reality that is Miss Robinson is someone to be celebrated.
It must be remembered that Robinson – whose up-down-and-back-up-again life story was grippingly told in her 2001 Memoirs Of An Unfit Mother – is someone who went from living on £300 per week to being worth over £50 million in spite of enduring both alcoholism and a painful custody battle. An example to us all in that she turned her personal life and personal fortunes around, here also is someone with both wit and wisdom.
Commenting on her appointment this week, Robinson amusingly told Channel 4’s Steph’s Packed Lunch:
“I am beyond thrilled to be joining Countdown. The show is almost as old as I am and just as historic. I am particularly excited to be working alongside the show’s two other formidable women.”
“Worryingly, Susie and Rachel are not only very smart but younger, prettier and thinner than me. Sadly, there’s no time for another face lift so I’ll have make do with this old one.”
“Three Clever Girls Do Countdown! Don’t you love the sound of that?”
“I am a crossword nut so the Countdown’s conundrums I can make sense of. But the adding up and taking away – I can’t go much further than working out the fee once my agent takes his cut.”
Here is someone with grit and spirit and here is someone who doesn’t moan and groan; here, in fact, is just what we need in these depressing times. It is time for all to hail the return of Anne Robinson and for all to celebrate the rebirth of honest directness.
Heroine of the Hour 2021 – Anne Robinson was the anchor for the popular BBC quiz show ‘The Weakest Link’ from 2000 to 2012. It deservedly made her a fortune and when it ended, rightminded folk everywhere lamented its loss. Her return to our screens now is most definitely something to look forward at a time when the nation is still enduring the most miserable of lockups.
Poundland muckspreader Karren Brady desperately seeks attention by bleating that men are “sexist” against her; Lady Brady brought up a story from years ago proving she has utterly nothing new to say
“The arrogant, self-interested baroness,” “gutter gossip hack” and “all-round nasty piece of work” are just some of the descriptions that have deservedly stuck to Karren Brady (AKA The Right Honourable The Baroness Brady of Knightsbridge in the City of Westminster CBE) over the years.
Also widely mocked for her links to “dildo floggers” and as “Mrs Blowjob or No Job,” Brady used her column in today’s The Sun on Sunday to yet again moan about people making “jibes” against her.
Referencing an alleged incident long ago with Sky News’ football anchorman Richard Keys, Brady bleated to readers:
He was later overheard talking about me when he thought the microphone was off.
He said: “See charming Karren Brady this morning complaining about sexism? Yeah. Do me a favour, love.”
How condescending is that? Needless to say, I have never forgotten it. And I doubt I ever will.
In the case of this acid-tongued harpy, nothing other than stones and glass houses come to mind. Now, please, Karren, just do us all a favour and put a sock in it in 2021.
“At 23, I had skin as thick as a rhino… I don’t have any fears.”
“I dare to put my head above the parapet, to have a mind and a voice of my own and to plough my own furrow.”
“[I am now] one of the most highly sought-after motivational speakers in the world.”
More modest than the late Mother Theresa, one is simply left asking: “What on earth was it about the very wealthy woman Karren Brady that David Cameron saw fit to elevate her to the House of Lords?”
In 2016, Duncan Bannantyne described Karren Brady as a “nasty piece of trash” and “a complete coward” after she penned a column describing him as “hilariously repulsive.” Here, this mouthy muckspreader is pictured with her disgraced bestie Sir Philip Green.It was ludicrously announced that plain old Karren Rita Brady would be given a seat as a Conservative life peer on the House of Lords on the 8th August 2014. She had previously addressed the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on 30th September 2013.As this banner proves, football fans loathe her and on 6th June 2020, in yet another column in ‘The Sun on Sunday’ Karren Brady banged on about ‘missing’ Madeleine McCann before turning to sharing her bizarre belief that Big Macs are brilliant. If ever there’s been a columnist with a better ability to choose interlinking subjects, we’d argue that it was time the world was told.
