Outrageously over-the-top Beverly Hills pad complete with gold accessories galore goes on sale for £80 million; buyers will get a gold Lamborghini, a gold Rolls-Royce and 170 gold coloured bottles of Cristal
Sold last for £7.7 million ($9.8 million, €9.3 million or درهم36 million) in 2012 when it was a 5,926 square foot house, 1175 Hillcrest Road on the Trousdale Estates in Beverly Hills, California has been completely redeveloped and renamed ‘Opus’. It now provides 20,500 square foot of accommodation on a 1 acre plot and has gone on for sale for the astonishing sum of £80 million ($100 million, €95 million or درهم367 million).
Now featuring 7 bedrooms and 11 bathrooms, it is the ‘extras’ that come with the property that make it newsworthy. Amongst the ‘toys’ thrown in are a gold Lamborghini Aventador and a gold Rolls-Royce Dawn, £1.6 million ($2 million, €1.9 million or درهم7.3 million) of artwork (including three Damien Hirst paintings), 170 bottles of Cirstal champagne and a full-time house manager, whose salary has been pre-paid for two years.
The creation of a developer named Nile Niami, the house also has “electric toilets that do everything for you” – Just what every billionaire truly needs.
Bonhams to offer what they call “the world’s most sought after Cadillac” at auction in Florida; it was originally made for the famed BROADMOOR Hotel resort in El Paso County, Colorado
The BROADMOOR – a name that is unique and copyrighted due to its little raised “A” – in Colorado Springs is a vast hotel at the base of the 9,570 foot tall Cheyenne Mountain, the location of the operations base for the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Built in the Italian Renaissance style and featuring 784 guest rooms, the complex has three golf courses, 18 restaurants and a fishing camp and is said to be the place where President George W. Bush decided to quit drinking after waking up with a hangover in the summer of 1986.
The Broadmoor Hotel.The main hotel building.
The original owners of the hotel, the Penrose family, “wanted their guests to be escorted form the airport to the hotel and to be given tours of the area’s majestic beauty in the finest of luxury” according to the Bonhams catalogue entry on a 1959 Cadillac BROADMOOR Skyview they are set to auction in March. It is the last of around 28 Cadillac limousines made for the hotel from 1937 and was built by the Superior Coach Corp., a now defunct Ohio based manufacturer of yellow school buses and hearses.
251-inches long overall, equipped with power steering, power brakes, a 390 cubic inch V8 engine and dominated by a vast plexi panel ‘Skyview’ roof, the car was designed to accommodate 11 passengers. It remained in service at the hotel until the early 1970s, was then was sold to a Cadillac collector in Branford, Connecticut and subsequently underwent a full restoration at the behest of its current owner.
Bonhams will sell this unusual vehicle at their Amelia Island auction on 9th March at the Fernandina Beach Club. They have set an estimate of £140,000 to £200,000 ($175,000 to $250,000 or €165,000 to €235,000 or درهم640,000 to درهم915,000) and describe it as “one of the most exclusive Cadillacs ever built”.
Quaint medieval thatched cottage for sale; it is one of the oldest in Wiltshire
One of the oldest building structures in Wiltshire, The Old Cottage at Ogbourne St. Andrew, dates to medieval times and is now for sale for £630,000 ($786,000, €743,000 or درهم2.9 million).
Grade II listed and built from banded sarsen and flint with a thatched roof, this quirky 1,787 square foot cottage most definitely wouldn’t look out of place on a chocolate box or in an episode of Midsomer Murders. It includes 3 reception rooms, a breakfast kitchen, 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and stands with 0.34 acres of gardens.
Featuring such things as an inglenook fireplace complete with a bread oven and beamed ceilings, The Old Cottage has been in the ownership of the same family for 40 years. It is for sale through Hamptons International and though currently without allocated parking, has the potential to create space.
Excitement over the 2017 Cheltenham Festival has already begun and punters are already eagerly placing their bets
In 2016, our man ‘The Tout’s’ tip for the coveted Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Cheltenham Festival in Gloucestershire, Sprinter Sacre, romped home and beat the favourite by seven lengths. This year’s festival is looking equally exciting and punters are already lining up to eagerly place their bets with guidance from such places as Cheltenham Festival 2017 Tips.
Dating back to 1860 and running between 14th to 17th March this year, the Cheltenham Festival is a National Hunt meeting with prize money second only to the Grand National at a total of £4.1 million. It has an average attendance of 62,000 people per day and is famous for the ‘Cheltenham Roar’, the enormous amount of noise that the crowd generates as the starter raises the tape for the first race of the festival. Ruby Walsh has been top jockey at the festival ten times whilst Paul Nicholls has been top trainer six times. Willie Mullins comes a close second having trained winning horses five times.
Rivalry between British and Irish trainers is intense at Cheltenham and a cup, named ‘The Prestbury’ in honour of the nearest village to the course, celebrates this annually. The first country with 14 winners or more takes that but the true highlight of the four-day event is ‘The Gold Cup’, this year coinciding with St Patrick’s Day.
Past winners of this legendary race have included such stalwarts as Desert Orchid, Master Oats and Lord Windermere but the greatest successes have come in the form of five times winner Golden Miller (1932 at 13/2, 1933 at 4/7F, 1934 at 6/5F, 1935 at 1/2F and 1936 at 21/20F) and three times winners Cottage Rake (1948 at 10/1, 1949 at 4/6F, 1950 at 5/6F) and Arkle (1964 at 7/4, 1965 at 3/10F and 1966 at 1/10F).
For those more interested in socialising, the Cheltenham Festival provides plenty to do. In 2015, ex-glamour model Katie Price even managed to secure a couple of selfies at the event with The Duchess of Cornwall.
The Cheltenham Festival runs from 14th to 17th March 2017 at Cheltenham Racecourse, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 4SH.
To book tickets, click here or telephone: +44 (0) 344 579 3003.
For betting tips, go to Free Bets, a one-stop shop for betting promotions.
Cyclist turned jockey Victoria Pendleton at the festival
Happy racegoeers
Pippa Middleton at the event
Katie Price and HRH Duchess of Cornwall pose for a selfie
1959 Rolls-Royce estate car owned by late industrial tycoon Orin Smith to be auctioned; it was bizarrely designed to include beds and a loud air horn to “blast” cattle off the highway
Florida based businessman and retired CEO of the Engelhard Corporation Orin Smith (1935 – 2016) was passionate about cars and next month, those with deep pockets will be in with a chance to purchase 58 vehicles from his collection that will be sold, mostly without reserve, by RM Sotheby’s at their annual Amelia Island sale on 10th and 11th March.
Amongst the eclectic selection of classic and contemporary cars from the late industrialist’s collection is a 1959 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud I estate car by H. J. Mulliner and Radford. One of just two examples, this immaculate short-wheelbase shooting brake was originally supplied to a Robert L. McCormick of Wichita, Kansas and transported to New York on the Cunard flagship Queen Elizabeth.
McCormick kept the car – which features a luggage space that can accommodate items up to 6-foot long – until 1965 and on selling it to a Palm Beach based judge named Lewis M. Schott, penned the new owner a letter that read:
The Radford conversion is a “complete job”. I will explain to your chauffeur and secretary how it makes into beds, etc, etc.
I’ll explain the 3-way horn switch to your employees. I used the loud horn for “blasting” livestock off the Mexican highways.
Finally, I hope you have as much fun out of the car as I have had. It should go 200,000 miles without work on it… A serious sacroiliac precludes long motor trips for me for a few years, and I’m an unhappy warrior when I think about it.
Sold again in 2007 to Florida Roll-Royce expert Richard Gorman, the shooting brake was then subject to an 18-month renovation. It is now presented in velvet green and a sage with parchment leather interior piped in velvet green and features upgraded air conditioning.
Of the overall collection to be sold on behalf of Smith’s family, Don Rose of RM Sotheby’s remarked:
I had the great pleasure of knowing Orin Smith and found him to be a true gentleman in every sense of the word.
In addition to his impressive gathering of some of the finest Rolls-Royce and Bentley automobiles, Orin displayed an eclectic taste with a keen eye for other icons of style, including sporting machinery from pre-war to the best of the contemporary.
The common thread here is beauty, in both design and engineering; fitting for a man of generous spirit devoted to excellence. Because of those qualities, Orin Smith was beloved to the Amelia Island crowd, which makes the offering of his collection at our Amelia Island venue all the more poignant.
Of the shooting brake itself, the auctioneer adds:
Numerous Rolls-Royce shooting brakes exist, but many of them are crude later conversions. This car is a true and authentic coachbuilt original, created to the exacting specifications of its original owner, and restored to that same high standard – air horns and all. Errant cattle, consider yourselves warned.
Belvedere, CA home of late tech billionaire and author of ‘Sex and the Single Zillionaire’ Thomas Perkins for sale; he entertained amongst others Sophia Loren and Rupert Murdoch there
Thomas Perkins (1932 – 2016) had it all. Born in New York, this Harvard University and MIT graduate made his fortune in Silicon Valley, California when he co-founded Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1972 and invested in amongst others Amazon, AOL, Compaq, Google, Macromedia, Netscape and Segway. He was said to be worth £6.4 billion ($8 billion, €7.4 billion or درهم29.4 billion), was briefly married to famed author Danielle Steel between 1998 and 2002 and wrote a novel of his own, Sex and the Single Zillionaire, in 2006.
Aside from an £8 million ($10 million, €9.3 million or درهم36.6 million) country house in East Sussex, England named Plumpton Place and ‘The Maltese Falcon’ – his 289-foot long, £104.3 million ($130 million, €120.9 million or درهم477.5 million) sailing yacht – Perkins owned a French style residence on Belvedere Island in Marin County, California. He purchased it with his Norwegian first wife, Gerd Thune-Ellefsen, in 1972 and continued to live there after her death in 1994.
Danielle Steel and Tom Perkins remained friends even after their divorce
Steel even hosted a party for Perkins’s novel at her Pacific Heights, San Francisco mansion when it launched in 2006
The tech billionaire’s yacht, The Maltese Falcon, was the largest sailing yacht in the world when it was launched in 1990
Perkins at his English country home, Plumpton Place in East Sussex
The exterior of Perkins’s Belvedere home, 345 Golden Gate Avenue, appears modest
But what is to be found within includes this spectacular ‘Grand Salon’
Extending to 8.885 square foot in total, the house – which was put up for sale last June by Perkins’s children – was built to the designs of architects Julia Morgan and George Kelham in 1928 and features 16th century linenfold wood-paneled walls in a room described as a ‘Grand Salon’. Here, Perkins entertained European royalty, his fellow News Corp board member Rupert Murdoch and the Italian actress Sophia Loren and given the room’s outlook to the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco Bay, these luminaries cannot have failed to have been impressed.
Known simply as 345 Golden Gate Avenue, Perkins’s former home is for sale through Sotheby’s International Realty for £13.2 million ($16.5 million, €15.3 million or درهم60.6 million). It includes a formal dining room seating 18, 6 bedrooms, 7.5 bathrooms, a guest apartment, an outdoor swimming pool and stands on a plot of 0.85 acres.
Prior to his death, in 2014, Perkins attracted controversy when he penned an article for The Wall Street Journal. At the time, he wrote:
“Writing from the epicentre [sic] of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one per cent’, namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one per cent, namely the rich”.
He later apologised for making comparisons to Nazi Germany but subsequently added: “In the Nazi era it was racial demonization, now it’s class demonization”.
5,000 acre Irish estate where “anything can happen” for sale for £24.1 million; its current owner would prefer a buyer who’ll allow him to use it for three months a year
Michael Jackson hid out at Luggala in County Wicklow, Ireland in 2006 for three months after being cleared of child molestation charges and other guests at this magical estate have included Francis Bacon, Orlando Bloom, Bono, John Paul Getty II, Mel Gibson, John Hurt, Mick Jagger, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Paul McCartney and Anita Pallenberg.
Encompassing a plot of some 5,000 acres, Luggala (meaning: “a hollow in a ridge”) is also known as ‘Fancy Mountain’ and has been used in films including Zardoz, Braveheart and Excalibur. It is located 28 miles south-west of Dublin, was described by the singer Marianne Faithfull as “the most beautiful place in the world” and the main house there has gradually morphed into what has been called “the most decorative honeypot in Ireland”.
Architecturally significant, Luggala Lodge (also known as Luggala Castle), was built in 1787 and is lauded as having “that special brand of 18th century Gothick that rejoices in little battlements, crochets, trefoil and quatrefoil windows and ogee mantelpieces, Indeed, quite like the Gothick of pastry cooks and Rockingham china”. It “boasts all the appurtenances of a grand castle but on a miniature scale” and though standing on a modest footprint, extends to some 7,438 square foot in total.
In 1937, the estate was bought by the Hon. Ernest Guinness (1876 – 1949) and given to his daughter, Oonagh, on her marriage to Lord Oranmore and Browne – a peer with the rare distinction of managing to sit in the House of Lords without ever saying a single thing. It subsequently became a place where “nobody could stay away: Dublin intelligentsia, literati, painters, actors, scholars, hangers-on, toffs, punters, poets and social hang-gliders” and was even immortalised in poetry by Seamus Heaney.
Current owner of Luggala, the decidedly eccentric the Hon. Dr. Garech Browne (born 1939)Luggala Lodge, Roundwood, Leinster, County Wicklow, IrelandLuggala Lodge after a fire in 1956Oonagh Guinness, Oonagh, Lady Oranmore and Browne (1910 – 1995)
On Oonagh, Lady Oranmore and Browne’s death in 1970, the estate passed into the “custody” of her son, the Hon. Dr. Garech Browne. He has spent considerable sums restoring the house and made it a “cultural hub for Irish music, art and literature”. A co-founder of the record label Claddagh Records and instrumental in the formation of the traditional Irish folk group, The Chieftans, Browne and his Indian princess wife, Purna Devi of Morvi, added an indoor swimming pool to Luggala Lodge as well as a Gothic library for his collection of 8,000 books.
Now for sale due to 77-year old Garlech Browne and his wife primarily choosing to be based in Singapore, it has been suggested that the Irish State should purchase the estate. Thus far no offer has been forthcoming and this week Jennifer O’Connell of The Irish Times even penned an article that suggested: “Opening the national chequebook is not the way to secure [Luggala’s] future”.
Matthew Steeples highlights an especially unpleasant individual – Meet Rupert James, a ‘man’ with a hatred for Gina Miller and what he calls ‘Kaffir Boys’
Aside from being a typical example of an angry old man, Rupert James is someone who takes to social media to abuse others. To him, Gina Miller is a “witch” and “an interfering bint”; an image of a black parking warden generates a comment of “just look… enough said” and a video of bull terriers attacking a black man in South Africa is shared along with the comment: “Take away has arrived. Feeding time… Serves the thieving Kaffir right… Hahaha!!!”
Rupert James shares his views on a video shared by something called ‘South Africa Crime Watch’
The original post by the ‘organisation’
Shared on Facebook with his equally nasty chums, James previously has referred to other black men as “Kaffir Boys” and myself as a “complete c**t”. He added: “He’s going to regret the way he’s spoken and written about me. This I promise” and added: “Being blocked by this little s**t is as good as being sent to the Upper House”. James has no regard for civility and along with his cronies seems unable to accept how inappropriate using the word ‘kaffir’ truly is.
Regarded as “highly racially offensive, in the same way as nigger in the United Sates” according to Wikipedia and “seldom used as an isolated insult, but rather is used systematically by openly racist people when talking about black people”, ‘kaffir’ is a word that should be banished to history. It and individuals like Rupert James have no place in civilised society.
Further examples of posts from Rupert James follow:
Unlisted 18th century Georgian residence near Badminton for sale; ideal for those looking to quit the rat race
City dwellers and commuters regularly dream of quitting the rat race for a life in the country and when they watch programmes like Escape to the Country and Downton Abbey, they see an idealised vision of rural life. Such people could do worse than take a look at Dauncey House at Tormarton, near Badminton in South Gloucestershire, a property that is currently for sale through Hamptons International.
Reduced in price from £1.3 million ($1.6 million, €1.5 million or درهم5.8 million) to £1.2 million ($1.5 million, €1.4 million or درهم5.4 million), this attractive Cotswold stone village house was also marketed for £1.3 million in 2009 according to Country Life magazine. It is situated within a village where you’ll count the ‘King of Hoovers’ Sir James Dyson and the Duke of Beaufort as neighbours and it is believed that “humans have been active in the area for more than 6,000 years”.
Surprisingly unlisted and providing 3,368 square foot of accommodation, Dauncey House includes 3 reception rooms, 6 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. It stands in 2.5 acres of gardens and orchards and though perhaps a little blandly decorated currently, provides what the selling agents call “flexibility for the growing family”.
Situated just 10 miles north of Bath and 1 mile north-east of Junction 18 of the M4 motorway, this handsome 18th century Georgian residence would make an ideal home for a commuter. Chippenham, just 12 miles away, provides a direct service to London Paddington.
The paper surprisingly focused on a total spending of £300 on gin in 2014 and £49 on the spirit in 2015. Bizarrely, in spite of the minimal quantity consumed, they stated the Corporation’s executives are “especially fond” of it.
Given the BBC has 20,951 employees in total, the publication of this non-story seems surprising. This hardly represents a return to Hogarth’s Gin Lane and it’s certainly not a case of ‘Auntie’s Ruin’.
