Tempestuous television presenter Phillip Schofield bizarrely claims to have been murdered in a past life because of a debt
Not content with making a total plonker of himself launching an own brand boxed wine range condemned as “only fit for the bin” and “no more palatable than fizzy Ribena,” Phillip Schofield’s back at it with some more crackpottery.
Featured in the Mirror this morning in the context of his newly released self-indulgent ‘memoir’ Life’s What You Make It, Schofield claimed he “has a rule about never borrowing money” as he believes he and an (imaginary) ‘family’ he’s plainly invented were murdered in a “past life” over a debt.
Of this plain attempt to get publicity for just about anything, wack job Schofield – whom was also the subject of another story in the same paper yesterday where he pathetically whined about how he “feared he was dying after weight loss” (in spite of the fact that there was actually nothing physically wrong with him) – announced:
“I opened the door to silence and felt horror wash over me. Three steps in, and I saw them – two murdered bodies on the floor.”
“I knew they were my wife and small child. Horror turned to fury. I knew why they were dead. I owed money to two brothers who worked at the end of the street in a sawmill.”
“The brother [then] found me, dragged me outside, punched me to the ground and, as my head hit the mud, he repeatedly stamped on it until I was dead!”
Going further the notoriously temperamental ITV presenter added that he is “reminded of the terrifying vision of his former death every time he goes into a church” and stated he is “not willing to take the risk again, meaning he flatly refuses to borrow any money.”
What’s coming next for Schofe? A trip to the funny farm?
Appearing from his somewhat shabby kitchen on Good Morning Britain today by Zoom along with a genuine expert named Professor Susan Michie, Madeley branded lockdowns a “pointless game of hide and seek.” Going further, he then added: “There’s no point in running away and hiding from the virus… It’s not squashing the virus.”
Whilst some might suggest ‘The Dorian Gray of Daytime Telly’ might actually have a point, his curious choice of words about sums up this all-round wally and on Twitter the public reacted with an understandable hint of mockery. Of his not so sage expertise, comments included: “What a plonker” and “his mum Judy will kill him when he gets home.” Another quite accurately added: “I still have this feeling of dread every time I see Richard Madeley trending. ‘Oh, no, what’s he said now?’”
Madeley is currently self-isolating for 14 days after returning from a holiday in France. Perhaps, just for him, a special case could be made to make that permanent.
Twitter users had a field day after Madeley’s latest blunder. One suggested he was showing “the first signs of the menopause.”Amongst responses to the car crash performance was: “Will Richard Madeley go away if we lock him indoors?” Another added: “Seems Richard Madeley doesn’t agree with the lockdown! Understandable, it’s not so easy to nick supermarket bottles of wine when you shop online!”
All-round plonker Phillip Schofield’s wine range condemned as “only fit for the bin” and “no more palatable than fizzy Ribena”
Known for his extremely short fuse and once described by David Dimbleby as “cretinous,” Phillip Schofield recently launched a wine range in Waitrose and on Amazon. Unsurprisingly, it’s been a total flop and was quite deservedly condemned at the weekend in The Sun as “overpriced” and “bitter.”
Priced between £19.99 and £24.99 for 2.25-litre boxes, Schofield’s was slammed by one punter as “only fit for the bin” on Waitrose’s website. They added: “The wine [was] effervescing within the bag. No more palatable than fizzy Ribena” whilst another suggested: “I don’t have anything positive to say about the flavour at all. Not pleasant drinking. We failed to finish the box.”
Prior to launching the range in April, Schofield quite pompously bragged to The Drinks Business:
“When I agreed to this partnership, I had certain conditions; I wanted to be part of the tasting team… I wanted it to be good value. The result is something I felt I could really invest in.”
Schofield – whose ‘coming out’ and alleged connections to a young man named Matthew McGreevy attracted much media attention earlier this year – unsurprisingly failed to respond to a request from The Steeple Times for comment; he was probably instead too busy nursing a hangover headache from drinking his equivalent of Sir Cliff Richard’s equally vile plonk.
Pictured top: All-round plonker Phillip Schofield on a night out with his one-time ‘friend’ Matt McGreevy; Phillip Schofield’s bag-in-box wines.
Sir Cliff Richard’s associations with wines, just like Phillip Schofield’s, have not always proved fruitful. In 2006, appearing on Gordon Ramsay’s ‘The F-Word,’ the crappy crooner had a meltdown during a blind tasting. After sipping one unnamed offering, Sir Cliff announced: “That’s rubbish. I wouldn’t pay for that. It’s tainted, it’s insipid, it tastes like vinaigrette. I’d never buy that.” Ramsay, responded by remarking: “Cliff, that’s your wine”. The singer is said to have answered: “Young man, go f**k yourself.”What a Plonker – Phillip Schofield was photographed with Matthew McGreevy on a number of occasions during the latter’s youth.What a Plonker – The television presenter with his “friend” at a later date.
Dippy Debbie McGee yet again confirms her status as the ultimate airhead in boasting about her connections to ‘Randy Andy’ and is met with a denial from a royal source
Right now, most people would keep quiet any connection to Prince Andrew. Aside from his antics in Pizza Express (Woking branch), the disgraced royal is “in financial hot water following the Epstein scandal” according to Tatler’s amusingly named Hope Coke and he’s been “royally dumped” by everyone from Barclays to the University of Huddersfield.
With his dimwit on-off live-in ex-wife forced to take up hawking crappy books yet again to fend off other creditors, Prince Andrew’s woes continue to mount and now ‘The Lovely Debbie McGee’ has gone and stuck her oar into the thick of it. Of course, as always with “a sandwich short of a picnic” Debbie, it wasn’t meant nastily, but, as ever with her, the intervention was anything but relevant.
In this morning’s Daily Mail, a decidedly short-of-real-stories reporter called David Wilkes shared vitally important news that the late Paul Daniels’ wife now has a podcast titled Spill The Tea with Debbie McGee. He also revealed that on it, she’d bragged that Prince Andrew had flown the magician in “one of Her Majesty’s helicopters” from Stoke-on-Trent to Windsor Castle.
“Muggins, Me, McGee” – who also fascinatingly told of how she’d “knocked over a glass of wine last week” and “burnt the edges of her salad leaves the other day” on the podcast too – reported that she did not get to go along for the ride and was instead forced to drive the couple’s car to London. She, thus, luckily avoided an encounter with the Duke of York’s non-sweating hands, but was “sad” that she didn’t get a lift in the Queen’s car – which her husband got to hitch a lift in from Windsor to The Savoy Hotel also.
In response, a “royal source” flatly denied ‘Dim Debbie’s’ claims and remarked: “If this story is true it did not involve one of Her Majesty’s helicopters.” The poor dear plainly conjured up this story from the bottom of her tea leaves, but at least it wasn’t as sordid as when she revealed she put a “disturb mask across her private parts” whilst naked and waiting for her husband to come to bed. Now there’s a sexual story that definitely should not be repeated.
BBC presenter Adrian Chiles’s delight in the simple pleasures of a pint in a park during lockdown reflects how so many feel
Television and radio presenter Adrian Chiles’s relationship with alcohol has been very publicly documented. In August 2018, he presented a BBC Two documentary entitled Drinkers Like Me and “investigated why alcohol had become such a big part of his life.”
At the time Chiles surmised that alcohol was “the only drug you do not have to apologise for taking” and declared he “associated drinking with friendship and good times, as most of us do” according to the Guardian’s Emine Saner. Concluding, the BBC stalwart added: “The advice to ‘drink responsibly’ is the world’s most boring phrase.”
This morning in an opinion piece for the Guardian, Chiles announced: “I am trying to drink less but know a simple pleasure when I see one.” In it, he recounts how his “accidentally on purpose” visit to a pub during the coronavirus lockdown to get a takeaway beer with a friend to drink during a break from the book he is “endeavouring to write… working title: How to Drink Less.”
After consuming a stout on a “rickety bench beneath a low-hanging tree” with “slow reverence,” he “gave thanks for this simple pleasure” and concluded: “I am all for taking alcohol off the pedestal on which it stands for many of us, but this was something special. We talked as we sipped, and then we went home, exemplars of mindful, moderate drinking.” Spot on and cheers!
Swivel-eyed berk Sir Christopher Meyer appears on Sky News in a plastered condition; his “Chanel-clad” pointy-fingered wife was, however, nowhere to be seen
Concealing a bit of a bash on Tuesday evening, tittle-tattling former ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer appeared on Sky News to share some totally irrelevant drivel that nobody needed to know about the relationship between America and China. Anybody sensible went to the kitchen and poured themselves a glass of wine during the tedious segment and only returned when the obnoxious oaf had been replaced onscreen.
As ever, drippy dimwit Sir Christopher, husband to the late-not-so-great PM Theresa May’s bestie, sniveling snob Baroness “Chanel-Clad” (AKA ‘Charity-Tin Cathy’), proved himself as much use as a chocolate teapot. His most pertinent remark was to claim: “Trump is desperate to shift the blame for the coronavirus onto the Chinese… Why? Because this is an election year.” A revelation and a half, if ever there were one.
Subsequently, looking and sounding a tad beyond over-oiled, this weird wazzock continued: “Remember injections of disinfectant and all that?” Perhaps, indeed, his not-so-good lady wife had administered him with just such prior to plonking the plaster-clad prat in front of Sky News’ camera.
Now, Sir Christopher: Please, just get back on your meds old chap. Thank you kindly.
Elsewhere, on Twitter, a “South American banker” named David Hutchinson shared his views about deservedly loathed “red-socked fop” also. He most accurately commented: “Sir Christopher Meyer. Anti-EU. A cerebral skinhead without the tattoos.”
A classic ‘rags to riches’ tale is that of Penny Streeter. Born in what was then Rhodesia, this police superintendent’s daughter came to England when she was 12 and worked on Margaret Thatcher’s Youth Training Scheme and in Pizzaland at the age of 16. She went into business with her mother at 22, went bust and after ending up living in a homeless refuge with her children, worked her way back and launched what has become A24 Group, a healthcare recruitment agency in 1995. By 2002, this hard-working woman’s company was the “fastest-growing company in the UK” and in 2019, she was listed as being worth £208 million in The Sunday Times ‘Rich List.’ Streeter and her husband now own a vineyard in South Africa and a winery in Horsham, West Sussex. We say: Cheers to her!
Matthew Steeples highlights three things that are keeping him going through coronavirus lockdown living (aside from not running out of gin)
Having found myself ensconced in East Anglia for five weeks now –never did I imagine myself staying in a rural place so long – and having not actually got into a car or visited a town in that period, I busy my days reading, writing and walking a bit. It’s been especially strange not to physically see friends and I can’t say I’ve fathomed ‘House Party,’ but my telephone device has certainly seen more Bob Hoskins-esque “It’s Good To Talk” action than ever before.
Whilst most people will tell you Netflix has been their best source of entertainment during this period and I will most certainly join them in commending ‘binge watching’ Ozark, I’ve found time to do things that I’ve always put-off such as clear out my iPhone’s address book and chuck out paperwork I’m never going to actually get round to dealing with. It’s been a time to read and reflect and an opportunity to listen to music a little more often and here follows a few other ‘lockdown discoveries’ of mine that you might find useful:
Harvey Nichols
Nobody would imagine that Patsy and Edina’s favourite shop, Harvey Nichols, would be the bargain food and drink store of the lockdown, but given they don’t charge for next-day delivery wherever you are in the UK and there’s no minimum spend, here is an unbeatable service. Unlike some greedy online booze retailers (some of whom have actually increased their prices and introduced preposterously high delivery charges to coincide with us all being stuck at home), you can get a bottle of the heather-hinted, 43% ABV Edinburgh Gin for just £32, a jar of highly addictive ginger and chilli jam for £3.95 or an utterly delicious asparagus and shrimp risotto that feeds two for just £5.95. Add half a glass of white wine and Bob’s Your Uncle and Fanny’s Your Aunt.
Podcasts and Radio Plays
I’ve become addicted to true crime podcasts such as Murder Mile (in spite of the most recent one I listened to being about the appalling murder of my late friend Robert Troyan in Mount Street Mayfair in 2013) in the last weeks. An especially gritty and somewhat grim example is The Clearing, an eight-episode serialisation based on the crimes of the American serial killer Ed Edwards (AKA ‘Wayne’ Edwards) that has been lauded by the Guardian as “an immense achievement.”
Equally gripping, if you haven’t heard it already (I’m listening to it for a second time), is BBC Radio 4’s rerun of GF Newman’s The Corrupted. Featuring a fictional dodgy MP interacting with real political figures from the past including Margaret Thatcher and Douglas Hurd, here is something for political geeks to get their teeth into before the ‘B-word’ again raises its ugly head once coronavirus fades into the background.
‘The Quiz’ on Facebook
Some of us were already playing before orders to stay indoors arrived, but the ‘Quiz Planet’ app on Facebook has proved a charming way to interact with friends from near and afar. Some of the questions do border on the inane and others have induced a Major Charles Ingram-esque cough on my part, but if you want to while away the hours, do sign up and if you want someone to thrash, try challenging me.
And Then… What’s Next?
Most of all, of course, what will really keep you going through all this is this: A day will soon come when you’ll again be eating, drinking and being merry with your nearest and dearest at your very favourite establishment. Whether you fancy fish and chips or a bottle of Chablis (or both), it’ll come and it’ll come not a moment too soon.
For now, do heed the words of the late Mr Hoskins: “What men call chatter, really does matter. It’s about being a friend. Having the time to listen. It’s what makes the world goes round.” Call a friend or, if you’re not a technophobe like me, ‘give’ them a Zoom.
Boisdale prepares for celebration of ‘Victory Over CV19’ with the launch of fourteen ‘war bonds’ to be redeemed when gastronomes can again gather
With outposts in Belgravia, Bishopsgate, Canary Wharf and Mayfair, Boisdale is a London institution where the late, great Baroness Trumpington – a legend known best for once sticking her fingers up in Churchillian fashion at a fellow peer in the House of Lords when she took umbrage at some nonsense he was spouting – was given a prize for writing an article titled: “If I ruled the world” in 2015.
Baroness Trumpington and Sir Winston Churchill both enjoyed sticking their fingers up at things they did not like; they’d both have given the finger to COVID-19.
Now, like all restaurants throughout the land, Boisdale is sadly temporarily shut, but its affable and somewhat eccentric proprietor Ranald Macdonald has decided to prepare his customers for the better days that will be with us soon.
Presented as ‘war bonds’ and featuring imagery of Churchill, the celebratory ‘Victory Over CV19’ vouchers on offer include everything from two whole lobster thermidors or a 20oz Scottish chateaubriand for two with four side dishes for just £75 (usually £120) to a private victory party with food and wine to the value of £2,000 for just £1,500.
Those wanting a real steal can opt for a £295 ‘Belvedere and caviar’ bond with 200g grams of Russian Oscietra caviar and a whole bottle of vodka to wash it down with (normally £695), but sadly the only thing Macdonald cannot provide is Churchill’s very own presence. When coronavirus is banished, the greatest ever wartime leader would have most definitely have reused the remark: “In victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it” as the very first champagne cork goes pop.
To buy Boisdale ‘Victory Over CV19 War Bonds’ click here.
Vast “fairytale” château in France’s Loire Valley for sale for ‘just’ £28 million in spite of having had £80 million spent already on its renovation; it was most famously owned by Madame de Pompadour
In 2017, a Lebanese-born, Monaco-based property developer named Edmond Baysari placed what selling agents Sotheby’s International Realty describes as the “most beautiful and majestic castle in [the] Loire Valley” on the market. It’s so big and so costly to maintain that it remains for sale still today.
Harvard educated Mr Baysari purchased the 102,257 square foot château for about £4.3 million in 1983 from the Parisian glassmakers Saint-Gorbain. It had been used as their company retreat from 1939 and had earlier belonged to Jeanne Antoinette Poisson – the official chief mistress of Louis XV from 1745 to 1751 and a woman better known as ‘Madame de Pompadour’ – in the years prior to her premature death from tuberculosis in 1764 aged just 42.
Providing “regally appointed” accommodation so vast that it is not even described in detail that includes around 50 bedrooms and a wine cellar capable of housing 30,000 bottles amongst other things, Château de Menars – or the ‘Palace Pompadour’ as some have nicknamed it – costs around £800,000 per year to run. In total, some £80 million has been spent renovating it “using the same methods” that the king’s mistress originally employed.
Of why he is selling, the heirless businessman’s lawyer, Jack Anderson, told Reuters in 2017: “[Mr Baysari] realises destiny is going to take him… His goal is to know that it’s in the hands of someone who’s going to continue the beauty of the chateau and maintain it.”
The 104 acres of grounds that surround the château includes vineyards yielding pinot noir grapes, “elegant” geometric grassed lawns and more than a mile of frontage to the River Loire. Classical sculptures and gazebos abound and there is, according to Reuters, “a cobbled courtyard large enough to land a helicopter” also.
During Baysari’s ownership guests at Château de Menars have supposedly numbered Prince Charles, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mick Jagger and President Ronald Reagan. Now, Sotheby’s International Realty point out: “We think this could be perfect for the creation of a luxury hotel complex… Or for the acquisition of an extraordinary and very large private property.”
His “English spoken” [sic] agent, Jean-Pierre Piganiol, seeks £27.6 million and according to Forbes, “several nine-figure offers from Russian and Middle Eastern billionaires looking for a trophy home” have already been turned down.
The Names & Numbers – Château de Menars, Loire Valley, Blois, 41000, France
1983 to 2017 – The sum said to have been spent on restoration of the Château de Menars is said to have been £80.1 million ($100 million, €91.4 million or درهم367.3 million). Annual upkeep costs are said to be £801,000 million ($1 million, €914,000 million or درهم3.7 million).
1983 – Sold to Edmond Baysari for 5 million francs or the equivalent of £4.3 million ($5.4 million, €4.9 million or درهم19.7 million).
1949 – Declared an Historic Monument of France.
1939 – Sold after his death by Mr Allard’s daughters, Blanche Lasserre, Yvonne Arnodin and Jeanne Goirand, to Saint-Gobain, the Parisian glassmakers, for use as their company retreat.
April 1912 – Acquired for 700,050 francs (about £27,400 at that time) by Félix Allard, a “contractor for public works.” He modernised the château and added mains water, hot air heating, gas lighting and electricity and features including a large gallery area.
1760 – Purchased by Madame de Pompadour (1721 – 1764) for 1 million livres (about £75,000 at that time). She “sold some pearl bracelets to meet the first payment” and commissioned the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel to build two new wings on either side of the two existing pavilions on the property. Sadly for her, she never saw it completed as she died from tuberculosis in 1764.
1728 to 1732 – Stanislas Leszcynski (1677 – 1766), the King of Poland, stayed at Château de Menars whilst in exile as a guest of the Charon family.
1669 – Jean-Jacques Charon (1643 – 1718), son of Jacques Charon, “added two unequal wings to the chateau and considerably enlarged the estate.”
1646 – Commencement of the construction of a castle on the site by one Jacques Charon. It “composed of a main building and two symmetrical pavilions.”
