Spy writer West left out in the cold. . .


Litigious: Ex Tory Mp Rupert Allason faces losing his central London mews house

Litigious: Ex Tory Mp Rupert Allason faces losing his central London mews house

Famously described by a judge as ‘one of the most dishonest witnesses I have ever seen’, former Tory MP and author Rupert Allason had better make the most of the luxuries available on his current sojourn, cruising the Aleutian islands between Alaska and Russia in the Northern Pacific.

For the writ-happy Downside-educated Allason, better-known as spy writer Nigel West, faces losing his mews house in central London after he pursued one legal action too many. Allason, 59, the former MP for Torbay, sued publishers Random House ten years ago for breach of copyright over their book The Enigma Spy, about Soviet agent John Cairncross, the alleged Fifth Man in the Cambridge spy ring.

Not only did he lose the case, but High Court judge Mr Justice Laddie told him he had told ‘untruth after untruth’.

The publishers have been pursuing him ever since for their legal costs of nearly £300,000 and have now applied to take possession of his tiny home in Belgravia, worth around £750,000.

The case follows a whole series of legal actions during which the perma-tanned and louche Allason became a near-permanent fixture of the Royal Courts of Justice, issuing writs. He once even sued the BBC’s Have I Got News For You team after it said his fondness for pursuing libel actions ‘meant there are excellent legal reasons for not referring to him as a conniving little s***’. He lost.

In the latest action in which lawyer Stephen Shotnes is acting for Random House, Allason claimed that the Belgravia property did not belong to him as it was in trust for his children — his son, online entrepreneur Tom, 31, and 24-year-old daughter Alex. But the judge in this latest hearing, Mr Justice David Richards, said he was satisfied Allason’s evidence was untrue and that he had ‘concocted’ the purported declaration of trust.

Divorced in 1996 from his heiress wife Nicole who lives in Bermuda, friends now wonder where Allason, who has a new woman in his life, will end up living next.

 

Michael Winner and his bride-to-be Geraldine, who wed next week, may get more than they bargained for when they arrive for their honeymoon at the glamorous Hotel Splendido on the Italian Riviera.

Orient- Express hotels boss Maurizio Saccani, who has had the odd tiff with Winner over his restaurant reviews - Michael described him as ‘hot-blooded and silly’ - is planning a surprise. Staff expect the enthusiastic jazz guitarist to serenade the newlyweds with a Beatles medley.

Indeed, he has been rehearsing quite hard, I am told. Perhaps his first number should be All You Need Is Love.

 

Karen bends Spencer to her will

They’ve only been married six months, but Earl Spencer’s exotic Canadian-born third wife Karen Gordon, 37, has already started knocking her husband into shape.

Under children’s charity founder Karen’s direction, Spencer has been packed off to the gym and enrolled in Pilates classes at a West London studio in Holland Park.

Health conscious: Earl Spencer's new wife is knocking him into shape

Health conscious: Earl Spencer's new wife is knocking him into shape

Spencer, 46, duly attends private hourly sessions, priced at £90 hour, taught by former West End dancer Reinhard Michaels, whose other clients have included actresses Kristin Scott-Thomas and Gwyneth Paltrow.

‘Karen is a vegan and takes health matters very seriously. It is important to her that Charles understands her lifestyle and fully embraces healthy living and fitness, plus she loves it when he is a bit trimmer,’ says a friend.

‘Reinhard trained as a master of Pilates, the highest accolade in the industry, and after a friend raved about how amazing his classes were to Karen, Charles has trained with him ever since.’

 

Historian John Julius Norwich has had it with The Borgias, Sky Atlantic’s lust and papacy caper starring Jeremy Irons.

‘The sex scenes you just can’t take too seriously,’ says Viscount Norwich, who has his own book out on the history of the popes.

‘I have watched some of it, but I’m afraid I’ve now given up on it. ‘There is only a shred of historical accuracy and it is so jumbled up. For one thing, Pope Alexander was an extremely ugly man - Jeremy Irons is far too good-looking.’

 
Model Lady Mary Charteris is engaged to rock singer Robbie Furze

Model Lady Mary Charteris is engaged to rock singer Robbie Furze

Lady Mary to wed her rocker

She might have ended up mistress of a palace as girlfriend of Princess
Caroline of Monaco’s son Pierre Casiraghi, but instead Lady Mary Charteris is preparing for married life as a rock chick.

For Louis Vuitton model Mary has just become engaged to Old Harrovian
Robbie Furze, singer with rock band The Big Pink.

Mind you, as daughter of the eccentric Earl of Wemyss - the former Lord Neidpath who was a youthful advocate of trepanning, the habit of drilling holes in the skull to expand one’s consciousness - a rock ’n’ roll life should be a piece of cake.

Despite her aristocratic upbringing - her mother Catherine Hesketh is a member of the Guinness clan - Lady Mary, 23, a one-time muse of the late Isabella Blow, has now taken up DJ-ing and rebranded herself away from her girl-next-door image. In fact, since meeting Furze, she has dip-dyed her blonde locks fuchsia, posed in her underwear for a billboard ad campaign and moved to an edgy area of East London after a stint in the SoHo district of New York.

Furze, meanwhile, is an old flame of singer Lily Allen and formed his band with Milo Cordell, whose screenwriter brother Tarka - an ex love of Kate Moss - took his own life three years ago.

 

He earns £120,000 a week, lives in a £5 million home and has a taste for flashy cars — but one thing apparently lacking in footballer Rio Ferdinand’s life is nature.

For the Manchester United player has, I learn, asked for plans to be drawn up to build a large barn-style home on an ecological reserve in the Cotswolds, which is home to more than 4,000 rare species and just a corner kick from Prince Charles’s Highgrove estate.

‘Rio wanted somewhere secluded and away from the paparazzi, but it’s the rare creatures that live on the reserve that have been the real draw for him,’ says a friend. ‘He is particularly excited by the beaver colony, which has lived there since 2005.’

In fact, a key feature of the five-bedroom house, designed by architect John Pardey, will allow the soccer star to do just that — an elevated hide and jetty on the 80-acre lake have been designed so Ferdinand can happily observe the beavers in their natural habitat.

The property is on the Lower Mill Estate housing development, which is owned by Jeremy Paxton. Plans are being drawn up for the two acre, £3.5m house to be built on the site’s picturesque Howells Mere boating lake.

 

PS

She’s Britain’s richest self-made woman — but you wouldn’t know it from Dame Mary Perkins’s lifestyle.

In London from her Guernsey home for the Everywoman In Retail awards, the Specsavers founder - worth £1.1 billion - is ensconced not at The Savoy, where the bash was held, but at the more modest Rubens Hotel, near Buckingham Palace.

‘It’s very nice and handy for Victoria station,’ Dame Mary says. ‘I’m not a snob about these things. I suppose I could have a place in London but why bother when I can get a cheap flight back to my home.’

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