SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: Bernie Ecclestone stakes claim on Petra's £66m pad

Bernie Ecclestone has taken out a charge on daughter Petra and her husband James Stunt’s £66 million home in Chelsea, west London, to make sure he will receive the proceeds should it be sold

Bernie Ecclestone once criticised his daughters for squandering his £2.5 billion fortune on fast cars, mansions and designer clothing.

The Formula One boss is clearly intent on reasserting his control of the family finances.

For I can reveal he has taken out a charge on daughter Petra and her husband James Stunt’s £66 million Chelsea home to make sure he will receive the proceeds should it be sold.

When the property was bought in 2012, it was listed in Petra’s sole name. The 27-year-old heiress had married businessman Stunt the preceding year after he signed a pre-nuptial agreement, and the couple moved into the six-storey Chelsea mansion where they still live with their three children.

According to the Land Registry, Bernie filed a charge in late January.

‘A charge is where you anticipate extracting your share from the sale proceeds,’ says a property consultant.

‘Most charges are registered by lenders, with the owner’s consent. This looks like a charge which had been unilaterally registered against a property.’ Meanwhile, the profligate Stunt, once described by his father-in-law as ‘a flash b*****’, has not desisted from his free-spending ways.

Last week, he took delivery of a £3.1 million Lamborghini. This adds to his notorious cavalcade of Rolls-Royce Phantoms and Bentleys which accompany him on his regular shopping trips to Harrods.

Bernie admitted he hired an ‘agency’ to look into Stunt’s background and finances before he married, but nothing he found gave him cause for concern.

Petra and Bernie declined to comment.

Boxing champ Ali: I made up race attack 

It was the story that sealed the legend of Muhammad Ali as a beacon for social justice.

He returned a light-heavyweight gold medal-winning hero from the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome.

But sickened after being denied service at a whites-only restaurant in Louisville and then harassed by a biker gang, the boxing champion hurled his medal into the Ohio river.

Now, on the eve of a new exhibition celebrating his life, he has confirmed that the incident, first disclosed in his 1975 autobiography, was a myth. Ali — then still known as Cassius Clay — simply lost the valuable medal and invented the tale to cover up his embarrassment.

Davis Miller, the co-curator of the I Am The Greatest show at the O2 Arena and a friend for 30 years, says: ‘He told me the truth about the medal. He said: “I never threw no medal in the river. I just lost it, that’s all.” ’

If the gold medal story is, indeed, a myth, it will be a tad embarrassing for the high-profile figures who are campaigning for Ali to receive an honorary knighthood.

Fifty Shades stars get all steamed up 

Actors JohnsonFanning and Jamie Dornan may look like a passionate couple as they reprise their roles as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele on the set of the latest Fifty Shades bonkbuster, Fifty Shades Darker, in Vancouver.

But Dornan is uncomfortable with some of the more risque sex scenes as he plays the bondage-loving billionaire in the second instalment of author E. L. James’s erotic franchise.

At least Dornan can rely on his wife, the actress Amelia Warner, to back him. She is ‘massively supportive’ of her husband’s kinky role.

The fact Dornan earned £178,000 for the first Fifty Shades film, and is reportedly seeking a substantial rise for the second, might explain why.

Actors Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan may look like a passionate couple as they reprise their roles as Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele on the set of the latest Fifty Shades bonkbuster, Fifty Shades Darker

Poirot star David Suchet shares much with Leonardo DiCaprio when it comes to awards: always the bridesmaid, never the bride. This week he was up for his eighth Olivier. ‘I’ve just been told I am the record holder for the largest number of Olivier nominations without having ever won one,’ Suchet tells me at the Sheridan Morley Prize. ‘I feel very honoured, though I don’t expect to get any further.’ He shouldn’t be so hard on himself. DiCaprio finally nabbed his Oscar this week, 23 years after his first nomination.