The Ghislaine Maxwell trial unfolds in New York in all its lurid detail. I never met her but I knew her bullying and crooked dad, Robert, who stole my pension along with thousands of others, which probably renders me unfit to be impartial on the outcome of the trial.
Last year, the not-so-little black book she kept for Jeffrey Epstein was leaked to me, as well as many others I’m sure, and it runs to around 200 pages of neatly-typed entries. So, if you want numbers for Alec Baldwin, Dustin Hoffman or Courtney Love, I’m your man. It also includes dozens of entries of masseurs, which is at the centre of the case against Maxwell – that she lured girls in to massage and then service her boss. If the hundreds of people named in the book have any sense they’ll have changed their address and telephone one numbers.
The mundane detail that has emerged in the trial of the way staff were treated in Epstein’s service is revealing and will no doubt paint a picture of Maxwell as a bullying and domineering person. Chip off the old block. Staff weren’t allowed to speak unless they were spoken to in the various mansions and apartments and had to lower their eyes in Epstein’s presence. Maxwell also produced a 58-page checklist of instructions the staff had to perform each day.
One witness described “hundreds of women” coming through Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion in the 12 years he was there. He had to change the bed linen at least three times a day, and collect and wash sex toys left lying about.
Dirty linen is now being washed in court, including the most important instruction in the staff dossier. “Remember you hear nothing, see nothing and say nothing except to answer a question to you,’’ the Epstein omertà reads.
Shell shocker
THE bomb squad were called to Gloucester Royal Hospital during the week after a man told staff he had an artillery shell lodged in his rectum, which he had innocently fallen on while dusting his arsenal naked, presumably. Surely should have called the bum squad?
Bools to the wall
I’VE never played bools, a bit of pétanque sure, but it seems it isn’t very popular in Kilmarnock any more because the world’s oldest bowling club has locked its gates after 281 years. Its dwindling membership down to 26 wasn’t enough to meet the running costs.
It was founded in 1740, five years before the Jacobite Rebellion, and a bit later Rabbie Burns used to knock back a few ales there when he wasn’t knocking out sonnnets. There was a club formed in East Lothian in 1709 but the Killie club is the oldest one in continuous use. Neither wars, floods, fire or the 1918 pandemic – or the present one – could beat it. Just popularity.
So, farewell Kilmarnock Bowling Club. You’ll probably be a block of flats by next year.
A Stella idea?
THE future of the planet is safe. It’s in Stella McCartney’s hands. She is a designer, for those who aren’t as up on couture as I am. “For my Summer 2022 collection, I was so inspired by fungi and their incredible potential for saving our planet,” she said, “and the Frayme Mylo embodies that hope for the future”
Mylo is a synthetic or vegan leather made out of mushrooms, somehow, presumably in the dark and shovelled with manure.
Well, it saves you feeding the beast, killing it and curing its hide. It’s much quicker, too, because you can produce a crop of mushrooms in a few days but no, I don’t know how many went into the frankly hideous bags that Stella made from the stuff.
On the upside, when you tire of the bag or it goes out of fashion, you can always eat it.
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