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When Inigo Philbrick was sentenced to seven years behind bars in May 2022, for masterminding an £80 million art swindle, his fiancee, former Made In Chelsea star Victoria Baker-Harber, vowed to stand by him.
I can disclose that Victoria has not had to wait too long, as the art dealer has now been released from prison in New York after serving less than two years of his sentence. He can now embrace their daughter, Gaia-Grace, whom he has never met.
‘It’s a real surprise that he’s out so soon,’ one of her friends tells me. ‘Everyone thought he would be in jail for much longer.’
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirms that Philbrick was released last month.
A protege of top art dealer Jay Jopling, Philbrick, 36, who was born in Hackney, East London, bought and sold paintings by artists including David Hockney.
He wore a £48,000 watch, £5,000 suits, a belt with a diamond lodged in the pin and he drank £5,000 bottles of wine.
His business, run from an art gallery in Mayfair, was, however, a Ponzi-like scheme, in which he used money from some customers to buy artworks and pay off others.
And he was sentenced in a Manhattan court and ordered to forfeit the £80 million he had swindled.
There is no suggestion that Victoria, 35, daughter of Olympic sailor Michael Baker-Harber, knew of Philbrick’s fraudulent scheme.
His house of cards collapsed in 2019 when he sold a painting by Picasso at an auction in London.
The £5 million price tag was not enough to pay off all the people who thought they owned it, so Philbrick went on the run for six months.
The FBI tracked him down on the remote Pacific Island of Vanuatu. Philbrick told a New York judge he ‘did it for the money’ and said his victims could afford it.
However, one investor, Daniel Trumpel, a German art dealer, said: ‘This is money my wife and I had worked hard for and which Philbrick embezzled to finance his luxurious lifestyle.’
We can expect to hear all about Philbrick’s time doing porridge. Last year, Victoria told me she was making a television programme about him. ‘I’m doing a documentary. It’s about my fiance and his time in prison,’ the socialite said. ‘It’s wild.’
Philbrick was fully behind the project: ‘He’s all for it. It was his idea.’
She added: ‘He didn’t murder anyone. He put his hands up and admitted what he did do, and takes full responsibility and accountability, but everyone makes mistakes.’
Succession creator Jesse Armstrong will soon be as rich as one of the characters in his hit television drama which chronicled the machinations of media magnate Logan Roy and his toxic, feuding family.
Figures published this week reveal that his production company, Jebentus, raked in £10.7 million last year.
It returned a £9.2 million profit in the year to May 2023, so Shropshire-born Armstrong, 53, paid himself £1 million and has now accumulated a staggering £21.6 million in his business.
The scriptwriter, who previously helped create Peep Show and The Thick Of It, still lives modestly with his wife, Millie, an NHS worker, and their two children in the same South-East London terrace house that has been his home for the past 20 years.
Sir Rod Stewart once said that being on the cover of Railway Modeller magazine was a bigger thrill than being on the front of Rolling Stone.
But the singer, 79, claims the rock bible didn’t take his comments well.
‘That’s true,’ he says of Railway Modeller. ‘I’ve been on the front cover four times now. And I’ve not been on the cover of Rolling Stone since I said that.’
If only his pal Donald Trump was content with such mild thrills. ‘He’s not the guy I met 20 years ago,’ he says of the ex president.
I used to go to his house every Christmas and do concerts. He was a good guy. But he’s turned into somewhat of a monster.’
How do you drive in those shoes, Daphne?
Fashion icon Daphne Guinness can make even pumping petrol look glamorous.
The heiress, 56, was spotted wearing black Mary Jane heel-less platform shoes as she filled up her car.
Asked if she wears those in her car, Lord Moyne’s daughter replies: ‘I drive in bare feet.’ Having made her mark in the fashion world with her outlandish taste in clothes, Guinness wants to be remembered for her music.
Her album, Sleep, will be released next month. Renowned American photographer David LaChapelle directed the video for her catchy song, Volcano.
Oti cha-cha-chats with the Queen
Queen Camilla retains an encyclopaedic knowledge of Strictly Come Dancing, her favourite show, Oti Mabuse tells me.
Returning to the Palace as a celebrity reader for the BBC’s 500 Words children’s creative writing competition, the dance star says: ‘I came here when we did the Strictly Christmas special in 2017 and I met now Queen Camilla.
‘We reminisced and I got to ask her some questions because she is a lover of dance.
She actually remembers individual dances from before I left the show three years ago.’ Plans to film a live episode of Strictly at the Palace ballroom have yet to come to fruition.
Not just a pretty face: Lila banks £360,000
While her schoolfriends are graduating from university with thousands in debts, Lila Moss is sitting pretty.
I hear the model, 21, has almost tripled her earnings in a year.
Newly filed accounts for her company, Grace Grove, which she set up in 2021 to channel her earnings as a model, disclose that her assets climbed to £360,000 in the 12 months to May last year, from £129,000 in 2022. The profits were £135,000, up £77,000.
At 5ft 6in, Lila is shorter than the average model, but she managed to win roles in advertising campaigns for brands including Miu Miu, Pepe Jeans and Marc Jacobs Beauty.
The daughter of supermodel Kate Moss and magazine editor Jefferson Hack, Lila is signed to her mother’s agency.
Having begun modelling at the age of 14, her career has been plagued by accusations of nepotism and she recently faced criticism for appearing on Edward Enninful’s last cover of British Vogue as editor-in-chief.
Brenda Blethyn was too convincing as a Geordie in Vera.
The actress says she was asked to tone down her accent as DCI Stanhope so overseas viewers could understand her in the hit ITV1 drama.
‘I don’t think I have cracked it, but a lot of the locals say that I have,’ says Blethyn, 78, who is from Ramsgate, Kent.
‘But I don’t really think so. It was quite broad when I started but they said, ‘No, you’ve got to tone it back a bit’ — probably because of foreign, overseas sales — and so it has mellowed somewhat.’
(Very) modern manners
Greta Scacchi, who became known as ‘Scorchy Scacchi’ because of the number of nude scenes in which she appeared, has discovered one advantage of growing older — avoiding railway penalty fares.
‘If you’ve run to catch a train and you don’t have a ticket on you, if you sit in first class and the ticket inspector comes along, he’ll believe you’ve ‘lost’ it,’ explains the 64-year-old star of films including White Mischief.
‘So you can just buy one. I relish the fact that people believe your stories.’
Her acclaimed BBC1 dramas, such as Happy Valley, Last Tango In Halifax and Gentleman Jack, are set in Yorkshire, where she grew up, but Sally Wainwright now lives in the Cotswolds with her husband, Austin Sherlaw-Johnson, an antiquarian sheet music dealer.
And the couple are keen to splash out on some home improvements. I hear that the scriptwriter has applied for planning permission to dig an indoor swimming pool in the grounds of their Oxfordshire home, which lies in a conservation area.
The couple were refused a certificate of lawful development last November because of the location of the proposed pool building.
Better luck this time!
Charlotte’s language lessons for Wolfie…
By the tender age of two, Princess Charlotte was already speaking some Spanish phrases, thanks to her Iberian nanny.
But Dara Huang, the mother of Princess Beatrice’s stepson, is struggling to convince her child of the benefit of learning a foreign tongue.
‘Is anybody else experiencing their children not wanting to speak a second language any more,’ wails the architect and television presenter, who was encouraging her son, Christopher, known as Wolfie, to learn Mandarin.
He will turn eight this month.
Dara, 41, who was previously engaged to Beatrice’s husband, the property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, was born and grew up in America.
Her maternal grandfather had emigrated from Taiwan to the U.S. She was granted British citizenship in 2022.
Why Britannia may not rule at the Proms under Labour
Rule Britannia could be consigned to history if Sir Keir Starmer wins the General Election.
Acclaimed cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason set the cat among the pigeons recently when he said the tradition of Rule Britannia on the Last Night Of The Proms makes people feel uncomfortable and could be dropped in favour of English folk music.
Now shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire, who is an acclaimed cellist herself, has made clear she’s in tune with the ‘woke’ crowd.
‘It’s not my favourite bit of music,’ she tells the Women With Balls podcast. ‘It’s just fantastic how they’ve diversified the programming.’
Although she says it’s a decision for the organisers rather than politicians, she adds: ‘For a lot of people, as Sheku Kanneh-Mason said, it will feel alienating.
I want the Proms, I want culture, to be accessible to everyone and it’s a good debate for us to be having.’
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