You could be forgiven for thinking Downing Street alone suffered the legal aftershocks of parties – or “business meetings” – held during the disheartening months of repeated lockdowns.
But now the £1,235-a-year Lansdowne club in Mayfair have been rocked by a High Court case brought by a member who was expelled after allegedly breaching Covid guidelines.
In a fire lawsuit against The Lansdowne, which has its own swimming pool and occasionally hosts fencing competitions in its ballroom, Gina Mok, 44, alleges she has been the victim of statements made both “untrue” and “malicious” and what means she was “convicted of a criminal offense”.
In court documents, Mok, a self-proclaimed “private investor”, says she was not only a member of the club but also of the council that oversees the Lansdowne’s running until she was expelled last December.
A woman has gone to court after her membership of the Lansdowne Club, an expensive private members’ club in Mayfair, was canceled after someone claimed she had broken Covid rules
The interior of Lansdowne Club, which has existed since 1935 at £1,235 a year
But last fall, after traveling to Bulgaria, she attended a meeting of the club’s board of directors.
Afterwards, Mok ate dinner and sat next to another council member, Phoebe Topping – Head of International Certification at the Department of Health, responsible for developing and implementing government policy on ‘vaccination certification for travel’.
Mok, who was unvaccinated, claims Topping accused her of “breaking the law because new Covid rules” – of which she was unaware – “forced unvaccinated people to quarantine after returning from abroad”.
Barely a month later her membership of the Lansdowne was terminated. The club have filed a defense in response to Mok’s claim in the High Court for £50,000 in damages for “loss of privacy, injury to feelings and people, distress and damage”. [her] Call’.
A club spokesman said it would be “inappropriate to go into detail, other than to say that, given the actual background, we were extremely surprised that these claims were made at all”.
Janet smiles at everything… even after a speeding ticket
Janet Jackson was fined after parking her Range Rover in a car club-only bay in London
Undisturbed: The singer drove away with the ticket still on the windscreen of her car (pictured)
She is said to be worth £150million, which could explain why pop star Janet Jackson was still smiling after her Range Rover got a speeding ticket.
The sister of the late King of Pop Michael Jackson parked in a space reserved for vehicles from a car club in London. She attended a dance studio for rehearsals. Jackson, 56, who was spotted grinning as she drove off with her ticket still on her windscreen, has lived in the capital on and off since her marriage to Qatari businessman Wissam Al Mana in 2012. They split in 2017 after she gave birth to their son. Eisa.
Princess Elsa Star is the big cheese at her hen party
Samantha Barks, who plays Princess Elsa in the West End production of Frozen, is getting married soon
West End star Samantha Barks, who will cut the wedding cake this week, looked like she was practicing with cheese at her hen party.
The 31-year-old actress, who plays Princess Elsa in Disney’s £10million stage production of Frozen, wore a white dress and beaded hat that read ‘Bride’. “There’s nothing like a wedding to highlight all the wonderful people in your life that come out for you,” says Barks, who played Eponine in the Oscar-winning adaptation of Les Miserables. In a few days she is to marry US actor Alex Stoll, whom she met when they appeared together in Pretty Woman in New York.
The 4th Earl of Sandwich is said to have invented the sandwich so he wouldn’t have to leave his gaming table. His descendants continue to leave their mark. I hear Walter Montagu, son of the 11th Earl, has encouraged the boat club at Eton College, where he is a student, to show up in Ukrainian rowing suits on Tuesday to row 1,244 miles – the distance between Eton and Ukraine. “It was an emotional day,” a friend tells me. “The boys have raised almost £40,000.”
Does Prince Charles have a side hustle with Diana Ross, who ended the Platinum Jubilee concert to his apparent delight?
The Motown queen, whose “Upside Down” put the heir to the list of most popular dance tracks, credits “Prince Charlez” as the backing vocalist and co-writer of her new song “Come Together”. The diva’s reps confirm Prince Charlez is a pseudonym — but for Charles Hinshaw, an American R&B songwriter and producer.
Perhaps Hinshaw, who grew up in the gangster-rap capital of Compton, Los Angeles, fashioned his adoptive name “Charlez” to avoid confusion over engagements with his namesake?
Grey-haired, bobbed and bespectacled Esme Young, judge on BBC hit show The Great British Sewing Bee, has a racy past and fondly recalls riding topless on a friend’s motorbike when she was young. “I was only wearing panties, a helmet and nothing else,” Young, 73, admits. “I had a scarf tied around my shirt but it fell off. Imagine if I got away!’ Young, costume designer for films like Bridget Jones’ Diary, adds that despite her TV success, she doesn’t own a set. “I got rid of my 1974 – I was like, ‘I’m wasting my time.'” Instead I drew, made things and read books.’
“Royal” romance that’s always camera-ready
Smitten: Rhiannon Mills, royal correspondent at Sky News, and Andrew Parsons, the Prime Minister’s official photographer, confirmed they were in a relationship over the weekend
Sky’s royal correspondent Rhiannon Mills is said to have first met Boris Johnson’s chief photographer Andrew Parsons when they were covering the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2019 tour of South Africa.
And the couple still mixes business with pleasure. Yesterday they confirmed their romance, which I revealed on Saturday, by attending Royal Ascot, where they were granted access to the ultra-exclusive Royal Enclosure.
Prince Harry memorably opened his heart to Mills, now 42, on a tour to New Zealand in 2015, telling her he would love to “have children immediately” and marry someone with whom he could “share the pressure”.