Onassis girl rides out storm

Richard Kay
Daily Mail, Friday, June 7, 2013
[email protected]
www.dailymail.co.uk/richardkay
Del Boy past
of Labour’s
£1.65m donor
P
Had they done so they would
have discovered John Mills, 74,
has an intriguing past. A brotherin-law of former Labour minister
Tessa Jowell, he is the widower of
Dame Barbara Mills, a Director of
Public Prosecutions and the first
woman to head the Crown
­Prosecution Service.
His brother David, of course, was
famously accused of taking a bribe
from Italy’s priapic ex-PM Silvio
Berlusconi — he got off on a technicality on appeal.
And now I learn John has also
had brushes with the law. He was
prosecuted under Trading Standards for selling brass trinkets as
gold-plated jewellery. Mills’s company Atlantic Jewellery, which sold

FOUR years ago, he
spearheaded a campaign to
take 850 D-Day veterans back to
France for the 65th anniversary
of the Normandy landings,
raising funds and digging into
his own fortune, too.
With the countdown to the 70th
anniversary under way,
advertising guru Trevor Beattie
has begun plans to repeat the
exercise for those surviving 500
Onassis girl rides out storm
For a few moments
ye st e r d ay, h o r s ey
­heiress Athina Onassis
put aside domestic
troubles to take part in
what is dubbed ‘the
glitziest sport of the
moment’ at the
Longines Global
­C hampions Tour at
the Olympic Park in
Stratford.
Five days ago, the
Greek government
tried to block the
£100 million sale of
the island of Skorpios, where her
grandfather Aristotle Onassis and
or so old soldiers to return again
in 2014. But this time Beattie is
extending his remit.
He also plans to restore the
Normandy Veterans monument
at the National Memorial
Arboretum in Staffordshire.
Fund raising begins in earnest in
September with an air show at
Sywell Aerodrome, Northants,
with astronaut Buzz Aldrin the
star guest.
WAS RCA records hasty in
­l etting Alexandra Burke
slip through the recording net?
The singer was ­ yesterday in
the U.S. meeting the man she
hopes will mastermind her
career, former Warner Music
vice-president Kevin Liles.
But her trip will not cheer up
the fans who had paid more than £37 to
see her perform this week at the Elgar
Room at the Royal Albert Hall. While
the X Factor star was meeting Liles,
Picture: REX
Chemistry: Ashley at bash

As the reassuring
voice of Radio 4’s
Woman’s Hour for more
years than she cares to
remember, Dame Jenni
Murray is the doyenne of
the airwaves.
But when it comes to
creating words on paper,
she reveals a problem. ‘I
can’t cope with today’s
technology so I produce
my books and stories on
an old mobile phone,’
says Jenni at the Women’s Prize for Fiction at
the Royal Festival Hall.
‘I end up looking faintly
ridiculous bending over
my ancient BlackBerry
typing tomes of over 1,000
words on my phone,’ she
adds. ‘I know it sounds
strange, but I just can’t
get the hang of new­fangled devices.’
ps
who has reduced ticket
costs to just £10 to try to
attract a new crowd to
the usually highbrow
sport. It is unlikely
Athina was competing
for the prize money of
£240,000.
She was not the only
well-connected rider
on show.
Rocker Bruce Springsteen’s daughter ­Jessica,
21, who rode earlier
and whose father is
due to play in front of
50,000 fans at the same
venue in three weeks
time, was watching
from the stands. the Albert Hall’s Jasper Hope was left
scratching his head to work out why
the function room was empty after he
sold out six shows in three hours.
‘Just three weeks ago, she cancelled,’
he says. ‘We’re very disappointed for
her fans. We have returned everyone’s
money but we couldn’t understand
why the concerts were cancelled.’
I am told, however, that her very
­success was why she pulled out. ‘We
decided to organise a much-larger,
nationwide tour instead,’ says an aide.
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In control: Athina Onassis
Now Ashley’s sweet on a rapper
What is it about posh girls and rappers? First Quality Street heiress
Millie Mackintosh becomes
engaged to Hackney-born
­Professor Green and now her Made
In Chelsea co-star, Ashley James, is
sweet on a hip-hop artiste too.
Model Ashley, 26, educated at
£28,000-a-year Sedbergh school
in Cumbria, linked up with Jordan
Stephens, 21, one half of duo ­Rizzle
Kicks, at a bash in Mayfair, and I’m
told, the pair quickly exchanged
numbers. ‘Jordan was very keen
to meet Ashley,’ says a party-goer
her troubled mother
Christina are buried.
The Greek authorities
claim the sale, which
Athina is determined
to push through,
­violates Onassis’s will.
Athina, who divides
her time between
Brussels and Brazil,
rarely steps foot in
Greece.
Yesterday, the 28year-old equestrian
was a picture of cool
control as she took part
in the show-jumping
competition brought to
London by the Queen’s
grandson Peter Phillips,

baubles in 37 Woolworth’s stores,
was fined £750 after he pleaded
guilty to nine charges.
He earlier faced similar offences over a Lucky Panda sold by his
company Fairlane — it was deemed
dangerous because its eyes and
ears came off — and was fined £500.
Five months later, Trading Standards officers in Wales sent another
Fairlane product, a liquid garden
fertiliser, for routine chemical
­analysis and learned its ingredients were not as described.
By then, Fairlane was in liquidation
and it was decided not to prosecute.
All this happened a long time
ago, but it did not augur well for
Mills’ job as deputy chairman of
the London Docklands Development Corporation. For failing to
disclose his convictions, Mills was
sacked by Nicholas Ridley.
Like his brother, Mills is a former
Labour councillor in Camden. He
founded JML, which stands for
John Mills Limited, in 1986. It now
has a turnover of £67 million.
He says the £1.65 million ­donation
was being made in shares rather
than cash to provide Labour with
a steady stream of income from
dividends. He also saved significant amounts of tax.
Picture: Alpha Press
ERHAPS the ­Labour
Party was too busy
working out how
its
newest
and
most generous donor
could avoid £1.5 million in tax, with the clever
wheeze of accepting shares
in his shopping company
channel, to look into his
background.
Page 41
at the launch of pop-up restaurant Retro Feasts.
‘There was an obvious chemistry between them. They weren’t
interested in anyone else for the
rest of the evening.’ Ashley’s previous loves include
her reality show co-star Ollie
Locke, who once dated Sir Philip
Green’s daughter Chloe.
But Ashley’s parents needn’t
worry. Jordan, whose grandfather
was Lucky Jim film director John
Boulting, has had huge success,
selling more than a million singles.
The Duchess of Cambridge’s baby isn’t
due for five weeks, but her family’s
Berkshire home already echoes to the
patter of tiny feet — her mother Carole’s cocker
spaniel Ella has just produced four puppies.
A delighted Kate saw them for the first time when
she spent last weekend at the Middletons’
£4.7 million Georgian manor house in Bucklebury.
The pups will have plenty of time to make friends
with Kate’s own black spaniel, 20-month-old Lupo,
because in a break with royal tradition she plans
to live with her parents for at least the first six
weeks after her baby’s mid-July arrival.
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