His retreat from public life is now almost complete. But before he heads off to internal exile at Sandringham, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has been tidying up a few loose ends – of which none has perhaps been looser than his Dragons’ Den-style company, Pitch@Palace Global Limited.
Established in 2017, it saw young tech entrepreneurs compete for funding in front of live audiences around the world, culminating in a final held at St James’s Palace.
But two years later, just after Andrew’s ‘car-crash’ interview with Emily Maitlis, it emerged that any hopeful who managed to secure funding was required to give two per cent of their start-up company to Pitch@Palace.
The days of that ‘nice little earner’ ended yesterday, however, when documents filed at Companies House revealed that Pitch@Palace is to be ‘wound up within the next 12 months’.
Unfortunately, if far from unexpectedly, there seems scant chance that memories of Pitch@Palace Global – of which Andrew is listed as the sole person with ‘significant control’ – will fade gently into oblivion. That is, in part, thanks to the identity of its only director, Arthur Lancaster.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor has been tidying up a few loose ends – of which none has perhaps been looser than his Dragons’ Den-style company, Pitch@Palace Global Limited
Until last year, Lancaster, 63, was a director of AML Tax (UK) Ltd, part of a group controlled by Doug Barrowman – the entrepreneur who, together with his wife, ‘Baroness Bra’ Michelle Mone, has been ordered to repay £148 million after another of their companies, PPE Medpro, supplied allegedly ‘unusable surgical gowns’ during the pandemic.
Lancaster, who is a director of PPE Medpro, found himself in court in 2022 when AML Tax (UK) Ltd was fined £150,000 for ‘aggressively’ promoting tax avoidance schemes. In their judgment, Judge Thomas Scott and Judge Jonathan Cannan ruled that Lancaster had been ‘evasive’ and had provided ‘as little evidence as possible’, while the evidence he did give had been ‘lacking in candour, in some respects incorrect and littered with inconsistencies’.
Evidently just the man for Pitch@Palace. The company, which has no employees, now has just £12,000 in assets – down from £257,286 a year earlier. Only £2,000 was owed to creditors.
Perhaps it’s all been given to charity – which, of course, famously ‘begins at home’…
Romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland was certainly forthright. Earl Spencer, stepson of her daughter Raine, once worked for a US television network and was asked to interview the author.
‘I was taken in to where she dictated and there was a chaise longue, and a secretary sitting there with a typewriter,’ he says. ‘And Barbara Cartland said in front of the secretary, “I have to have a screen – because she’s so plain.”
‘And she said, “You’re very plain, aren’t you?” And she went, “Yes, Miss Cartland.”
It was just awful.
‘And the reason she didn’t want to see the so-called plain secretary, she said, was “because I have to think beautiful thoughts”.’
Bowie’s girl reveals her ‘second mum’
David Bowie’s daughter Alexandra ‘Lexi’ Jones, whose mother is supermodel Iman, has revealed that she was mainly brought up by another woman, whom she describes as her second mother.
Musician Lexi, 25, says Ludy, a nanny who is from the Philippines, helped raise her from birth.
‘She took care of me from when I was two days old to my pre-teen years and stayed in my life even after that as the woman who was and is like a mother to me,’ Lexi explains online.
‘She taught me everything I know – how to tie my shoes, how to ride a bike, how to swim – and all the fun and necessities any blessed child learns while growing up.
‘I’m really grateful that I had her to raise so much of who I am today.’
David Amess’ Broadway dream comes true
Sir David Amess, the Tory MP murdered by an Islamist terrorist in 2021, would have been delighted with this news.
The Music Man Project (MMP), an Essex charity for performers with learning disabilities, of which he was president, has been given the green light to perform in New York next year.
It fulfils Sir David’s aim for the group to ‘conquer Broadway’.
MMP president Dame Penny Mordaunt tells me: ‘We just booked the flights. We’re taking them to play on Broadway.’
David Stanley, who founded the charity, adds: ‘I believe Sir David will have the best seat in the house, watching over us as we fulfil his promise.’
The group will perform at The Town Hall, a Broadway venue which has previously played host to Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan.
Pirate Lila looks pretty shipshape
Ahoy, me hearties! Lila Moss may be shorter than the average catwalk model, at 5ft 6in, but she’s determined to get ahead of those who accuse her of benefiting from nepotism. Kate Moss’s daughter, 23, wore an enormous, pirate-style hat by Dior’s new creative director, Jonathan Anderson, for the Perfect magazine x A$AP Rocky Zine dinner at Aki London. Lila teamed it with a voluminous Dior dress.
Who do these Spice kids think they are!
Beau Lee Jones (Emma Bunton’s son) and Bluebell Halliwell (Geri Halliwell-Horner’s daughter) attend the Tatler Little Black Book Party
The Spice Girls sang that ‘friendship never ends’ and their children clearly wannabe pals as well
The Spice Girls sang that ‘friendship never ends’ and their children clearly wannabe pals as well.
Emma Bunton’s son, Beau Lee Jones, 18, and Geri Halliwell’s daughter, Bluebell, 19, were in harmony at Tatler magazine’s Little Black Book Party at Tramp, the private members’ club in St James’s, London.
‘We met in 2019, when our parents were on tour, and we’ve been friends ever since,’ Bluebell tells me. Her father is Sacha Gervasi, ex-boyfriend of Ginger Spice Geri. Beau’s father is Baby Spice Emma’s husband, the R&B singer Jade Jones.
