Roll out the doggie

Evening Standard | 14 Mar 1989

My family has what must be London’s only dachshund on wheels. She’s called Muffit. Crufts and suchlike are fine – working dogs, gun dogs, pedigree chums, prowling prancers and canines with unpronounceable Chinese names. But against her, they pale into insignificance.

Muffit was under the supervision of Keith Butt, the Adonis vet whom women cross London to see (they stop off in Harrods en route to buy a pet to take with them). Following an accident in which her back legs had become paralysed, he suggested she be sent to the kennel in the sky.

My father went to see her in doggy hospital to give her her last grapes. He ended up writing a cheque for some fantastic amount (relative to the size of the dog) which was duly dispatched to the States (where else?) where some doggy wheels were speedily fired, or run up or whatever you do to make canine roller skates.

• Columns & Regulars

The £200,000 reason why they hate this woman

E.S. | 4 Oct 1987

This year 34-year-old Gerry Bridgewater may earn £235,000. That’s a basic salary of £35,000 plus between £20,000 and £200,000 n commissions. For Gerry was the first female dealer permitted to trade in the Ring of the London Metal Exchange; a coup that involved a lengthy fight. Subsequently she broke a 109-year-old tradition and became the first female individual subscriber permitted to trade on her own account. ‘I never take no for an answer. I’m a strong self-believer,’ she explains. She is the LME’s own Iron Lady.

• Current Affairs

Spye Park

Country Homes & Estates | 17 Nov 1986

This is the story of the Spicers of Spye Park, and if they sound like characters in an eerie film, there certainly has been plenty of attention paid to the sets. Spye Park – so-called because of its unique vantage point over the village of Lacock in Wiltshire – was originally a Jacobean house lived in by a Mr Baynton, who gambled it away.

• Homes, Interiors & Property

Spy Hunters

YOU Magazine | 3 Aug 1986

In a Regency house just off the Mall, a man wearing an MCC tie sits behind an enormous mahogony desk. On the other side of the desk is a navy-suited strawberry blonde. Suffice to say her name is Camilla.

The man questions her about her hobbies, and Camilla answers easily enough. Then he suddenly slips in a question about Middle Eastern politics. His manner remains relaxed but emotionless, but Camilla is unnerved, sensing a menacing undercurrent.

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