£130m drugs bust sailor jailed
A DRUG smuggler was yesterday jailed for 16 years after being caught off the Cornish coast with cocaine worth more than £130million stashed in his yacht.
Dutchman Maarten Peter Pieterse was arrested in July last year after Border Force officials found two tons of drugs secretly stowed on board his vessel.
The 61-year-old is believed to have sailed from the Azores and was heading to Belgium to offload his cargo – one of the largest ever seizures of class A drugs in the UK – when he was intercepted.
Dominic Thomas, defending Pieterse, told Bristol Crown
Court his client was once the owner of a “thriving” jewellery business in Rotterdam but had since fallen on hard times.
Following sentencing,
Ty Surgeon, operations manager of the National Crime Agency, said: “This seizure will have significantly disrupted the activities of organised crime groups.”
YOUNGER viewers know Peter Bowles best as the venerable Duke of Wellington, enjoying an endearing on-screen relationship with Jenna Coleman in ITV hitVictoria. But older fans will remember another famous partnership between actor and leading lady – one that put a real sizzle into Sunday night television 40 years ago.
Peter was the nouveau riche billionaire moving into the former home of a down-at-hill aristo, played by Penelope Keith. And the simmering sexual tension between Richard DeVere and Audrey fforbes-Hamilton kept the nation hooked on To The Manor Born for the next three years.
The first episode drew in almost 24 million viewers. It became one of the best loved British sitcoms ever. And that was all down to the instant spark between Peter and Penelope… one that could have ignited four years earlier had he played her husband Jerry Leadbetter in The Good Life.
“Our chemistry was immediate,” recalls 83-year-old Peter with a smile. “I had never met Penny before and never watched an episode of The Good Life, even though I’d been offered Paul Eddington’s role. “But we had some rehearsals and... we clicked. We both have strong personalities and got on terribly well. And, of course, she is an attractive woman. But nobody knew how successful To The Manor Born would be. Our viewing figures were never less than 20 million and I became aware very quickly that people of all classes, all jobs, all strata, were watching it.
“I would be greeted by men mending roofs and by road sweepers, I’d be hooted at from lorries and a man driving a Bentley once stopped in the middle of the road, got out and wanted to shake my hand.”
As dashing DeVere set about wooing the formidable Audrey, millions of women of a certain age fell in love with him too – and with Peter, then 43. He even caught the eye of Princess Margaret – much to the irritation of Sue, his wife of almost 60 years.
“I was once in a line-up waiting to be introduced to Princess Margaret,” he recalls. “It was at the time when I was quite popular and she sees me from several paces away and I spot a twinkle in her eye. When she gets to me, she has a cigarette holder and cigarette in her hand. She says to me ‘Give me a light’, then turned away to talk to her equerry.
“I found a box of matches and she turned back and leaned forward. I struck a match and she said, ‘Oh God, not sulphur. Haven’t you got a lighter?’
“The next thing I know, my wife is stepping in front of me saying, ‘How dare you speak to my husband like that! I think you’re very rude.’
“I was shocked. Princess Margaret shook and the whole room shook. But she handled it very well and said, ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to offend but I don’t like sulphur.’ And she went. Two years later I was at a private party where Princess Margaret was a guest. Again, I saw the twinkle. She comes up to me and says, ‘Good evening Mr Bowles’ then hands me her clutch bag.
“She said, ‘You will be my bag man for the evening. In here are my cigarettes and a lighter – when I require both I will ask you.’ And she turned on her heel and walked away. I got commanded to follow her. But she didn’t keep me humiliated for very long. She asked me for a cigarette and a light and then said, ‘Quits now, I think Mr Bowles!’Wonderful.”
Peter adds modestly: “I had no idea I was sex symbol, I have never had vanity in that way. My mind doesn’t work like that.”
It’s a modesty that he learned from his parents who certainly weren’t to the manor born. In fact they were in service. His father Herbert was a butler and chauffeur at a stately home in Warwickshire and his mother, Sarah, a nanny for actress Jodie Kidd’s grandmother Janet.
During the war Herbert went to work for Rolls-Royce engines and the family – he has a younger sister, Patricia – moved to Nottingham. “We lived in a Coronation Street setting but there was no feeling of deprivation or envy,” he says. “My parents had absorbed a middle-class routine and learned to speak well. They knew of another world and it allowed me to mix with anybody, fearlessly.”
After school, Peter won a scholarship to study at RADA then began his acting career with the old Vic Company when he was 20.
In the late ’60s and early ’70s he played a series of villains in TV shows like The Avengers, The Saint and The Prisoner. His first major role was as Guthrie Featherstone QC, MP in Rumpole of The Bailey and his first comedy outing came in Rising Damp.
STILL IN LOVE: Peter and his wife Sue
UNUSUALLY for the ’70s, in Manor Born, Penelope was on an equal standing with her male co-star. Peter says: “It always troubled me from a very young age that women did not get a fair share of anything. But we never analysed it – Penny and I just learned our lines and played our parts.”
Yet, Peter reveals, the huge success of the show seemed to be threatening his future career.
“After being in the most successful series that the BBC had at the time, they said to me one day, ‘You do realise you will never work in drama again?’ It was a tremendous shock. They said drama producers wouldn’t want me because I’d been doing comedy. I was also doing Only When I Laugh on ITV.
“That seemed off. But the first part I went for after Manor Born was a very important Charles Dickens role. They were almost rude and dismissed me because I did ‘the sitcom thing’.”
So Peter devised his own drama