Fergie toe sucker’s £750k bill after losing battle with ex
HE HAS de-stabilised the Royal Family, presided over a company which collapsed with £10 million debts and has been declared bankrupt in the High Court.
Yet the Duchess of York’s erstwhile ‘financial adviser’ John Bryan — photographed sucking her toes while she reclined topless by a pool in the South of France in 1992 — has continued to live a life of style and comfort, untroubled by the disasters he has left in his wake.
But now, I can disclose, justice has finally caught up with the smoothtalking, 62-year-old, Los Angeles-based Texan, who, for the past two years, has been locked in a vicious courtroom battle to try to extract up to £1.5 million from his ex-wife, beautiful Belgian reality TV star Astrid Coppens, alleging that she withheld critical information about her wealth and income when they divorced in 2013.
Judge Michael J Convey has ruled that Bryan’s claim ‘should be denied in its entirety’, and witheringly questioned Bryan’s testimony about his own financial status.
‘ It is simply not credible that [Bryan] had no assets and no money,’ concludes Convey, adding that, at the time of their divorce in 2013, Bryan was earning more than Astrid was, and noting that Bryan was receiving £13,500-a-month via his company, the Watley Group, to fund ‘his manner of living’. Astrid, 34, a classically trained violinist, singer and model, who was just 22 when she married Bryan and lives barely a mile from her exhusband, is understandably elated.
She has posted on Instagram an image of herself pounding a punchbag, with the caption: ‘No matter what, keep fighting because the truth is something to fight for! Justice is served.’
Bryan, who was made bankrupt in 1996 after failing to pay debts of £60,000 to creditors — including Fergie’s sister, Jane, the photos of whose second wedding he had sold to Hello! — now faces a legal bill which Astrid’s lawyer, Olaf Muller, estimates at more than £750,000.
He will find it difficult to evade paying. ‘We will chase him down to the ends of the earth,’ Muller assures me.