Horner and Geri face unholy row over pool
HE’S endured a gruelling month or more, during which he’s been subjected to relentless and sometimes lurid speculation. So let’s hope that Christian Horner has plenty of juice left in his tank.
For I can disclose that, barely has the combative Red Bull Formula One team boss been cleared of allegations of ‘ inappropriate behaviour’ — brought against him by a now suspended female employee — than he’s been plunged into a battle with neighbours.
It can’t have been what Horner, 50, and his wife, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, 51, envisaged when, at the beginning of the year, they unveiled plans to ‘enhance’ the grounds of their 15th- century manor house on the Oxfordshire/ Northamptonshire border.
Though their proposals contained evocative descriptions of a yew hedge, vegetable garden, raised flower beds and an apple or rose walk, the couple conceded that their ‘primary objective’ was to ‘ introduce’ a 40ft x 16ft swimming pool.
That’s proved quite enough to rub their neighbours up the wrong way. One characterises the Horners’ scheme as ‘the height of disrespect’, explaining that the proposed pool would be desperately close to the village church.
‘Many local families attend the church and of course the rector conducts weddings, baptisms and funerals,’ says this critic, adding that mourners, standing in the churchyard, could be witnessing an interment only ‘to be distracted by screaming, shouting and splashing’.
The objectors’ mood is unlikely to have been improved by the knowledge that the Horners’ residence, which has its own boating lake, stables, helipad and orangery, already boasts an indoor pool.
Intriguingly, the identities of those up in arms — and, indeed, most of their comments — are deliberately obscured on the council website. But could one of them be former deputy prime minister Michael Heseltine?
I ask because one objector remarks that the church is ‘very beautiful . . . and has been used for weddings by the Heseltine family’.
Lord Heseltine, who lives nearby in even greater grandeur than the Horners, was celebrating his 91st birthday yesterday and will say only: ‘This is not a matter for me.’
■ TV ACTOR Stephen Mangan is keen to add another string to his bow: musical theatre. ‘any sort of musical with silliness is right up my street,’ Mangan, 55, tells me at the gala night for Police cops: The Musical, at Southwark Playhouse Elephant in London. ‘I would like to either tap dance or ride a unicycle, or just dress up.’