Bake Off star’s firm burned the fingers of investors
THE Great British Bake Off star Paul Hollywood managed to woo back his wife, Alexandra, after he betrayed her with Marcela Valladolid, his sultry fellow judge on the U.S. version of the hit BBC programme.
Hollywood will, however, need more than smooth talk to win over the former creditors of his speciality baking business.
For I can reveal that his company has failed to pay back a single penny of the money it owed when Paul DAME Eileen Atkins was so devoted to her film producer husband Bill Shepherd that she once spurned heart-throb Colin Farrell’s advances.
Sadly, the celebrated actress, 82, is now mourning the loss of Bill, who has died aged 73. ‘Bill had been very ill,’ a friend tells me. Former ad man Hollywood Artisan Bread went into liquidation two years ago.
The business, which made expensive loaves — including Roquefort and almond sourdough, stocked by Harrods at £15 a loaf — owed a total of £60,000 to creditors including a leasing company, energy firm EDF and HM Revenue & Customs.
The last unpaid debt means that Hollywood (pictured), who is paid around £500,000 per year by the BBC, has left taxpayers out of pocket.
The liquidator recovered just £12,000, which was enough to cover the accountancy and fees, but not to repay any of those owed money by the firm, which Hollywood set up in Shepherd never lost his appeal for Dame Eileen, who cheekily described how Hollywood star Farrell, now 40, tried to slip into bed with her while on location. ‘I don’t know how I held out, but I did,’ she later disclosed.
‘I enjoyed getting him out of my room for about an hour.’
2007. ‘The actual return to creditors was nil pence in the pound,’ confirms the liquidation report.
Creditors will have reason to be angry at being left out of pocket by Hollywood, as freshly published accounts for his other company, Paul Hollywood Ltd, reveal that it made profits of almost £1.4 million. His eponymous firm’s profits went up by almost £400,000 in a year.
He channels earnings from Bake Off and his books through Paul Hollywood Ltd, and has now used its funds to set up another associated business, HJP Media. He has invested nearly £900,000 in HJP Media and its accounts show he has paid back a loan of £1.4 million in cash which he had borrowed from the firm, including interest of £34,000. Artisan Bread is not the former baker’s first business failure. Earlier in his career, he had to call in liquidators when his first bread firm built up debts of £262,000. It was dissolved in December 2005, leaving some creditors fuming. At the time, his spokesman insisted ‘the majority of creditors were compensated’. This time, his spokesman could not be reached for comment.
HOW to distinguish yourself in the House of Lords? Dye your hair, says Labour baroness Helena Kennedy QC, 66, who has a new dark brown look. The barrister tells me: ‘I looked around the Labour benches and every old biddy had the same hair colour — that thing of: “I’m going grey, so I’m going to get blonde streaks.” I thought: “No, I’m going to rebel against this!” Grey can look fabulous — but quite rarely.’