Fergie’s friend refuses to foot his ex’s million dollar legal bill
THE Duchess of York’s friend John Bryan was famously photographed sucking her toes as she reclined topless by a pool in the South of France in 1992.
However, I learn the Texan financier is reluctant to foot the bill for his exwife’s legal costs arising from a long and bitter courtroom battle in Los Angeles.
His young and beautiful ex, Astrid Coppens, a Belgian reality TV star, complains she has yet to receive a cent of the million dollars the American court decreed Bryan owed her,
But she tells me she will now let the money go as it’s a price worth paying for having him out of her life.
‘He failed to send me one dollar,’ says Astrid, who married Bryan in 2006 when she was only 22 and he was 50. ‘But I am very happy to let it go.’ Astrid has since married film director Bram Coppens.
Her magnanimous decision is perhaps understandable. Only a year ago, she was in such distress that she was unable to sleep and had started to lose her hair.
Claiming that Astrid owed him £1.6 million, Bryan had launched legal proceedings by alleging that she had withheld crucial information about her wealth and income during their 2013 divorce.
When a judge ruled that the claim should be ‘denied in its entirety’ — and noted that her ex, who though pleading hardship, enjoyed an income of £13,500-a-month — Bryan promptly launched an appeal. By the time that, too, was dismissed last summer, Astrid’s legal costs amounted to $1 million, the equivalent of £816,000.
Her lawyers promised to pursue Bryan ‘to the ends of the earth’ to retrieve the money. So far, they have failed. But Astrid is now rejoicing in the birth of her first child, daughter BillieRay. ‘Bram and I are extremely happy, enjoying our time with our new little miracle,’ she tells me.
Bryan, declared bankrupt in the UK in 1996 owing £60,000 to creditors — including Fergie’s sister — declines to comment. But he seems to have speedily re-adapted to single life: a video online shows the 64-year-old driving a Ferrari and partying with friends a third his age. Parp, parp.