Hewitt’s ex gives Prince’s pal a caning
He was once as thick as thieves with Guy Pelly, Prince Harry’s partner in crime during the royal’s carefree bachelor days. But that alliance unravelled in a bitter legal spat when the fashionable London nightclub they jointly owned was forced to close.
Now history has very nearly repeated itself. On this occasion Howard spooner’s battle has been not with the ebullient Pelly — who has lost his driving licence on three separate occasions — but with U.s. multimillionaire Brook Johnson and his glamorous wife, sally, one-time squeeze of Princess Diana’s notorious lover, James Hewitt.
and it has, I can disclose, left spooner, 50, with a £35,000 bill in legal costs, following a courtroom judgment against him.
This was not an outcome the twice-married entrepreneur envisaged after agreeing to become equal partners with the Johnsons in The George, a landmark 17-bedroom hotel on the Isle of wight.
Declaring himself ‘really excited’ after they acquired the hotel last year, spooner spoke of making its restaurant ‘a bit like The Ivy’. seemingly inspired by his previous partnership with Pelly, spooner added that there would also be ‘a cocktail bar with a mixologist bartender’.
But differences over money soon surfaced.
spooner, who, after the closure of Public, their London nightclub, said that he wouldn’t work with Pelly again — ‘not in a million years’ — claimed that he was £85,000 out of pocket and demanded the Johnsons ‘stump up what they owe’.
He subsequently issued a second demand for payment of £16,612, plus interest. But the Johnsons didn’t budge. with a courtroom encounter looming, spooner withdrew his demands, and, following a two-hour court hearing this week, was ordered to pay the couple £35,000 in legal costs.
Perhaps he should have known better than to take on the spirited sally.
while at secretarial college in Oxford, she attended ‘The Headmaster’s Thrash’, a boisterous evening during which her role was ‘games mistress’.
spooner may feel that he’s suffered six of the best.