SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: Attenborough's son is in a tit-for-tat feud

January 14, 2020

SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: Lord Attenborough’s son is in a tit-for-tat feud with Jamie Theakston over building work at luxury home

He comes from a famously courteous family, but theatre producer Michael Attenborough (pictured) is in no mood to turn the other cheek in his battle with his neighbour, TV and radio presenter Jamie Theakston, writes SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE

He comes from a famously courteous family, but theatre producer Michael Attenborough is in no mood to turn the other cheek in his battle with his neighbour, TV and radio presenter Jamie Theakston.

Appalled by Theakston’s plans to build a four-bedroom, £2.5 million house in the extensive back garden of his home in Chiswick, West London, Attenborough has, I can disclose, retaliated — by securing permission to enlarge his own property.

Attenborough — 69-year-old son of the late film legend Lord Attenborough and nephew of conservation guru Sir David — declines to discuss this decision.

But plans submitted to his local council show that he and his second wife, Karen, have been given the go-ahead to add a flat-roofed extension to the Victorian house where they’ve lived for 30 years. It measures approximately 20ft by 8 ft.

Two years ago, Attenborough lamented how he had spent ‘two-and-a-half years fighting Jamie Theakston’s ambitions to make money’. Those ambitions became apparent soon after Theakston paid £3.85 million for his house in 2010. He and his wife Sophie then proposed to demolish its existing extensions and replace them with something larger.

This was rejected, as were their plans to build a swimming pool and gym at the end of their garden right next to the Attenboroughs.

But then they were given the green light to build the four-bedroom house in the garden, despite howls of objection from locals pointing out that it was in a conservation area. Attenborough suggested that he and Karen would sell up.

‘I’ve always contended that one of the most emotional words in the English language is the word “home”,’ he reflected. ‘You put roots down. And now we have to wrench them out.’ But not, perhaps, before imitating his antagonist.

Theakston, 48, who is also director of two property companies, declines to comment.

BBC newsreader Richard Baker left an estate of just over £100,000 in his will.

The presenter, who died aged 93 in 2018, introduced the first television news broadcast in 1954, and later went on to front the Last Night Of The Proms as well as presenting radio news.

Figures released by the probate office in London show he left a net estate of £102,787. It goes to his widow, Margaret, whom he married in 1961.

They had two sons, Andrew, a newspaper sports columnist, and TV executive James.

When Baker moved into a retirement home, he used to read all the newspapers and cut out the interesting headlines, which he read to other residents over supper.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Sir Christopher Hampton is counting his blessings not being in the running for any Academy Awards this year.

When Hampton won the Oscar in 1989 for Dangerous Liaisons, he says: ‘It was not really a big deal . . . whereas, when I did [Ian McEwan’s] Atonement, which was getting on for 20 years later, in September we started the circuit. All of us had to go and do a thousand interviews all over America and eat dinners on the rubber chicken circuit. It was like a sort of punishment, like going to prison, because you had to do these early morning interviews in Cleveland, burbling out the same old stuff . . . it was all a complete waste of time.’

Hampton adds when A Dangerous Method — based on his play The Talking Cure — was snubbed by the Oscars in 2012, the director David Cronenberg called him and said: ‘We haven’t got any nominations — isn’t that great!’

That’s the spirit.

Sienna likes a man she can look up to…

He may be ten years her junior, but Sienna Miller’s art dealer boyfriend Lucas Zwirner cut her down to size when the pair went for a romantic walk in New York this week.

The 5ft 4in actress went public with their relationship a year ago, after the couple were introduced by mutual friends.

Sienna, 38, who was previously engaged to Jude Law and, later, Tom Sturridge, with whom she has a seven-year-old daughter Marlowe, recently admitted she was open to the idea of walking down the aisle.

‘I think I would be open to getting married, yes,’ she said.

He may be ten years her junior, but Sienna Miller’s art dealer boyfriend Lucas Zwirner cut her down to size when the pair went for a romantic walk in New York this week, writes SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE

He helped Donald Trump secure his first presidential election.

However, former White House strategist Steve Bannon is less successful when it comes to his own turbulent domestic life. He has been married three times and has no plans to marry again. ‘Marriage is not something I aspire to, no,’ he tells Mace magazine.

‘First off, I would not wish me upon any woman in the world. I’m a failure in marriage.’

Publisher Naim Attallah proves himself a master interviewer in his new anthology, No Longer With Us II. Derek Hill, who painted Prince Charles, offered insights into the heir to the throne. ‘When I first painted him he was 19. He came in one morning looking very cross and I asked “Sir, what is it?” He said, “I’ve just learned that the people who make damask linen have destroyed the wooden blocks used to make it with.” For a boy of 19 really to mind about such a thing was, I thought, extraordinary.’

Sam who? How DJ Read snubbed director Mendes

Lauded for his latest film 1917, Oscar-winner Sir Sam Mendes is one of our most celebrated directors.

But he has the distinction of being rejected by former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read. The broadcaster says he turned down the chance to have Mendes direct his musical, Young Apollo, in 1989, dismissing him as too callow.

‘In my infinite wisdom, I said: “No, no, I need someone who’s got a bit of experience,”’ Read reveals. ‘It wasn’t funny, it was tragic.’

The following year, Mendes — left, with wife Alison — was appointed artistic director of London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre.

Don’t expect Justin Hawkins of rockers The Darkness to display humility after being revealed as the performing chameleon in wacky ITV show

The Masked Singer.

‘The toughest part of the process was learning relatively modern songs. I’m not fond of new music, so I had to force myself to assimilate inferior compositions,’ pronounces Hawkins, who sang Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors, a hit a mere 34 years ago.

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