Some would say he has left it rather late. But when a new film about Soho porn baron Paul Raymond opens this week, his son will be taking a forensic interest.
Not that Howard Raymond will attend a screening — he has no wish to dignify what he considers to be a tawdry misrepresentation of his father’s colourful life.
He is, however, sending his lawyers. ‘I want to ensure there are no legal or copyright issues,’ Howard tells me.
The 53-year-old businessman, who inherited part of his father’s property empire, has been at loggerheads with film-maker Michael Winterbottom, accusing the director of turning a family story into a ‘Carry On Soho-style farce’.
At one stage the two men might have collaborated, but after initial talks Howard withdrew. His mood was not improved when he learned that the comedian Steve Coogan has been cast to play his father.
Over the course of the past two years, hostilities have broken out between Howard and the film’s makers. He won a trademark legal battle over the name The King Of Soho, which was the working title of the film but also the title of Howard’s family memoir.
Indeed, a film version of this book is due to start shooting in summer.
Steve Coogan in The Look Of Love, which has been the source of friction between the film-maker and the porn baron's son
‘I have just met the lovely young actress who is going to play my mother at age 28,’ he tells me. ‘She is stunningly beautiful but I am not yet at liberty to disclose her name.’
More...
RICHARD KAY: By George! Asda guru, 72, has a new girl
King of Soho's girl kicks out the strippers: Daughter of Paul Raymond wants to turn father's lap-dancing club into a theatre
It is scant consolation that early reviews of the Coogan bio-pic, The Look Of Love, have been less than generous. One dismissed it as ‘superficial’. Howard, who says Coogan’s portrayal of his father is an ‘insulting caricature’, says: ‘Friends who were invited to the premiere — I wasn’t — who knew my father say it does not do him justice. It is an outsider looking in.
‘My film will be from an inside point of view and will be much more about the family and how it shaped my father.’
Howard says filming is scheduled to start in late July — and as a Soho landlord himself, there will be no problem securing permission to film in many of the iconic spots associated with Raymond.
‘In fact, we have pencilled in only two evenings of location shooting in Soho,’ he says. ‘It will be human, warm and accurate.’
How Kathryn clicked with her online whiz
Vivacious entrepreneur Kathryn Parsons has bagged herself a dishy — if dishevelled — millionaire.
Kathryn, 30, who picked up the New Generation award at the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year bash at Claridge’s this week, took the opportunity to show off the new man in her life, on-line gaming whiz Michael Acton Smith.
Michael, 38, is the founder of Mind Candy, the children’s entertainment company and the driving force behind the online world of Moshi Monsters.
Go-getters: Michael and Kathryn at the awards do
His company had a turnover of around £29 million at last count. ‘We first met at a conference in Amsterdam six years ago but only got together last year at another conference,’ says Cambridge classics graduate Kathryn, who started her own company Decoded — which trains up the digitally challenged — in 2006 after quitting her advertising job.
The couple have not moved in together yet — he lives in Soho and she is in North London — but this weekend they are off to stay in a tent in West Wales.
Says Michael: ‘It’s actually a geodesic dome. We are both lecturing at the Do Conference where there are workshops and talks on how to turn ideas into a business.’
He adds: ‘We go to a lot of conferences together. They can be quite romantic!’
Natalie's pit-stop pandemonium
Natalie Pinkham has never lost lost her luggage before
She is used to life in the fast lane so after all the excitement of the F1 Grand Prix in Bahrain, TV glamourpuss Natalie Pinkham was ready to put her feet up.
Alas, as the pit-lane reporter and her 40-strong Sky team got off a flight to Abu Dhabi en route to London, they received unwanted news — all their luggage had been lost.
‘We put our bags on the connector flight and never saw them again,’ says Natalie, 34, an old flame of Prince Harry. ‘I have flown to every corner of the Earth — last year I did 58 flights — and I’ve never once lost my luggage. It got to the point where I got a bit smug and now it’s come back to bite me!’
Happily, things improved on their BA flight home. ‘The stewardesses gave us a big glass of wine and we sat back and had a good old giggle,’ says Natalie at the UK launch of charity Free The Children — hosted by Virgin heiress Holly Branson — at Thomas Goode in Mayfair.
‘I suppose our stuff is somewhere in the Middle East but I wasn’t going to hang around to find out.’
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I gather the parliamentary children’s nursery championed by John Bercow is still losing almost £2,000 per week.
New figures reveal the controversial facility’s running costs in the year 2012/13 were £271,000.
It made just £177,000 in fees, so taxpayers must meet the £94,000 shortfall.
Although father-of-three Bercow was a key backer of the nursery, which cost £750,000 and opened in 2010, his spokesman has never revealed if the Commons’ Speaker’s own offspring have used it.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After years of bitterness, there has been a rapprochement between Amanda Peat — sister of Prince Charles’s former private secretary Sir Michael Peat — and her ex-husband, Italian fashion mogul Ferruccio Ferragamo.
For years, the couple were estranged after it emerged he had fathered an illegitimate child and Amanda decamped to Hampshire.
Their son Salvatore, 41, tells me that his warring parents are back on more civil terms. ‘After all the pain, mother is a lot happier now,’ he says. ‘She’s just returned to Italy to be near us and her grandchildren. She couldn’t settle in England and missed us all so much.’
Speaking at the Relais & Chateaux Diner Des Grands Chefs at Old Billingsgate, Salvatore adds: ‘When my father and mother weren’t speaking, it was painful for all of us.
‘But they are friends again now and she has just bought an historic farmhouse in Italy which she is renovating. She’s so happy doing something she’s really good at.’
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week she was urging that children should receive lessons on life in Britain’s jails on the National Curriculum.
But pretty soon Lady Edwina Grosvenor, the spirited daughter of the Duke of Westminster, will have things other than prison reform on her mind — she is expecting her second child. Lady Edwina, 31, is married to TV historian Dan Snow, 33, and they have an 18-month old daughter, Zia.
Edwina, who has a degree in criminology and sociology, has worked in and around prisons for 14 years. She believes teaching children the reality of life in prison might deter them from committing offences.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barrister Michael ‘Moneybags’ Mansfield is invited by Resurgence & Ecologist magazine to discuss his ‘green life’.
While predictably applauding the Occupy movement and decrying fracking, the QC supports a campaign to persuade the UN to categorise ‘ecocide’ as a crime.
He can barely conceal his anticipation that such an action would have on ‘the agents of profligate corporations and governments’. And some rich pickings for human rights lawyers too, I’m sure.
Amusingly he is modestly described in the piece as ‘a republican, a vegetarian, a socialist and a self-described “radical lawyer” ’. What a guy!