A ‘very rich Italian’ man has been left outraged after he was reportedly chased down and reprimanded by an angry waiter in Saint-Tropez for only leaving a 500 euro (£429) tip.

The diner, who has not yet been identified, was pursued by the staff member to the carpark of the restaurant in the glamourous French Riviera resort and told it ‘wasn’t enough’.

The waiter chastised the ‘very rich’ customer and told him to go back inside and pay another 500 euros to reach the ‘minimum’ tip amount of 1,000 euros (£859), reported local newspaper Nice Matin.

A French friend of the dismayed Italian said: ‘He thought he had been generous by leaving 500 euros, instead he was reprimanded. 

‘The waiter told him that it wasn’t enough and that he could still make a small effort to reach 1,000 euros because it was more consistent in approaching 20 per cent of the total amount of his bill.’

The Italian was so affronted by the exchange that he reportedly told his friend that he never wanted to step foot in Saint Tropez again. 

The incident marks a growing frustration for holidaymakers travelling to Saint –Tropez, a popular holiday destination for royalty and the wealthy. 

Tourists have told how some restaurants in the coastal town require a minimum spend of 1,500 euros (£1,288) each, while in other areas of the French Riviera, customers are expected to spend at least 10,000 euros (£8,587). 

‘During a recent evening, this restaurant that we know well required a minimum spend of 1,500 euros each,’ a regular, who said he is unlikely to return to Saint-Tropez, told Nice Matin. 

It was also reported that a family at a restaurant in Ramatuelle, just south of Saint-Tropez, were told by staff that the minimum spend at a table there was 100,000 euros (£85,900).

Restaurant staff are also said to be screening customers – and if they found that they didn’t tip well during a previous visit, they wouldn’t let them book a table again, reports Repubblica. 

The mayor of Saint-Tropez, Sylvie Siri, said he has summoned local restaurant owners for a meeting at the end of the summer season to ‘clean up’ their practices and ‘welcome customers in a more dignified way’. 

Speaking of how restaurants are only reserving tables to clients who agree to a minimum spend, Ms Siri said: ‘It is a practice similar to extortion, a form of racketeering.’ 

It is the latest example of the sky-high cost of enjoying bars and restaurants at some of Europe’s most exclusive holiday hotspots.

Yesterday, it emerged that shocked customers had been ordered to pay a restaurant €20 (£17) to cut up a birthday cake.

The family had brought in the cake with them for a celebration in Palermo, Sicily.

But the party-goers were astonished when they found they had been charged €20 for cutting it into pieces.

Last week, diners at another restaurant in Italy were shocked after waiters charged them €2 for an empty plate so their daughter could try the pasta.

Italians mocked the restaurant for the unusual charge and even the regional governor condemned it. 

Ida Germano, the owner of the Osteria del Cavolo in Finale Ligure, told The Times the charge was valid because more plates to clean meant more work to do. 

She clarified that the cost of supplying and washing extra plates so the mother could let her daughter taste the pasta would be ‘more work’. 

Since international travel returned to normality at the end of the global pandemic, several disgruntled holidaymakers have taken to the internet to express their shock at being presented with exorbitant bills in bars and restaurants in a number of European holiday destinations. 

In another prices scandal, a couple who asked for an extra teaspoon so they could share a dessert were charged €1.50 (£1.30).

They were billed for the pleasure of using two teaspoons to eat the crema catalana they had at the pizzeria near Alba, in northern Piemonte. 

It came as a bar at Italy’s exclusive Lake Como has sparked outrage after it was revealed it charges customers an extra €2 (£1.70) just to cut their sandwiches in half.

One disgruntled customer shared a photograph of a receipt online as proof of the baffling charge.

The printout from June 18 clearly shows that Bar Pace had charged them €2 for the privilege of cutting their sandwich in two.

Listed as ‘diviso da meta’ it translates into English as ‘divided in half’.

In 2019, a Venice restaurant sparked outrage by charging tourists £1,000 for four steaks and a plate of fish.

The outraged Japanese diners – students from the University of Bologna – said they ordered three steaks and fried fish at the Osteria da Luca near St Mark’s Square.

With only glasses of water to accompany their modest meal, the group was left shocked by their €1,145 bill on Friday.

The snow no longer felt cold. In fact, it felt warm and fluffy. I closed my eyes – and began to drift off.

I was utterly exhausted. Frozen numb and low on oxygen at around 22,600ft up Everest’s Tibetan ascent.

Surrounded by crevasses and treacherous drops, I stopped at an ice bed for rest, failing to realize how easily these mountains can claim lives.

‘Come on, Sadie,’ one of my group’s sherpas, Nima, demanded. ‘We’re not far. Just another hour, then we’re there.’

He was kind, but firm. Because he knew all too well: if I’d fallen asleep, I might never have woken up.

That was March 2018 – and memories of that trepidatious climb came flooding back this week as drone footage of 27-year-old Pakistani Muhammad Hassan’s dying moments on the slopes of the K2 mountain went viral.

We all watched in horror as a mortally injured Muhammad, a sherpa (known as ‘porters’ in Pakistan), lay motionless at 27,000ft, wedged into the snowy rockface of K2 – second in height only to Everest but more fatal.

As is now common on these ‘bucket-list’ peaks, Muhammad was far from alone – surrounded by dozens of eager climbers, many from the West, who pay hefty sums to be shepherded safely to the summit by adept local guides just like Muhammad.

Nima was my Muhammad. And how lucky I was to have him to keep me awake, to hold my hand.

Muhammad wasn’t so lucky – perhaps precisely because he was a sherpa and not a paying tourist.

And as mountaineers took it in turns to apathetically step over the father-of-three’s limp body in their relentless pursuit of the peak, his life slipped away.

Just two climbers were reported to have stopped to help. By the end, he was so stricken he couldn’t talk or even hear.

Worse, a group of Norwegian climbers posted pictures on social media moments after his death celebrating a record-busting ascent time that no doubt would have been scuppered had they paused to come to Muhammad’s aid.

Disgusting, yes. But, sadly, as someone who has spent over a decade in the unique and bizarre world of elite climbing, I can tell you that this travesty of inhumanity was a disaster waiting to happen.

Sure, sherpas and porters look out for each other even if tourists don’t, but at the end of the day, they are under enormous pressure to prioritize their clients.

And these clients, predominantly high-flying, uber-rich Westerners, change at high altitudes.

These might well be decent, kind people at base camp. But, high up as the atmosphere thins, at the peak of human achievement, as the very top of the world looms into view, the look in their eyes can turn menacing.

Why should they jeopardize their own slim chance of success to help another climber? It’s every man for himself.

There’s also the money. An Everest or K2 climb will set you back the better part of $50,000. Even for the few who can afford that, it’s likely a one-time thing.

Training also takes months, often away from family and friends in arduous conditions, acclimatizing to altitudes and building fitness. Sacrifice is essential – and when push comes to shove, the fear of failure can overwhelm you.

I first heard about the concept of ‘summit fever’ – the dangerous compulsion to reach the top no matter the costs – during a 2010 lecture at The Explorers Club in New York City.

As a 23-year-old with no mountaineering experience at the time, I was appalled.

You might die, others might die, but so be it. Surely not, I thought.

But as my experience grew – climbing in Tibet, Nepal, Africa, Russia, Argentina in my holidays – I soon realized ‘summit fever’ is a real and terrifying phenomenon.

By far, the worst offenders I have seen on the mountains are monied amateurs.

Both men and women, transformed into arrogant monsters, decked out in all the most expensive gear but often with no idea, yet insistent that their spending must precipitate success.

Such people also tend treat the sherpas and porters terribly.

They’re also invariably over-ambitious, unfit and often put their guides in real danger at high altitudes.

Nonetheless, the rapid rise of adventure tourism and ‘peak bragging’ has made healthy business for local communities – though only in relative terms (a sherpa can expect to earn $5,000 in a climbing season).

And make no mistake: theirs is the most dangerous job in the world.

I went to Everest in 2018 to set a world record for the highest dinner party, which would take place at 23,149ft – some 6,000ft from the summit.

The expedition raised money for the Nepalese community in the wake of the devastating 2015 earthquake, and thankfully sponsors covered my prohibitive costs.

The sherpas and porters who completed the world record with us became our friends and – as I know all too well – some of us owe them our lives.

They taught us how to dance to Nepali pop, while we treated them to a high-altitude egg and spoon race.

But such an experience is the exception.

On the whole, the marked segregation between the clients and local guides verges on abuse: they’re split off into separate tents and even eat different foods.

No prizes for guessing who gets the tastier dinner.

And this doesn’t just happen in Asia’s Himalayas but in all the world’s poor mountainous regions – from Africa to South America.

And it’s in that context that Muhammad Hassan’s death is as sickening as it is unsurprising. One where sherpas and porters are treated as second-class human beings.

Being completely fair, a mountain rescue at Muhammad’s altitude and in such snowy conditions probably wouldn’t have been best advised or even necessarily possible. But it says everything that so few people bothered to even try.

These men and women adore the mountains they call home. How shameful that Muhammad had to pay with his life just to help others experience that joy.

Book of the week

Highly Desirable: Tales of London’s super-prime property from The Secret Agent

By Anonymous (Headline £22, 374pp)

We hate estate agents — the easy money they make as prices escalate and commissions expand (‘the figures that seemed inconceivable just years ago have quickly become the norm’); the surface-level smarm ‘bordering on obsequious’; the fact they don’t do anything complicated beyond ‘securing the right property at the best possible price’: the conveyancing solicitors do the nitty gritty and earn far less.

Indeed, any idiot can show someone around an empty house and say, ‘This is the bathroom’, or ‘I can picture you having kitchen suppers around that table’. 

You appreciate why Anne Robinson, disguised in the book as ‘an adored international TV personality’, has a policy of telling estate agents to remain silent, on pain of torture and death.

Max Thomas, the (pseudonymous) author, operates in London’s super-prime sphere — £22 million apartments in the City, an £18.5 million house in Regent’s Park, a flat in Chelsea Barracks with a £35 million price tag, which also comes with an £80,000 per annum service charge.

Though Thomas comically tries to make his life sound as exciting as James Bond (‘I’ve got to salvage this deal by 6pm!’), in fairness, he is likeable and diligent, mugging up on ‘speculative costs of refurbishment, pound-per-square-foot value, potential swiftness of transaction’. Thomas has the addresses of builders, architects and feng-shui experts.

He finds himself turning into a psychological counsellor, his clients wanting recommendations for reflexologists, masseurs and private jet charter companies.

The fun of Highly Desirable is learning all about the ‘high net-worth individuals’ whom Thomas encounters. 

‘There are lots of rich people about’, apparently, and you’ll hear them coming because they do nothing except complain loudly about staffing problems, caterers, private tutors, club memberships and beauty regimes. 

Wives and daughters have ‘so much surgery and so many artificial additions’, they can’t be recognised from week to week.

We are told about ‘rich kids spending thousands on champagne and thinking that’s normal’. Private equity managers, venture capitalists, oligarchs, sheiks and gangsters — these are the characters and wannabe Bond villains who travel by chauffeur-driven limousine and in first-class cabins, who are ‘never polluted by contact with the outside world’. 

They expect to dwell in homes with media and massage suites, games rooms and have ‘all the trimmings’, such as lifts and garages for four cars.

Notting Hill has been colonised by the hedge funder, Americans favour St John’s Wood, and Hampstead ‘is full of the moneyed intelligentsia’. 

Holland Park, where houses have a £17 million ticket price, is the location of the late Michael Winner’s palace, now owned by Robbie Williams and rented to Richard Caring, the British billionaire nightclub and restaurant entrepreneur. 

When as a new owner Williams wanted to scoop out the basement for a swimming pool and a cinema room, there was a feud with the neighbour, Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who feared subsidence.

‘I can’t begin to imagine,’ says Thomas, ‘the number of unused underground pools that have been built in London over the last decade.’ 

For the paradox with the rich is that they are seldom in residence. Houses and flats are investment assets, not homes to inhabit. Most of the time the owners are on the yacht or in tax-efficient Switzerland, Monaco or Dubai.

London is simply where a place is needed (‘I feel it is a sensible £2.95 million’) for an occasional drinks party for 40. Often, the rich never materialise in person at all. They just Google-map it and peruse the floor plan, then make Zoom calls with decorators.

Worse than this, the rich openly flout planning permission rules and bypass due process regarding listed building regulations. 

A stucco mansion in Chester Terrace, Regent’s Park, unoccupied for years, is found to have chain metal lights, velvet black walls, leatherette sofas and leopard-skin pouffes.

There’s a Queen Anne property in Chiswick Mall along the banks of the Thames, a riverside flat in Battersea with 24-hour concierge service, an elegant townhouse in Onslow Gardens in South Kensington: once the potential buyer turns up with a cavalcade of bodyguards, days are numbered for any surviving plaster cornices in the drawing room, the craftsmanship of Victorian fireplaces and folding wooden window shutters. 

Everything gets stripped out. ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap’, Thomas comments wryly of the results.

The wealthy expect ‘discretion all the way’, buying and selling off-market, ‘without any digital footprint’ or recourse to ‘online portals’, as this risks advertising on the internet, which can be perused by anybody.

Thomas meets a grim old miser in Kensington, whose house contains such original features as a butler’s pantry and kitchen nursery. ‘The whole house has a cloying claustrophobic odour of musk, antique cologne and talcum powder.’ 

I dread to think what the developers did — though the owner is to be applauded for not wanting to sell to foreigners or common sorts, e.g., the Yorkshireman who’d amassed his large fortune from owning care homes.

‘We are dealing with very wealthy people — and they don’t tend to elicit sympathy,’ says Thomas, who is not going to be contradicted by me on that point.

Despite their self-help podcasts, almond cappuccinos, artisanal bread and cupcakes, these yacht-hoppers and villa fillers, who run off with 28-year-old Pilates instructors, or who retrain as therapists having left banking; who need two chefs to pack a picnic, and have ex-spouses ‘who only need £3 million for the house in Queen’s Park’ in North-West London — all these people in Thomas’s book come with an ‘aura of paranoia’.

Beyond doing deals, ‘there’s not much that seems to give them pleasure’, he says.

Eventually, Thomas has a heart attack. ‘You need to be kinder to yourself, you need to minimise the stress in your life and you need to prioritise your needs above the needs of everyone else,’ states his doctor. 

Funnily enough, that’s exactly what my cardiologist told me, when I crashed to the ground the other day with a myocardial infarction.

Except, I live in a mortgaged hut in a shabby South-Coast town. The world portrayed in the highly enjoyable Highly Desirable could be on another planet, it is so alien to my own pitiable state. 

Nevertheless, I wouldn’t want a life of bodyguards and almond cappuccinos, either.

The rich will keep getting richer: 300 wealthiest people in the world are more than $500 billion better off than this time last year, and Bill Gates is back on top

• Top 300 billionaires add $524 billion to their net worth in 2013 
• Total wealth of world’s richest people stood at $3.7 trillion by end of year
• Biggest gains for technology bosses, whose wealth rose by 28 per cent
• Bill Gates’s riches increased by $15.8 billion to $78.5 billion

By Daily Mail Reporter

Published: 05:50 EDT, 3 January 2014 | Updated: 12:37 EDT, 3 January 2014

The world’s richest people grew even richer in 2013, adding $524 billion to their collective net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world’s 300 wealthiest individuals.

The total worth of the world’s top billionaires stood at $3.7 trillion at the market close on Dec. 31, according to the ranking.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, was the year’s biggest gainer, as he regained the title of world’s richest man, knocking Mexican Carlos Slim off the top spot.

The 58-year-old chairman of Microsoft’s fortune increased by $15.8 billion to $78.5 billion.

The news came as figures showed shares of Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, rose 40 percent.

Mr Gates’s assets are mostly held in Cascade Investment LLC.

Through these investments he owns stakes in about three dozen publicly traded companies and several closely held businesses.

Investment in these companies mean that Gates has stakes in Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Corbis Corp., a photo-archive company.

John Pinette, a spokesman for Gates, declined to comment.

The most striking figures came from the technology sector, which soared 28 percent during the year.

Only 70 out of 300 registered a net loss for the 12-month period.

John Catsimatidis, the billionaire founder of real estate and energy conglomerate Red Apple Group Inc said: ‘The rich will keep getting richer in 2014.

‘Interest rates will remain low, equity markets will keep rising, and the economy will grow at less than 2 percent.’

Microsoft accounts for less than 25 per cent of Gates’s fortune.

The software tycoon has donated $28 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

A surge in global stocks in 2013 mean that last year was the best annual gain since 2009. The MSCI World Index advancing 24 percent during the year to close at 1,661.07 on Dec. 31.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index rose 30 percent to close at 1,848.36, its best yearly gain since 1997.

The Stoxx Europe 600 gained 17 percent to close at 328.26. Companies in the S&P 500 are worth $3.7 trillion more today than they were 12 months ago following a year when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled the curtailment of economic stimulus.

The bull market, born at the depths of the credit crisis, enters its sixth year fueled by near-zero interest rates and conviction among investors that it’s finally safe to own equities again.

Las Vegas Sands Corp. founder Sheldon Adelson was the second-biggest gainer in 2013, adding $14.4 billion to his net worth as the company’s shares rose 71 percent.

Revenue from the six gaming operators of China’s only legal casinos rose 18.6 percent to 360.75 billion patacas ($45.2 billion) last year.

Las Vegas Sands had revenue of $13.2 billion in the 12 months ending Sept. 30.

Slim lost $1.4 billion during 2013. His America Movil SAB, the largest mobile-phone operator in the Americas, dropped 12 percent in the first three months of the year after Mexico’s Congress passed a bill to quash the billionaire’s market dominance.

The company finished the year up 2 percent after a planned expansion into Europe was reined in, reassuring investors who were leery about the billions of dollars in investment the strategy would require.

‘Billionaires are asking what they should do with their money in 2014,’ Mark Haefele, Global Head of Investment for UBS AG’s wealth-management unit, said.

‘Central banks will continue to be supportive, so equities will likely continue to rise during the year.’

Bloomberg News revealed 109 new billionaires in 2013. None of them have never appeared on an international wealth ranking.

For example, Lynsi Torres is the youngest female billionaire in the U.S.

The 31-year-old heiress to In-N-Out Burger has inherited a family chain which grew from a single drive-through hamburger stand founded in 1948 in Baldwin Park, California, to become a fast-food empire.

The company is now valued at more than $1 billion.

A negative story to emerge from these figures is Eike Batista, whose net worth slumped by more than $12 billion during the year.

OGX Petroleo & Gas Participacoes SA, the oil company that transformed him into Brazil’s richest man, went bankrupt in October.

In March 2012 Batista was the world’s eighth-richest person. He now has a negative net worth.

Amancio Ortega retains the title of Europe’s richest person. Inditex SA, the world’s largest clothing retailer, rose 14 percent during the year.

The billionaire is reported to have recently acquired an office building in London’s West End for £410 million.

Sergey Galitskiy, founder of OAO Magnit, Russia’s largest food retailer, added $5.3billion to his net worth in 2013, more than any other Russian billionaire.

The 46-year-old has a $13.8 billion fortune. Russia’s richest person is Alisher Usmanov, 60, with a net worth of $20.2billion.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia is still the the Middle East’s wealthiest person, enbding the year with a net worth of $32.4 billion. That is, up $3.7 billion for the year.

Aliko Dangote is Africa’s richest person. The founder of Dangote Group acquired $9.2 billion during the year, making him the 30th-richest person in the world.

Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush was on a ‘predatory’ mission to find wealthy clients to endorse his submersible’s deep sea trips to the Titanic, industry leaders claimed last night.

Mr Rush perished on board the Titan last Sunday along with his four passengers when the vessel imploded while en route to the Atlantic seabed.

Insiders say the OceanGate boss was having difficulty finding rich customers to make the operation profitable. He also used his powers of persuasion to stop clients being steered away on safety grounds by respected figures within the exploration community, the Times reports.

Patrick Lahey, president of Triton submarines, told the newspaper: ‘He could even convince someone who knew and understood the risks… it was really quite predatory.’

Mr Lahey has experience at all levels in the manufacturing of deep sea vessels and was a close friend of Mr Rush’s second mate Paul-Henri ‘PH’ Nargeolet, 73, a skilled mariner and Titanic expert.

Mr Lahey said: ‘It’s terribly sad that PH’s life ended that way but PH knew the risks. I told him in very candid terms why he shouldn’t be out there. He understood. I believe PH thought in some way that by being out there he could help these guys avoid a tragedy but instead he ended up in the middle of one.

‘I told PH that going out there in some way sanctioned this operation. I said: “You’re becoming an ambassador for this thing; people look at you and your record and the life you lead and things you’ve done, which are extraordinary, and in some way you are legitimising what [Oceangate] are doing.”‘

Mr Rush, a self-style innovator, never sought certification or classification for his vessel. He insisted regulators could not keep up with his technology.

His combination of a cylindrical carbon fibre hull with titanium end caps was deemed by industry experts as a dangerous design flaw and it has been suggested as the likely cause of the Titan’s implosion.

Mr Lahey, who has worked for 43 years in the field and whose Titan subs featured in the BBC’s Blue Planet, added: ‘At the very time this monstrosity was being made, I was building the most capable subs of our age.’

A father and son who gave up their two tickets on the doomed Titan submersible say the OceanGate CEO flew on an ‘experimental’ plane to convince them to buy tickets.

Financier Jay Bloom had turned down tickets aboard the submersible for him and his son Sean after fearing they wouldn’t survive the trip.

Speaking to NewsNation, Mr Bloom said that concerns had been raised after Mr Rush flew to Las Vegas to convince him aboard an ‘experimental plane’.

Mr Bloom said: ‘It was very concerning. The major red flag for my son was when Stockton came to see me in Las Vegas in March.

‘He said he was flying in in a two seater experimental plane that he built so he was coming to Las Vegas on an experimental plane that he built to take me on an experimental sub that he built to take me to the bottom of the Atlantic ocean.’ 

Mr Bloom continued: ‘It’s kind of surreal. Every time I see a picture of the people who lost their lives on this tragic event.

‘I look at the picture of the father and son who replaced my son and myself and think how easily but for the grace of God that could have been our picture on the news.

‘When Stockton first approached me with the idea it sounded very sexy, very exciting, a real bucket list kind of item.

‘My son is a big fan of the Titanic, so I thought it would be great for us to do something together. The allure of the proposition is so compelling.

‘My son talked to his friend and they voiced concerns, about the vessel, the marine life, some of the materials that were used in the construction.’

The US Coast Guard is currently investigating the cause of the undersea implosion of the Titan submersible and has not ruled out finding human remains – while also hinting that the probe could lead to criminal charges.

Captain Jason Neubauer, who is chairing the US Coast Guard investigation, made the comments as the search and rescue aspects of the response came to an end. 

British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were killed on board the submersible, alongside Stockton Rush and French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Salvage operations are continuing and investigators have mapped the accident site, Cpt Neubauer told a press conference in Boston on Sunday. 

The Coast Guard opened what it calls a Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) on Friday, he said, and is working with the FBI to recover evidence.

Cpt Neubauer said the convening of an MBI is the highest level of inquiry conducted by the US Coast Guard. It is unclear how long it will take. The US Coast Guard said it does not charge for search and rescue operations.

This includes a salvage operation at the debris site on the seabed about 1,600 feet (488 metres) from the bow of the Titanic wreck, about 2-1/2 miles (4 km) below the surface.

The findings will be shared with the International Maritime Organization and other groups ‘to help improve the safety framework for submersible operations worldwide,’ Cpt Neubauer said.

He said the Coast Guard is in touch with the families of the five people killed, and that investigators are ‘taking all precautions on site if we are to encounter any human remains.’

Yesterday the sons of British billionaire Hamish Harding  paid tribute to the ‘best father’ who they say ‘constantly sought to be the best man he could be’.

Rear Admiral John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District, said: ‘The MBI is also responsible for accountability aspects of the incident and it can make recommendations to the proper authorities to pursue civil or criminal sanctions as necessary.’

The US Coast Guard said on Thursday that all five people aboard the submersible had died after the vessel suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion.’ 

One of Mr Harding’s sons, who was not named on the statement issued through Action Aviation, has hailed the billionaire for being a ‘tenacious, hard working businessman’ and for having ‘inspired me more than anyone will ever know’.

The adventurer and his wife Linda have two sons, Rory and Giles. Mr Harding is also the stepfather to her two children from a previous relationship, Laurena and Brian.

Kylie Jenner is slammed for showing off her massive wealth in photos from her $72 million private jet and in Paris with mom Kris: ‘Look how rich you are. Thanks for reminding us’

• Kylie Jenner is being slammed for ‘flaunting’ her wealth on Instagram 
• Followers fled to her latest post of her on her private jet and in Paris, France
• Dozens of comments lamenting her travel photos were left under her post 

By Hope Sloop For Dailymail.Com

Published: 18:41 EDT, 4 June 2023 | Updated: 18:42 EDT, 4 June 2023

CULTURE

THE INVENTION OF ESSEX: THE MAKING OF AN ENGLISH COUNTY 

by Tim Burrows (Profile £16.99, 336pp) 

What’s the difference between an Essex girl and a supermarket trolley? Answer: the trolley has a mind of its own.

As Essex girl jokes go, Tim Burrows could have been far crueller in his choice of example. But either way, as his book about the county shows, the girls themselves won’t mind — Essex residents have been shrugging off criticism for a very long time.

In 1700, a clergyman named James Brome wrote that the county was home to ‘Persons of so abject and sordid a Temper’ that they seemed ‘by conversing continually with the Beasts to have learn’d their Manners’.

More recently, the TV programme Spitting Image had a song called Essex Is Crap, in which Bruce Forsyth’s puppet sang about shell suits, leather sofas, coal-effect fires and karaoke. The late radio presenter John Peel, who lived in Suffolk, was so averse to Essex (and in particular its drivers) that whenever he headed home from London he bypassed it completely, choosing a longer route that took him through Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire instead.

But even though the rest of the world delights in mocking the county, we can’t help being fascinated by it. One of the biggest TV hits of recent years has been The Only Way Is Essex, or Towie to its devoted fans, who include the Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence. The series chronicles the lives of Essex’s twentysomethings, and led to a surge in popularity for fake tan and ‘vajazzles’.

If you’re unfamiliar with the latter, Burrows describes them as involving ‘adhesive diamante gems’. We’ll let your linguistic intuition (and possibly Google) fill in the gaps.

Essex is a county of firsts. There was the UK’s first nudist colony (1924, in Wickford, intriguingly called ‘Moonella’), and the world’s first regular radio broadcasting company (established near Chelmsford by Guglielmo Marconi in 1922).

But the examples most relevant to modern British politics (one of the book’s main themes) both belong to Margaret Thatcher. Her Tory government’s policy of allowing people to buy their council houses was launched in 1980 with a photo opportunity in a kitchen of a house in Romford. And the first public services she privatised were the bin collections in Southend, in 1981.

It was fitting that one of Thatcher’s most prominent supporters was Norman Tebbit, an Essex MP (first Epping, later Chingford).

The establishment’s attitude towards Mr Tebbit was summarised by Tory grandee Harold Macmillan, speaking to friends at his gentleman’s club: ‘Heard a chap on the radio this morning talking with a Cockney accent. They tell me he is one of Her Majesty’s ministers.’

Not that Tebbit would have been bothered — his view of the landed gentry was that ‘I don’t hold any brief for someone whose only contribution is to have been born in the right bed’. Instead, Tebbit liked people who got on through their own hard work and talent.

Chantelle Houghton grew up near Wickford, in a family so poor that ‘my dad, when the neighbours went on holiday, would get the hose pipe from their house and then put it through the window of our bathroom and fill up our bath so we could wash’.

She’s done very well for herself since then, initially by winning the 2006 series of Celebrity Big Brother, then by giving interviews to OK! magazine and making public appearances.

On one occasion, a crane lifted her up to become the fairy on top of the massive Christmas tree outside Lakeside shopping centre (‘I was so frightened, my legs just went limp’). Houghton has invested her earnings in property.

It’s a very ‘Essex’ success story. A lot of people will take the easy way out and sneer, as they always have. After the sitcom Birds Of A Feather featured sisters called Sharon and Tracey, the names became shorthand for ‘Essex girl’.

So much so that in 1994, when Volkswagen were launching a new people carrier, they thought about (but eventually decided against) changing its name in the UK. It was the VW Sharan.

SOCIAL HISTORY

ONCE UPON A TIME WORLD 

by Jonathan Miles (Atlantic £22, 456pp)

What Matisse described as ‘the luminosity of the Cote d’Azur’ always attracted ‘foreigners with spending power’.

Queen Victoria, for example, stayed at Menton, where her presence ‘consolidated the prestige of the Riviera resorts,’ even if the locals laughed at John Brown’s kilt.She’d travelled through France incognito as the Countess of Balmoral. Less inconspicuous were the three British battleships and 15 vessels of the French Mediterranean Squadron, anchored throughout her stay off Villefranche.

Not trusting foreign muck, Victoria brought her own food from Windsor, including Irish stew. But then the British could be difficult customers when abroad, always complaining, says Jonathan Miles, about ‘flies, fleas and gnats’.

British holidaymakers and residents were easily recognisable by their ‘loftiness, their mispronunciation and their dining habits’, tending to eat in solemn silence.

In the 19th century, visitors such as Robert Louis Stevenson went to the South of France for the guaranteed good weather, ‘cloudless, clear as crystal . . . aromatic air, all pine and gum tree’. The warm winter climate was advertised as being good for gout, rheumatism and tuberculosis. D.H. Lawrence died of a lung haemorrhage in Vence. James Joyce went to Nice to have ‘leeches applied to drain the pressure of his glaucoma’.

With the growing popularity of the Riviera as a ‘cocktail of illicit relationships and questionable conduct’, however, invalids were less welcome. By 1899, consumptives were banned from guest houses, as other patrons ‘would be upset by early morning coughing’. If anyone died, the deceased’s next-of-kin were responsible for ‘repapering, whitewashing and renewing the curtains’.

The South of France became instead the haunt of plutocrats and aristocrats, who constructed elaborate stucco villas. Beaches ‘situated near the outfall of the town drainage’ were redeveloped with promenades, esplanades and bandstands.

In Monte Carlo, the casino, with its domes and gargoyles, was designed by the architect of the Paris Opera. Dorothy Parker was not allowed inside the gaming house because she wasn’t wearing stockings. The view of Diaghilev said it all: ‘My tastes are simple. The best is good enough for me.’

There was a lot of money about. People arrived in their private yachts, which perhaps boasted a crew of 100, plus a cow on board for fresh milk.

It was not unusual for hostesses to be paraded into dinner borne aloft on a silver tray, naked save for a discreet sprig of parsley.

Or else there was the luxurious Blue Train, with its restaurant cars and sleeping compartments, the interiors decorated in mahogany and gold.

Riviera shops sold extravagant goods, ‘sparkling diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds, winking and gleaming in the bright winter sun’. Ladies of fashion turned up with 20 trunks, containing a vast array of gowns and accessories. Patou, Molyneux, Worth and Coco Chanel had outlets on the Cote d’Azur. In this turn-of-the-century period, 300 million exotic birds were slaughtered annually to decorate hats. The perfume industry in Grasse required 45,000 kilos of roses and 15,000 kilos of orange blossom a day.

If there was a darker side to all this, Miles points out the Riviera also provided business opportunities for a lot of society prostitutes. One courtesan’s clients included D’Annunzio, the Italian poet, the Duke of Westminster, King Alfonso XIII of Spain, and Tsar Nicholas.

Queen Victoria’s son and heir, the bulky, not to say morbidly obese, Edward, Prince of Wales, had a special ‘love chair’ or customised hammock device constructed, so that ‘with the minimum of effort’ he could have sex with two prostitutes simultaneously without squashing them to death.

Suicides were common, after losses at the gaming tables — 19 in the 1884 season. One man killed himself ‘by exploding a cartridge of dynamite in his mouth’. Drink was a problem. It wasn’t unusual for drunks to dive into empty swimming pools and need months of hospitalisation.

During World War I, owing to the Russian Revolution, the grand dukes who’d thronged the resorts were suddenly working as doormen and taxi drivers.

Later, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor also cut pathetic figures, hanging about in the sun with rich acquaintances named Chips, Tufty, Baby, Nana and Fruity. The ex-king’s phone bill, when Wallis was elsewhere for a fortnight, was £800 (that’s roughly £69,000 today). He wanted to be served by footmen in red livery, and insisted upon royal protocol.

World War II was worse. The Germans used the Blue Train as a brothel. The Gestapo set up torture centres in hotels and villas. Beaches were ranged with barbed wire.

Though, in the years since, the Riviera was discovered by Hollywood — David Niven, Dirk Bogarde and Gregory Peck acquired villas; Hitchcock filmed To Catch A Thief on location with Grace Kelly and Cary Grant; Brigitte Bardot was photographed topless at St Tropez; the Cannes Festival became an international feature — in general, the place, which once saw so many lush woodlands, became ‘an immense block of reinforced concrete’.

Green spaces have all been lost to unregulated building; treasured art deco and belle epoque architecture demolished. The Blue Train was scrapped when air travel took over. Shopping malls, apartment blocks, fast-food chains and motorways are everywhere.

Monte Carlo is home to Putin’s money-laundering oligarchs, and Princess Grace was killed when her car plunged over a precipice.

There are drug dealers, protection rackets and examples of judicial crookedness; burglaries, murders and considerable Islamic terrorism. Residents move around in bullet-proof cars with darkened windows.

It’s an environmental, cultural and political catastrophe. Miles’ book, a chronicle of ‘opulence, scandal, war and corruption’, is crammed with hundreds of juicy anecdotes, and made me think the best outcome for the Cote d’Azur — ‘a sunny place for shady people’, Maugham called it — is for it to sink completely and utterly under the sea.