The conservationist and wildlife presenter Bill Oddie is seeking permission to chop down three trees in his front garden.
He said that he regretted having to apply to fell the ash, sycamore and viburnum but had no choice because their roots were causing cracks in the floor, ceilings and walls of his home in Hampstead, north London.
The former BBC Springwatch presenter and star of the TV comedy The Goodies, who was awarded an OBE for services to wildlife conservation in 2003, has lived at the three-storey semi-detached 19th-century house for more than 30 years. An independent report submitted to Camden council this month said that pruning the trees, one of which is 20ft high, “is not considered to offer a viable long-term solution”.
Oddie, 75, said: “I don’t regard myself as having a choice if it is deemed to be causing subsidence. I’d prefer to live in a tree, really.”
Brother jailed for 15 years after raping Karen Danczuk
The brother of Karen Danczuk, the estranged wife of the Labour MP Simon Danczuk, has been jailed for 15 years for a series of sex assaults on her and two other women. Michael Burke, 38, shook his head as he was sentenced at Manchester crown court yesterday. He had claimed there was a conspiracy against him but was found guilty of eight charges of rape, including three against his sister when she was aged between nine and 11, and of another serious sexual offence. After the trial, Mrs Danczuk waived her right to anonymity.
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Tycoon ‘broke handshake deal’ with British banker
A British banker turned businessman is suing an Austrian entrepreneur for breaking his word over an £11 million deal allegedly cemented with a handshake, the High Court has heard.
Bruce MacInnes, chairman of the online retailer BrandAlley, claims Hans Thomas Gross, who dated the hotel heiress Paris Hilton until earlier this year, promised him a large share of the £100 million-plus profits from the sale of his RunningBall sports data business.
He says that they struck a gentleman’s agreement over dinner at the exclusive Knightsbridge restaurant Zuma. Mr MacInnes agreed to give up his investment banking job and work for nothing in return for commission if RunningBall sold above its target price, his counsel Gavin Mansfield QC said.
RunningBall was sold in May 2012 for €142 million, and Mr MacInnes expected to receive €13.5 million. However, he claims Mr Gross then denied there was ever an agreement. Mr Gross is disputing the claims and says the only deal concerned an option for Mr MacInnes to invest. Mr Justice Coulson reserved judgment.
Scotland Yard chief did not lie
The head of Scotland Yard gave a misleading account of his evidence following the 1989 Hillsborough disaster but had not “deliberately lied”, the Independent Police Complaints Commission ruled. It found that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe could have taken more care when he let press officers say he had given evidence to a public inquiry in 1990 when he had not. At the time he was an officer with South Yorkshire police, the force which was found by an inquest to have contributed to the disaster.
Royal ‘bomber’ jailed A man found guilty of possessing explosives and making false bomb threats during the Queen’s visit to Ireland in 2011 has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years. A Dublin court was told that Donal Billings, 66, from Drumlish, Co Longford, put a bomb on a bus in Co Kildare and claimed to have placed one in Dublin Castle to explode during a banquet for the Queen. No device was found.
Nerves beat Patti Smith Patti Smith said that she felt the “humiliating sting of failure” when nerves got the better of her during her rendition of A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall at the Nobel prize ceremony for Bob Dylan. Smith, a former punk, had to stop because “I was struck with a plethora of emotions, avalanching with such intensity that I was unable to negotiate them” she wrote in The New Yorker.
Council tax emojis
A council in London put crying-face emojis on residents’ tax statements by mistake. Lambeth council posted the images, more often associated with text messages, by the “amounts due”, “remaining balance” and “bills issued” columns. A spokesman said that the emojis appeared on bills that were accessed on iPhones as a result of a technical error that had been fixed.