Monday, 23 February 2004
Doth protesting too much - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
VANCOUVER - Conrad Black's troubles have been the subject of much interest and much speculation. The news that Lord Black of Crossharbour may have committed some corporate malfeasance in the running of his media properties, Hollinger among others, has been treated with a bit of schadenfreude from media and chattering classes alike.
Late last week the once Canadian, once rich and powerful media baron, was in a Delaware court trying desperately to recover his reputation. The ubiquitous Black, a cognoscente on both sides of the Atlantic, is charged by his shareholders to have funnelled company funds to him, dolling the dough to pad himself and his wife, Barbara Amiel ever so comfortably and lavishly. Lady Black herself, in past statements has not endeared herself otherwise. She once admitted to Vogue, that her extravagance "knows no bounds," as she took an interviewer through the room that housed her hundred pair of Manolo Blahnik's. And Lord Black was not immune. He paid over $8-million dollars for a sheaf of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's letters, and he was never known to be modest whether it was divulging his knowledge of Napoleon or tearing down the left in this country.
Lord Black, though titled, now claims that he's a "social leper." This whole spectacle has probably not made him a regular at the high-class social functions he and Lady Black used to attend in grand style. Certainly, his acumen as an executive may be laughed at considering he could join the lists halls of shame so vividly occupied by Jack Welch, though now it is possible what with the Securities and Exchange Commission's investigation, he could go over the line into the area reserved for people like Martha Stewart or Jeffrey Skilling.
Amongst this palaver was an interesting story that appeared on the front page of Saturday's Globe and Mail. It seems that as Black's proverbial Rome is burning; one Lady Black is in the role of Nero, fiddling away to the tune of a six-year old story that somehow sullies their already tattered reputation. Or so one Eleanor Mills charges in an interesting set-to being had on the pages of The Spectator, a weekly owned by Hollinger, the company whose control Black is trying to secure right now.
Six years ago, when Mills was a features editor at the Black owned Daily Telegraph in Great Britain, she was tapped by her boss Charles Moore, the Telegraph's editor, to fill in at one of the Black's lavish dinner party's in their home on Cottesmore Gardens in chic Kensington. It seems at the last minute, Black (who had not yet been summoned to the House of Lords, but was frantically trying to secure such an appointment) discovered that the guest list was "short of a woman." Mills rushed and within an hour of Moore's call to fill-in, she was at the Black house downing pre-dinner cocktails, whereupon a male guest had dropped out. Thus, the need for Mills's presence to even out the numbers was hardly needed anymore. Black, made this obvious when he approached Mills and told her point-blank: "Finish your drink and skedaddle." She was then told to go to the kitchen through to a servant's door, where a driver would be waiting to take her home.
Lady Black, infuriated by the story's resurfacing in the pages of The Spectator, fired off a missive defending her husband and hers ostentatious behaviour. Claiming that she had no idea why Mills was asked to leave, she said she was "very embarrassed," and had had her assistant, Penny Phillips arrange for a taxi to take Mills away from the Black shindig. Lady Black claims that this proposition was rejected by Mills and that she then asked if there was a back way out of the house, so as to avoid any further embarrassment. "Mrs. Phillips said there was, but through the kitchen. Ms. Mills insisted on taking it," claims Lady Black in her rejoinder to Mills's claims.
"Not keen to skulk in the kitchen while the other diners ate their first course," argues Mills in a surrejoinder following Lady Black's defence, she decides to leave on her own through the backdoor, obviously hurt by the situation. Apparently, had she been totally fine with the way things were, she wouldn't have recounted the tale some six years later. Mills claims that the extraordinary way in which the Blacks treated her is etched on her mind, and she charges that the Blacks have a habit of "asking employees to skedaddle when they were no longer required to make up the numbers." But what hurts most to Mills, is the fact that Lady Black has had the mettle to accuse Mills of planning her own humiliating exit.
And of course, amidst all the legal wrangling her husband and she are enduring, Lady Black manages to add another salvo to the public hand wringing. Now Lady Black claims that even though she and Lord Black have "apologised profusely," Mills continues to put a "malicious" spin to the story. In another angry letter published late last week, Lady Black writes: "I'd say that in the six years since the incident occurred, Miss Mills has dined out so often on the story that she now genuinely believes her own fiction. The actual events were unfortunate enough; they needed no embroidery by her." Eleanor Mills, contacted after the most recent Spectator letter from Lady Black, stated, "Methinks the lady doth protest too much."
The gossip mills must be churning over this subsidiary yarn to the bigger story of alleged illegalities committed by both Lord and Lady Black. It's a rather humorous tale in the rather absurd decline of one of the Western worlds more prominent and colourful press proprietors over the last 25-30 years. It is obvious as well that when the mighty fall, the tumble is awfully inhospitable and hostile. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, indeed.
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An archive of Joseph Planta's previous columns can be found by clicking HERE .