There's Something I've Been Dying to Tell You (19 page)

15

JUSTICE FOR THE LITTLE MAN

I have mentioned that we had been dealing with a court case. The story begins way back in 2007 when Michael was still working in Spain. He could see the way things were going in property sales and the only direction they were headed was down, so he decided that the way to approach the whole estate agency business was to cut costs, and maybe the way to do this was to save on offices with expensive shop fronts. People were becoming more and more used to using the internet, and certainly people looking for a house in Spain would often come into the office having already been online and seen what they wanted. An estate agent could soon become obsolete and it seemed more sensible to offer a more slimmed-down service and therefore operate with less expensive costs.

So Michael decided to create a back office for an online estate agency. This is a technical thing, folks, means absolutely nothing to me, but actually what they achieved has never been done even to this day. The nub of the idea being an automated system that did all the paperwork, so for example they wouldn’t need a secretary to write a letter, or an email, it would all be done by the computer. When it was all up and running, the plan was to franchise the business. It was a fantastic creation and is still sitting on my husband’s server to this day.

Together with his director, Andrew Jepson, and his web master, Ki Hume, the three of them started to work night and day. Basically for no money, except Ki who was paid by Michael. Every now and then Michael might sell a house and there would be funds for a while and this is where my role in the business came in. I was lucky enough to be working and wanted to help, so we used my money to keep everything going. Slowly the concept grew and we had our business plan: we’d offer cut price house deals for a flat fee of £995 which was to be paid on completion so there was no money up front. A very unique selling point. So everything was in place and going swimmingly. I was going to star in a new play,
Calendar Girls
, which was destined for the West End and possibly Broadway, eventually, and Michael spent six months working the north London area with the £995 concept and ironing out any problems that arose re the ‘back office’.

Now we were ready to franchise the business. This concept bizarrely had come up in a meeting that I had with PRIME, Prince Charles’s charity to help people over fifty to create their own businesses. I had been invited to St James’s Palace, recently, to have a brainstorming session about this very subject, and was able to contribute one particular piece of advice to potential franchisees:

‘I would like to point out here that anyone who thinks you pay for a franchise and then sit back and expect the company to do all the work is seriously deluded, and it is not the job for you. It is incredibly hard work to get it up and running, so it is not for the fainthearted.’

Riding high on the crest of a wave (big mistake), Michael and I decided to get married in 2008. Raising one’s head above the parapet brought the spotlight on us and the press returned to the old cuttings regarding Michael’s past, which is a little colourful. I have written about this in detail in
Lost and Found
but just to fill you in if you haven’t read it (how could you not!), my husband served eleven months in prison for ‘furnishing false or misleading information’. It had absolutely nothing, I repeat
nothing
, to do with property.

You’d think that he served time and that should be the end of it, but his guilty plea was to be used against him all those years later when he set up his online estate agency, Virtual Property World. A man who owned a similar online estate agency in Worcester decided to wipe out Michael and his business. Mr Darren Richards started to write about Michael and our business on a blog, using Michael’s previous trial as background, and sent links to the blog to the body that regulates franchises. Please believe me I am not trying to defend what Michael did back then, and neither has he ever not accepted his plight, but the point is it was seventeen years ago, and he has never been in trouble again, and more importantly he was
never, never
charged with property fraud which is what Mr Richards was trying to claim in his sensationalist blog, posted anonymously online: ‘CONVICTED FRAUDSTER MICHAEL PATTEMORE RUNNING VIRTUAL PROPERTY WORLD FRANCHISE.’

Would you use a company run by convicted property fraudster Michael Pattemore to sell your property?’

It was absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with
property
. This important piece of truth, though, meant nothing to Mr Darren Richards when he posted his damning blogs.

The other accusations levelled at us, and which really hurt me, was that I somehow would endorse something that was not straight. The actual words used were ‘Virtual Property World is “fronted” by Lynda Bellingham’. I have been in the public eye for forty-five years and worked for several high-profile charities during this time that would all vouch for my honesty and integrity, so much so, if I may blow my own trumpet briefly and say, I was awarded an OBE this year for my charitable works. But Mr Richards then went on to attack my son Michael too:

‘Lynda’s son, Michael, appears in their home-made adverts as the arrogant estate agent, and in another of the adverts as a happy home seller [I think this shows his versatility as an actor personally!]. He also claims to be an actual franchisee of Virtual Property World.’

But that is the truth, what is wrong with that? If he had bothered to check his facts he would have seen that we made my son Michael do a National Association of Estate Agents course and signed him up to the team so he could learn a trade that he could do when he was out of work. Everyone knows how hard it is to earn a living from acting alone. The fact we did the adverts for the website together was an added bonus, we had the talent on the doorstep. But I ask again, how petty and mealy mouthed is all of this?

When we were first alerted to the blog in the midst of my
Calendar Girls
tour, Michael had a pretty good idea where the blog had come from – we were aware of Mr Richards and his company Estates Direct which was a competitor to our own – but how to prove it, and what then do we do with the information, and more importantly stop them from ruining us!

Michael sat up all night surfing the net looking for lawyers who dealt specifically with this kind of internet violation.

Finally in the middle of the night he woke me with a start. ‘I think I found someone, Lynda. I am going to call him first thing’ and, boy, when Michael says first thing, he means first thing. I was awoken again from my much needed beauty sleep at 7.30 next morning to Michael dialling and pacing the floor.

‘No one will be in an office now, Michael, for goodness—’ But I was cut off and apparently mistaken, because Michael was now talking excitedly to a Mr John Spyrou of Pinder Reaux who was delighted to take his call.

‘This is our speciality, Michael, and we will use all our powers to help you. People have no idea, as yet, just how dangerous the internet is going to become. At the moment it is like the Wild West, manned unlawfully in pockets, with the odd law maker with a gun that happens to be pointing in the right direction, but that is not enough to save so many people from destruction, especially children.’

How right he was, and as we well know it seems that every day now there is another suicide caused by hurtful words online, another bullying incident, an act of fraud, and so many general nasty people having a go. Need I say more?

We now began our investigation in earnest. I could see Michael was not going to give up until we had nailed whoever had posted these blogs – at this point we were not sure if it was the boss man.

The initial problem was to get Google to take down the blog in the meantime, because it was seriously affecting the business. Talk about stress and where I am today. Every day brought with it another heartbreak for Michael, and meanwhile I had to work every night and put on a bright smile for the public. Thank goodness for John and Rupinder, our lovely lawyers.

Once the blog had been removed we then had the next battle, which was to convince Google and WordPress to give us the IP address of the blogger so we could move forward with our case against them. Months of waiting, and more money. How many families facing the same sort of problem as us, in terms of social media and blogging and bullying, have that kind of money? Does no one have a social conscience anymore?

And then on 14 June 2012 we were granted a Norwich Pharmacal order by the high court. Sounds like a prescription for piles, doesn’t it?! It might just as well have been the way we were feeling. But it worked, and WordPress was the first to confirm the IP address, followed by Google. It was enough for us to serve Darren Richards and Estates Direct with a lawsuit in the last week of July 2012.

We were now embroiled in the internet Wild West, and once Darren Richards had been served with his papers Michael got a message to say that Richards had called and would Michael call him back?

I was very nervous about the whole idea and was worried that Richards would somehow try and wriggle out of his commitment. Michael spoke to the lawyer, John Spyrou, on the Saturday evening and John encouraged him to return the call. My canny husband did so but made sure he recorded the conversation. Thank God he did because this is where the mystery deepens.

In the telephone conversation that Michael recorded, Mr Richards professed to be dumbstruck by the news and deeply upset, not to mention completely ignorant of who might have done such a thing. However, as head of the company, he accepted it was his responsibility to his team to get to the bottom of the matter. He assured us he was seeing his legal team in the morning, and once he had all the facts and figures he would get back to us. We never heard from Mr Richards again except through lawyers’ letters, which I suppose is understandable, but suddenly Mr Richards seemed to know everything about the blog and admitted it was his company that had posted it.

Writing this now I try not to feel too upset, what is the point? It was all so fishy and by the time we arrived to knock on the door of the offices for mediation, on 10 April 2013, I think both Michael and I knew we were on a hiding to nothing. Unfortunately we are not permitted by law to tell you what happened in the mediation suite, but suffice it to say it was a very long and distressing day and we came out knowing that money will always win. We wanted to go to court, we had always wanted to take it further, but we were always advised it was too risky and there would be no money in it for us as our company was so new it had no records of profit; it was all up for estimate. So yes we did get a public apology from Mr Richards and he did have to pay costs, all of which went into the fees we had had to pay out. We lost our business and I lost faith in any kind of justice for the little man. It is a cruel and harsh and unfair world. Little did I realise just how cruel and harsh until June came ‘busting out all over’ and I was diagnosed with cancer.

But we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves down and moved on. Michael and Bradley have just finished a fantastic conversion of two six-bedroom houses in Muswell Hill and they will make a handsome profit which will be well deserved. We have a beautiful family and many things to be grateful for, apart from the small matter of a terminal illness. But do you know, even that is bearable, because I will be able to come back and haunt Mr Richards in his darkest hours. Watch this space!

16

ADJUSTMENTS IN THE UNDERWEAR DEPARTMENT

January 2014

Here I was in 2014. That first week at home after my operation was very strange. Anybody who has spent any time in hospital and had a serious operation will remember those feelings of highs and lows. One minute I would feel exhilarated and shuffle out to the kitchen clutching my scar and make everyone laugh, and the next I would be hiding under the blanket wishing I was back in the safety of my hospital bed. It was most bizarre. With all due respect to my all-male household they made a very perfunctory attempt to watch over me, and it was clear, very quickly, that things would not progress far without a shove from me: the washing and ironing, for instance. Although I have a lovely cleaner called Julia who comes once a week with her mum Maureen, they are only there for four hours and there is not time to attend to the pressing needs of two twenty-something young men who like to look smart.

‘Do it yourself,’ orders hubbie Michael.

‘I will teach you,’ I offer.

Neither suggestion seemed to hit the mark so I started doing a bit from time to time. For this I got told off, but the trouble is I can’t bear living in a mess, it made me feel worse. The cooking was not going very well either, so when they had all left in the morning I would potter around making a pie, or a soup or something, for supper. This was not just for their sakes, I may add, I would have starved if I had waited for them to come and ask me what I wanted. I resorted to keeping my bedroom door open at all times so I could hear the front door, and whoever arrived would be greeted with, ‘I am in here!’

I felt like Miss Havisham in
Great Expectations
shut away in my room, though hopefully without the cobwebs!

The black moments would often arrive in the middle of the night, when I couldn’t sleep and everyone else was happily away in the land of nod. I could feel Furby moving about, and I was also aware of my whole stomach holding all this evil cancer inside it. It was as though a battle was being fought under my skin. I have never been able to lie on my back for long, but now it hurt to lie on either side, so I had no choice but to learn to sleep on my back. Months later and I am still not used to it, and it is so frustrating when you want to turn over and you can’t.

But by the second week I was feeling so much better and, although I was still walking like an old lady, I was back at the kitchen island and feeling OK. Then I managed to pull a muscle and felt pain again, and I felt low and miserable. I had to lie down more, and as soon as I lay down my brain would take over, and I would start to think, which was not a good idea.