I’ve created a lot of wealth for people over the years.’Ī year after being declared personally bankrupt, Carr was investigated by the Official Receiver. I know people have lost money but so have I. I don’t want to look like I am sticking two fingers up. But he subsequently defended his decision to compete in Portugal, saying: ‘This is my hobby.
That October, Carr went bankrupt but only after it emerged that the previous month he had been out to Portugal to take part in the powerboat World Championships – an expensive pursuit for a man who claimed he couldn’t afford a sofa or a fridge.Īt the time that his companies went into administration, Carr agreed that the power-boating ‘would have to go’. In the summer of 2008, another Carr company, Future 3000, went into administration, causing a raft of well-known local venues to be put up for sale, and his main development company Ravine Lifestyle quickly followed Future 3000 into administration. His solicitor told magistrates that he could not assess Carr’s take-home pay because it was too complicated to work out. In 2005, Carr was banned from driving for 18 months by Bournemouth magistrates after police were tipped off and caught him twice over the legal drink-driving limit behind the wheel of his Bentley. He relaunched it as the Opera House, although it remained a nightclub, and soon became one of the best-known in the land, providing the foundations for Carr’s expanding entertainment empire. Just a year later, Carr took over the Academy nightclub in Bournemouth. Power-boating fanatic Carr, whose father was a hotelier, was born in Bournemouth in December 1958 and first rose to local prominence in 1990 when he sold a chain of Wimpey restaurant franchises for £13 million.Īfter he resigned as a director of his company Allied Leisure in 1994, it emerged that it had made losses of £16 million. So in the battle for Bling Beach, is he really a money-hungry cowboy or a victim of snobbery?Ĭomputer image of the ten-storey aparthotel that could replace the Haven Hotel This is despite being declared bankrupt in 2008, the same year that Piers Morgan made an ITV documentary on the area’s story of boom and bling.Ĭarr chose to blame ‘the curse of Piers Morgan’ when two of his companies – involved in entertainment and property development – hit the rocks and he racked up debts of more than £8 million. One resident who, unsurprisingly, hasn’t objected to the proposal is Carr himself, who lives in a £2 million house on the peninsula. It’s a view shared by more than 700 objectors so far. He called the Haven replacement ‘a huge Benidorm-style hotel’. Topps Tiles tycoon and millionaire Sandbanks resident Barry Bester states that the plans ‘will… ruin the skyline forever and be a total disaster’. The National Trust is not alone in its concerns. Its planning adviser, Mark Funnell, said: ‘We are very concerned at the potential impacts of the proposed development, in particular by virtue of the scale and height of the… development being proposed… We are not convinced that any public benefits that may arise from the proposals would come close to overriding the harm likely to be caused.’ The plans have drawn the ire of local residents still reeling from the arrival of a Tesco Metro on their stretch of golden shore.Īnd they have the backing of the National Trust. Topps Tiles tycoon and millionaire Sandbanks resident Barry Bester called the Haven replacement ‘a huge Benidorm-style hotel’ It is home to scores – if not hundreds – of multi-millionaires, who live in some of the country’s most valuable properties. It’s for good reason that this tiny sliver of Dorset, which measures less than half a square mile, is billed as Britain’s Monte Carlo. And if you were particularly sharp-eyed, you might have spotted the former footballer Jamie Redknapp whisk past in a smart black Audi, no doubt en route to see his father, Harry, the football manager and tax-payer, who owns a vast modernist house nearby.
Teetering on a golden pair of vertiginous platform heels, her toned figure wrapped in a pencil skirt, was Celia Sawyer, the multi-millionaire dental nurse-turned-interior decorator, now the star of Channel 4’s collectables show Four Rooms. If you had parked your car (it would have to be a huge 4x4 with personalised number plates to blend in) outside Rick Stein on Friday morning, you would have spotted at least two. Common as seagulls on this small and exclusive Dorset peninsula, they like to flock near the Rick Stein restaurant, where a Dover sole costs the best part of £40, and can be washed down with a cheeky bottle of Montrachet for £565. It does not take long to spot a celebrity on Sandbanks.
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