As bad as life can be, at least we can look ourselves in the eye and know in our heart of hearts that we've never been paid to cook food for Sting – but at the same time, we've never experienced the joy of making Sting look foolish in court.
That makes Jane Martin the target of both our sympathy and our neverending respect. Jane Martin used to be Sting and Trudie Styler's chef, you see, until she became pregnant. After that, Jane Martin claims she was systematically forced out of her job by the crashingly self-important singer and his awful rah-rah wife. So she took Sting and Styler to court for unfair dismissal and sexual harassment, and has now won what's expected to be a substantial payout. That's the good news – the bad news is that Sting might try to redress his bank balance by releasing another piss-poor album of dreary lute wank.
Sting isn't having the greatest time at the moment. His awful lute album was beaten to a Classical Brit by Paul McCartney, his plans to publish a book of his own lyrics have been rightly derided as being a pretentious vanity project, he's about to go on tour with two men he famously hates and now he has to pay his chef for apparently being forced out of her job because she was pregnant.
Jane Martin, the longtime chef of Sting and Trudie Styler, has just won a tribunal in Southampton claiming that she was unlawfully dismissed from Sting and Styler's management company. In particular Jane Martin said that when Trudie Styler realised she had a pregnant chef, she became angry and started to force her servant to work longer hours and compete with other chefs until Martin had no choice but to leave in April 2006.
Jane Martin took Sting and Trudie Styler to court for sexual discrimination and unfair dismissal – and yesterday she won. The sum of money that the Sting household will have to pay Martin hasn't been set yet – that happens next month – but it is expected to be large enough for a couple who own seven houses to notice. As E! Online reports, this news has either gone down very well or rather badly, depending on if you're Trudie Styler or not. Here's what she had to say after the verdict in a statement:
"I am devastated that the tribunal's judgment makes this unjust and unfair attack on Sting and me. Jane Martin was always treated well and generously as an employee, and we remain stunned at her actions and at the verdict of the tribunal."
Not that Sting has has the best of luck with staff, of course. Prior to this malarkey, one of Sting's chauffeurs gave a newspaper interview claiming that Sting's entire marriage was a banjo-heavy sham. Regardless if it's true or not, it seems that Sting and Trudie Styler should probably think about treating their staff in a way that doesn't leave them resentful enough to do tell-all interviews or drag them through embarrassing public employment tribunals.
As for Jane Martin, we expect her to maximise on her new-found fame by securing her own celebrity cookery show – it'd be a lot like The F Word but with less horse-eating and more rolling around a vault full of Sting's money, laughing maniacally and smoking a sausage like a cigar.
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gandalf_rawks69 says
Hooray!
First Paris and now Sting: it’s like God is purposely targeting my least favourite celebrities! Fingers crossed Bono is next!
the knowing... says
we know what sting and bono got up to last year with pamela anderson and diana jenkins on our boat….