EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: How does Tony Blair manage to pay staff $100million in a year?

He plays down claims that he has amassed a personal fortune of £50 million or more through a property empire whose jewels include the South Pavilion at Wotton, Buckinghamshire, once the home of Sir John Gielgud, and a five-storey London townhouse near Hyde Park that has tripled in value since he bought it for £3.65 million in 2004.

But Tony Blair, who was selected to President Donald Trump’s Peace Board to govern post-war Gaza, has no qualms about the fact that the institute that bears his name is flush with cash.

Newly published figures show the company spent almost $100 million (£75 million) on executives, ‘strategic advisors’ and other staff last year.

This is an amount tens of millions of times more than the entire income of traditional “think tanks”, let alone personnel expenses.

But Blair’s institute is, of course, anything but traditional; Founded by billionaire Bill Gates, whose relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein sparked understandable discontent, the Gates Foundation is funded by the United Nations Development Program and American software mogul Larry Ellison, who founded Oracle and is now even richer than Gates.

These and other organizations have poured £120 million into Blair’s empire in 2024.

Such riches have allowed the institute, which was a pioneer in the introduction of ID cards, to expand its tentacles to eight more countries.

They also made it possible for an unnamed director to be rewarded with $1.3 million (£966,000).

But it wasn’t Blair himself who studiously avoided accepting payments from his own institute.

But it is less hectic while earning some money from the institute. Appearing at a conference in the Bahamas in 2022 hosted by Sam Bankman-Fried, the ‘Bernie Madoff of cryptocurrency’, he was convicted two years later of plundering $8bn (£6bn) from his clients and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The BBC makes a big deal of the fact that its hit series The Traitors was filmed at Ardross Castle in the Scottish Highlands. But Mark Bonnar, who competed on the celebrity version of the show which aired for the first time last night, was shocked to discover just how much fraud was involved.

“You lean against the aga, it’s made of wood, and you say, ‘I thought it would be real,'” the 56-year-old actor says.

She laughs to herself, this is birthday girl Ambika

One Day star Ambika Mod (pictured) may be used to seeing herself on screen, but even she had fun when she came face to face with a life-size cutout at her birthday party.

One Day star Ambika Mod may be used to seeing herself on screen, but even she enjoyed coming face to face with a life-size cutout at her birthday bash.

She wrote alongside a photo of the moment at an event in London: ‘Thirty is truly a turning point.’

Mod, who plays lead character Emma Morley in the popular Netflix adaptation of David Nicholls’ novel, recently spoke about the difficulties she faces in business compared to her co-star Leo Woodall.

‘If you’re brown, if you’re a woman, if you don’t have any connections, you have to work ten times harder to get half that. “Unfortunately, this is the truth,” he said.

Matt is not the rock star of old

Matt Willis (pictured), former party founder of the band Busted, makes sandwiches and practices golf

While The Who’s drummer Keith Moon hurled television sets from hotel windows in the 1960s, modern pop stars are taking a less rock ‘n’ roll approach to touring.

Matt Willis, former party founder of the band Busted, makes sandwiches and practices golf.

‘Sometimes I’ll make a little lunch the night before and put it in the fridge,’ explains the 42-year-old bassist, who is married to TV presenter Emma Willis, 49. ‘Normally it’s some sort of chicken and vegetables.’

He says of his golf: ‘I just bought this thing, Puttr. But the golf course is too long for my hotel room, so it only works in the changing room.’

Jamie Oliver has revealed his biggest regret. Five years after his parents Trevor and Sally sold their family pub The Cricketers in Clavering, Essex, the TV chef admits his inability to buy it bothered him.

Explaining that it was put up for sale shortly after his own restaurant chain collapsed in 2019, causing 1,000 people to lose their jobs, 50-year-old Oliver says: ‘I had just lost my restaurants and I couldn’t afford it. And that’s one of my biggest regrets in life.’

Baronet who died at lunch left behind a surprising amount of money

Sir Thomas Henry Milborne-Swinnerton-Pilkington (pictured, right) was not only a man of three barrels, he was also the most cunning of men

He lived a rare life, playing cricket for Eton against Harrow at Lord’s, swapping his family’s Victorian mansion in Hertfordshire for a house described as ‘arguably the finest country house built since the war’, and having lunch with a friend at White’s, the most starry of London’s gentlemen’s clubs, last December, enjoying a happy marriage that only ended with his death aged 90. lasted.

But the 14th baronet, Sir Thomas Henry Milborne-Swinnerton-Pilkington, known as Tommy, was not only a man of three barrels, he was also the most cunning of men.

As North Sea oil pioneer Algy Cluff noted in one of his dazzling miniature portraits of friends and a tramp or two, ‘What would Tommy say?’ in the boardroom. Nothing was decided without passing the question. test.

Newly published probate documents confirm this assessment. £38.3 million remains; the taxman only managed to collect £122,000 of this. Really sad news for ‘Rachel from Accounts’.

Wills’ secret visit

Prince William (pictured) becomes the first royal to spend time with all three elements of the Special Forces

Prince William completed his military service in 2013 but is fit enough to suggest he is in no mood to sit in the presidential chair.

So I was intrigued earlier this week when William, seen in a photograph dressed in a Navy uniform, made a secret visit to the headquarters of the Special Boat Service (SBS) in Poole, Dorset, renewing a relationship that had begun in 2008.

That’s when William became the first royal to spend time with all three elements of the Special Forces – the SBS, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment and the Special Air Service.

Although he was kept away from war zones, he spent ten days with the SBS fighting drug smuggling and piracy in the Caribbean. A definite whiff of action.