Sting (left) and foodie Trudie
Celebrity chefs can be a terror, but last week saw a celebrity’s chef the one being terrified. Sting and his wife Trudie Styler’s UK chef, Jane Martin, is suing the couple for unfair dismissal and sex discrimination. She alleges she was forced to work 14-hour days towards the end of her pregnancy, and then fired shortly after going on maternity leave.
Catering staff who have worked at the mansion in Dorset tell us exclusively that the house is adorned with numerous pictures of Trudie naked, while in her prime. Ocado makes deliveries totalling hundreds of pounds just to provide snacks for their daughter. And Trudie is apparently obseessed by catering. There is always enough food to feed 50 in luxury in the numerous larders about the house.
After the chef fell ill with gastroenteritis when she was a few months pregnant, Styler reportedly raged, “Who the f**k does she think she is? She’s my chef in the UK. She needs to be available if I need her, or she should rethink her position.” A tribunal in Southampton heard how Sting’s producer wife terrifies her staff, who Martin described as “entirely driven by fear of Trudie Styler”.
Nevertheless, Jane Martin had worked for the couple for eight years, fulfilling what she described as their “flamboyant lifestyle” until, she claims, Styler forced managers to fire her in April 2006 while she was pregnant.
Martin’s former boss Andrew Bowling, who manages Sting and Styler’s English country estates, says, “(The couple) played no part in the (redundancy) process and gave no instructions at the time. It strikes me that Jane Martin had no genuine interest in working at Lake House and she just wanted to get a financial windfall. I feel aggrieved that an employee who was treated well should seek to exploit the celebrity status of her employers.”
The tribunal is set to rule by the end of the week. Watch this space.
