For more than a decade, Formula 1 tycoon Eric Hersman has slept soundly under the £100,000 antique crystal chandelier in his bedroom.
But now its 24 bulbs are emitting more heat than light.
It has been taken down and put in storage, over an extraordinary row with Mr Hersman’s upstairs neighbours Sir Peter Walters and his wife Meryl.
Glass Warfare: Eric Hersman pictured with his wife Alexandra and their daughter Elizabeth and dog Sushi
A delicate matter: The £100K chandelier
According to retired BP chairman Sir Peter, 89, the 23-stone chandelier hanging from a joist beneath the living room of his £2million flat threatened to tear down the floor at any moment.
So after a structural engineer deemed the second-floor room ‘unsafe’, he and Lady Walters, 74, launched legal action – and secured a court order for the offending light fitting to be taken down.
Luckily it was removed by professionals – avoiding the calamitous fate that befell a chandelier under the care of hapless Del Boy and Rodney in a classic Only Fools And Horses scene.
Mr Hersman and his neighbours are now due to clash over the matter in a full court case which could cost tens of thousands.
American financier Mr Hersman, 58, last night told the Daily Mail the row has its origins in a dispute over the freehold of the six-storey £14million property involved, which is near the Royal Albert Hall in London’s affluent Kensington. And he claimed Lady Walters ‘hates’ him since he called her plain ‘Meryl’ instead of using her title.
Crystal bawl: Sir Peter Walters and wife Meryl
Swish: £14m London property at the centre of the row
The Central London County Court was told last week that the Walterses had applied for an injunction to have the chandelier removed pending a full hearing.
Sir Peter, who also held senior roles at Glaxo, EMI and HSBC, now ‘lacks capacity’ to litigate and is suing through his wife instead, the court heard.
The couple’s barrister, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, said the problem began last summer when Mr Hersman and his now estranged wife Alexandra, an interior designer, complained to Sir Peter about the state of the joists at the Grade II-listed Victorian property.
Miss Fitzgerald said: ‘In the course of an inspection Sir Peter and Lady Walters discovered there was a potentially dangerous issue regarding a chandelier hanging from the joists. Structural engineers advised [them] they were not able to use their reception room until the chandelier had been removed, because there was a risk of it falling.’
Plonkers: Del Boy and Rodney in classic scene
Mr Hersman’s barrister Andrew Butler QC insisted the financier – who made £60million helping Bernie Ecclestone expand Formula 1 – had been a good neighbour. He said: ‘We have simply removed these items to take the heat out of the situation.’ Judge Sir David Saunders said of the 23-stone chandelier, which is almost five feet from top to bottom: ‘That is a hell of a weight on a ceiling.’ Father-of-four Mr Hersman said he had ‘four or five’ other large chandeliers in his 5,500 sq ft flat that were not a problem.
The French ambassador had offered to rent his place for £15,000 a week, he said, while he believed the Walterses had well-heeled students from nearby Imperial College renting their 1,000 sq ft upstairs flat until it was vacated four months ago. Mr Hersman, who owns properties ‘all over the world’, said of the row: ‘I’ve done what they asked, although the chandelier had been there for up to 13 years.
‘I tried to make peace with them at Christmas, and said, ‘Let’s play nice’, but I never heard anything back. The only people that will win in this is the lawyers.’
He said of Lady Walters: ‘She just hates me. She got mad at me a year or so ago because I didn’t call her Lady Walters, I called her Meryl. I kind of did it to irk her – and she got irked.’
Mr Hersman added: ‘My money is as good as theirs, I’ve got lots of resources, and I’m willing to use them. I can probably buy them and sell them twice over.’ David Wilkinson, who sold the 1850 English antique chandelier to Mr Hersman, is now storing it for him at his headquarters in Sittingbourne, Kent. He said: ‘A joist in a house like that should easily take a chandelier like this – unless there’s something wrong with the joist. How much do you think a bath full of water weighs – and what if a 20-stone man stands on it?’
Sir Peter and Lady Walters live in a Georgian house near Horsham, West Sussex, and also own a £7.5million house close to the flat in the chandelier row.
Last night Lady Walters said through her solicitors that she did not wish to respond to Mr Hersman’s claims.