She has been based in LA for a decade — and recently bought her third mansion in the city. And, finally, Adele’s British manager Jonathan Dickins has opted to put down some roots close to the megastar who has made him a fortune.
Just as Adele completes her residency in Las Vegas, reportedly netting £12 million for three months’ work, Dickins has splashed out £9.3 million on a spectacular house in Beverly Hills, complete with an infinity pool and stunning views over Coldwater Canyon. A perfect place to watch the sun set, or should that be the Skyfall?
It can also be revealed that Dickins, 50, is sitting on a fortune with his company, September Management Limited.
On Christmas Eve last year it filed accounts declaring net assets of £26.4 million — a rise of £3.5 million from the previous year.
The super-wealthy lifestyle both singer and manager are enjoying is a far cry from their humble start.
She has been based in LA for a decade — and recently bought her third mansion in the city. Pictured: Adele’s mansion in Beverely Hills, California
Finally, Adele’s British manager Jonathan Dickins (right) has opted to put down some roots close to the megastar who has made him a fortune
Dickins met Adele outside a petrol station in 2006, after seeing her singing on social media.
She was then just 18 and on the point of signing with XL Recordings. Dickins recalled: ‘At the time I worked quite a lot with XL, and I worked with a couple of artists before Adele — MIA and Jack Penate.
‘The guy that signed both of them to XL, Nick Huggett, was going away on holiday and said, ‘You should check this girl out.’
‘At the time, the social media [platform] of choice was MySpace; you had a player that could hold I think three songs, and on Adele’s was Hometown Glory, Daydreamer and My Same and that was it. I heard these three songs, and then we met.
‘At the time, my office was in a bedroom in my house. I was just blagging it on my own. I met her outside a petrol station, then she came to my house and we had a cup of tea and we talked. It was really straightforward. She said: ‘I want you to manage me.’ I don’t think she’d met any other managers and it was really simple.’
The pair appeared tense when they were spotted together at the Brit Awards in 2022, right after Adele had scrapped her Caesars Palace residency at the eleventh hour.
There was speculation that Dickins might lose his job in the fallout — although pulling the plug had been Adele’s decision, as she wasn’t happy with the show and the staging of it.
Some even said the singer might choose to be managed by her boyfriend Rich Paul, who looks after a host of sports stars.
However, the dates were eventually rescheduled and her residency deemed such a triumph she will be returning to play a further run later this year.
Meanwhile she has stuck with Dickins. And now he’s got an LA pad a stone’s throw from the £46 million home she bought last year. (Lest you worry, he also has houses in London, New York and The Hamptons.)
Dickins tends to steer clear of the spotlight but has remarked that the secret of Adele’s success is that she is fully at home in her creative skin, and always knows her mind.
His influence has been deep. He introduced her to Eg White, who co-wrote Chasing Pavements, and convinced her to cover the Bob Dylan track Make You Feel My Love.
He advises Adele on strategy and often reiterates the need to make media campaigns all about her voice, saying the music business is a simple one which is often needlessly complicated.
Dickins’s grandfather Percy co-founded the British music magazine NME and also invented the pop music charts in 1952. His uncle Rob was the chairman of Warner Bros in the UK for 15 years. And his sister Lucy is Adele’s booking agent.
The makers of the Paddington films confirm this week that a third instalment — Paddington In Peru — will start shooting in the summer.
Studiocanal say the picture will feature ‘returning and new talent’ but curiously have not announced any of the cast, with just a few months to go.
Some think they haven’t pinned down Ben Whishaw, the voice of the bear — but Paddington without him would surely be like the bear without a marmalade sandwich under his hat.
Earlier this year, Whishaw told Collider: ‘I haven’t read this script and I don’t even know when we’re due to shoot it. It’s gone silent in the way sometimes these things do.
‘Maybe that just means they’re still working on it, or maybe it means it’s not happening.’
A spokesman for the actor declined to comment, as did Studiocanal.
Femme fatale Nicole is getting steamy again
You wait 24 years for Nicole Kidman to lead a big-screen erotic thriller — and then two come along at once.
Kidman will play a femme fatale in a pair of projects filming back-to-back this summer, starting with a ‘Hitchcockian’ thriller, Holland, Michigan, opposite Matthew Macfadyen.
Kidman (pictured) will play a femme fatale in a pair of projects filming back-to-back this summer, starting with a ‘Hitchcockian’ thriller, Holland, Michigan, opposite Matthew Macfadyen
Macfadyen, whose star is on the rise thanks to his career-making performance as Tom Wambsgans in Succession, will play Kidman’s husband in the picture, a cat-and-mouse story about a teacher who starts an affair, only to find out her husband has a double life of his own.
When that’s finished there are reports that she has agreed to be the lead in Babygirl, from super-indie A24, about a career woman in her 40s who has a dangerous liaison with a 21-year-old intern.
Kidman is a perfectly preserved 55 years old. Her last role in an erotic potboiler was Stanley Kubrick’s controversial Eyes Wide Shut in 1999, in which she starred opposite her then-husband Tom Cruise.
Macfadyen (pictured), whose star is on the rise thanks to his career-making performance as Tom Wambsgans in Succession, will play Kidman’s husband in the picture
Neigh means nay, insists Joaquin
Ardent vegan activist Joaquin Phoenix finds himself uncomfortably on horseback in the new Napoleon film by British director Ridley Scott.
Indeed, you can see in Phoenix’s face just how much he enjoys it . . . the answer being, not a lot.
Phoenix will have found himself horribly conflicted when forced to get back in the saddle, as he has been vegan since the age of three and believes that using any animal products — or using animals full stop — is a ‘gross abuse of power’.
In 2018 he talked about having to ride horses in The Sisters Brothers — and how he regretted it. ‘I didn’t really think about it until I was there and realised: ‘Oh, it’s a western and we’re on horses a lot.’
‘I felt bad about riding them. I had the feeling that they were like, ‘I don’t really want you on my back.’
When somebody suggested the experience might be mutually enjoyable for rider and mount, Phoenix said: ‘Yeah, but the horses tell you something different.’
The Apple TV+ movie will get a cinema release in November. British actress Rosamund Pike co-stars as ‘not tonight’ Josephine.
Ardent vegan activist Joaquin Phoenix (pictured, centre) finds himself uncomfortably on horseback in the new Napoleon film by British director Ridley Scott.
Madness frontman Suggs says he turned down the chance to be a part of Live Aid because he didn’t think Bob Geldof ‘could organise a bunk-up in a brothel’.
‘I said: ‘No, I’m all right for that Bob’,’ recalled Suggs.
‘So me and the singer of UB40 decide we’re going to do our own thing. We sold 4,000 copies of our song, whatever it was called.
‘I was moving house on the day of Live Aid and I could hear it coming out of every television in a five-mile radius.
‘I’m not complaining, but every now and then I don’t achieve all that I should.’
The misery continues for Ant Middleton, the ex-Marine and former star of SAS: Who Dares Wins. In 2021 he was dropped as the show’s host by Channel 4 over his ‘personal conduct’.
In January this year his firm, Sway, went into voluntary liquidation. The company owed £1.2 million to the taxman.
Now a second company, Aaron Media, set up by Middleton and his wife Emilie, has also been dissolved. It came into being in July last year but was dissolved on March 21 without filing accounts.
Will Woody’s (probably) final film be ready for the Cannes red carpet?
Woody Allen’s 50th and probably final film — which is in French — looks likely to come to Cannes next month.
Coup De Chance, which Allen wrote and directed, stars Niels Schneider and Lou de Laage as friends who get married, then betray each other. The 87-year-old said the ‘poisonous romantic thriller . . . might be the last one’ he makes.
Allen has become a festival regular; particularly after being disgraced in the U.S. due to child abuse allegations. He attended seven times between 2002 and 2016, with offerings including Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Match Point.
Few are willing to work with him these days but Thierry Fremaux, who runs the festival, is still a fan. He said this week ‘maybe’ Allen’s film would be ready for the event, which kicks off on May 16.
Roman Polanski’s new film The Palace won’t be there — but only because it is not ready, rather than because he, too, is cancelled. Polanski fled America for France rather than be sentenced over the statutory rape of a minor in 1977. He had initially pleaded not guilty but later accepted a plea bargain.
Allen has faced a Hollywood backlash after his adopted daughter, Dylan Farrow, claimed he molested her when she was seven. He denies this.
In 2016, Amazon pulled out of a multi-year deal that would have seen it pay $68-$73 million for multiple films from him.
His last two pictures, Rifkin’s Festival and A Rainy Day In New York, were released by the small MPI Media Group.
Despite the controversy, Allen has continued to work — and be venerated — in Europe.
So, too, has actor Johnny Depp — branded a wife-beater by the High Court in London (though cleared of the same allegations in a libel trial in the States). His movie, Jeanne Du Barry, will be the Cannes opening night film.
Depp plays king Louis XV in a French language feature. It’s unclear how fluent he became during his 14-year romance with French actress Vanessa Paradis, but he was seen on set with a French language coach.
The Bruce Springsteen-Paul McCartney love-in continues.
Macca was in the crowd on the opening night of Springsteen’s tour in New York this week and, with wife Nancy, stood for most of the three-hour set.
The Boss was McCartney’s guest (the other was Foo Fighter Dave Grohl) on stage at Glastonbury last year.
The two men go way back — and are nearly neighbours in The Hamptons.
I’m a celeb, get me out of a tax bill!
The new I’m A Celebrity . . . All Stars will air later this month on ITV, with some of the show’s most popular former contestants having recorded a spin-off in South Africa.
The bookers for the show are known for their brilliance in landing names such as Shaun Ryder and David Gest — but actress Su Pollard, left, claims she has turned down offers to take part each year since it started 21 years ago.
Pollard, 73, says: ‘They’ve asked me every year but I might do it now. Mind you, I’ll need convincing. I’d be hopeless. I worry that I’d be the new Gillian McKeith and have things done to me, just so Ant and Dec can hear me scream!’
Pollard, on BBC2’s Pilgrimage tonight, says that a lot of signings are down to HMRC.
‘Mentioning no names, but I’ve friends who have gone into the jungle because they’ve suddenly been confronted with enormous tax bills.’
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