People - Here, There and Everywhere

Jolie cashes in on LA property boom

THE SIGHTING of Angelina Jolie in the company of a real-estate agent looking over a house in LA's Laurel Canyon seemed at first to support the evidence that the actress might be about to split with Brad Pitt.

However, the property turned out to have only two bedrooms - hardly enough space to keep spare men, let alone her large brood of children. So it looks more likely that Jolie is joining the ever-growing list of celebrity speculators in the red-hot LA property market.

Among those putting their spare cash into bricks and mortar are Mel Gibson, who has just made a tidy $6m profit on the Malibu beachfront estate he bought less than two years ago, and fellow actor Matthew McConaughey who has doubled his money on a Spanish Hacienda-style house in the Hollywood Hills, purchasing it for $3.2m and selling for just under $6.2m.

Another Topshop honcho quits

THERE ARE almost as many executives quitting Topshop these days as there are teenage girls queuing up to buy the new Celia Birtwell designs at the Oxford Street flagship store.

Latest to go is Karyn Fenn who has quit after nine months as brand director, a job she was given when the powerful Jane Shepherdson suddenly quit last October. In the interim, as exclusively revealed by The First Post, the marketing director Jo Farrelly is leaving.

The departures raise questions about owner Sir Philip Green's wish to be more hands-on - starting with his personal appointment of Kate Moss (pictured) to design a range of clothes, which clearly left many of his team miffed. "Things went a lot smoother when he was, shall we say, more hands-off," says a London rag trade observer.

Green has reason to be grateful to the women who masterminded Topshop's success: annual profits in the $100m region allowed the high-spending Monaco-based tycoon to pay himself in 2005 what remains a record corporate bonus in Britain - £1.2bn. What all these high-profile women plan to do next is the subject of increasing fascination.