Lady and the toad: butler has day in court

They don't make them like Lady Jacqueline Killearn anymore. The 98-year-old aristocrat has been accused by her butler, who is suing her for £200,000 for unfair dismissal, of committing all manner of unspeakable things to him while he was in her service, among them charging him to sleep in a "squalid" basement at her £10m Harley Street home and throwing her walking sticks at him when she was angry.

Paolo Sclarandis, 64, worked for Lady Killearn, the widow of Britain's war-time ambassador to Cairo, who once entertained Winston Churchill, for two years between 2004 and 2006. It was not a quiet time, as the members of an industrial tribunal in Ashford, Kent, are finding out.

Sclarandis, a former antiques dealer, claims that Lady Killearn forced him to work 70-hour weeks, while living in the basement, for which he was later charged £10 a week rent. He has also accused her of behaving "like a despot" and claims that she called him a "toad" who cooked nothing but pasta.

Another gripe was the car he was made to chauffeur her around in. Lady Killearn owned a vintage Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and a second home - the 13-bedroom Haremere Hall, set in 145 acres of land in East Sussex - which she was driven to at weekends. But Sclarandis says that rather than use the Roller, she insisted he drive an 18-year-old Toyota van with 210,000 miles on the clock, and no breakdown cover.

However, many who have attended the tribunal on Lady Killearn’s behalf offer a different view. In a statement read to the court, Freddy Heyman, who Sclarandis claims is Lady K's "toy boy", said: "He was in the habit of screaming Italian obscenities and smashed the crockery which he refused to wash up. He ranted and raved about the [condition of the] kitchen which was insufficient for his, no doubt, artistic needs." The case, as they say, continues.