Woodward puts £5m villa up for rent

Labour MP Shaun Woodward (pictured) is not a poor man - as well as a string of properties round the world, he and his Sainsbury's heiress wife Camilla keep a private butler - but he has had to put his newest home onto the rental market. The Ulster Secretary is offering Humming Bird, the £5m villa he has spent three years building on the island of Mustique, for rent at £16,000 a week.

He is not the only one wondering what to do with his second home (to say the least of the third, fourth and fifth). With the financial services sector in New York crumbling, a number of swish residences in the Hamptons have appeared either for let or for sale.

Among those trying to sell their homes is ousted Lehman Brothers President, Joseph Gregory, who has put his Bridgehampton mansion on the market for $32.5m, and Eric Ellenbogen, co-founder of media company Boomerang Media TV, whose second home in East Hampton is for sale at $5.7m.

Woodward also has a home in the Hamptons, a place in France and a home in his Merseyside constituency, as well as having the run of his official residence Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland. All in all, despite these belt-tightening times, he should still be able to find somewhere pleasant to hang his stocking this Christmas.