My sister is an artist and my father was a hand-bag maker in the Forties,” she explains.Linda has discovered that display shops have the best materials for creating instant glamour. The black plastic sheeting in the kitchen came from Muraspec in London and faux-aluminium blinds from DZD give the lounge a Seventies penthouse feel. Huge perfume bottles, hat boxes, gothic candelabras and copies of Indian Mogul chairs ensure that it doesn’t look trashy. In fact, Linda manages to make Pierrot clowns, rubber heart-shaped cushions and glove-shaped vases look, well, classy It’s just the way she throws them all together. The centre-piece, an original Twenties black and red lacquer suite, gives the room a heaviness it needs and a huge mirror in the fire- place opens up what could be a small, stuffy room.Linda’s love of fashion has kept her interest in different periods moving. “Unlike other antique dealers, I’ve always wanted to progress and change and go on to new things.

An awful lot of people get stuck in a particular era, especially with their houses.” There are certain themes which carry on throughout the house “I love portraits of people I am fascinated by faces,” she says. In every room, there is a reference to the feminine form with at least one Twenties or Thirties figure lamp holding a globe of light in the corner.Linda has lived in this flat for 20 years and mixes modern IKEA units with her retro-glamour surroundings “Shopping is something I love doing,” she says. Does she ever have a purge and, God forbid, chuck anything out? She thinks for a minute and says rather apologetically, “I do try. Hard.”Linda Bee’s Art Deco stand is at Grays Antique Market, 1-7 Davies Mews, London W1, 0171 629 5921. When he came to write his editorial in the New Statesman last week, Ian Hargreaves had a problem. He knew that, as editor of the leftish weekly owned by Geoffrey Robinson, the beleaguered Paymaster-General, he was expected to make some sort of comment. To say nothing risked ridicule but so would praising his proprietor for being the beneficiary of a trust in an offshore tax haven when Mr Robinson’s boss, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had long raged against the use of such trusts.
Ever since an Independent on Sunday investigation two weeks ago had forced Mr Robinson to admit he and his family owned a trust in Guernsey, he had been hounded by the press, a gleeful Opposition and even some within his own party, but Mr Hargreaves’s boss had not broken any law, nor transgressed any parliamentary rule.

Mr Hargreaves believed that Mr Robinson’s plight was the result of a breakdown in communication, and that is what he wrote: “The Government exhibits an unhealthy tendency to want to conduct exchanges on its own terms … The result is that ministers with nothing to hide look furtive, and a government which proclaims a new openness reeks of imperiousness. It is in this echoing void between sermon and action that the charge of hypocrisy takes root. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is a government let down by its supposedly legendary skills in presentation.”Mr Brown’s spokesman had greeted the original story with customary scorn, claiming, wrongly, that all Mr Robinson’s shares were held in a blind trust, and the Government’s undoubtedly macho approach contributed to Mr Robinson’s predicament. The trustees of Orion, the Guernsey trust, have still not been identified. It has yet to be stated what shares, if any, Orion holds, apart from those in TransTec, a Midlands company which was chaired by Mr Robinson until he was appointed a minister.

In fact, he has said virtually nothing illuminating about his business affairs since the row began They remain shrouded in darkness.TAKE the New Statesman It is owned by New Statesman Limited. When a reader buys a copy, revenue from the pounds 1.90 cover price goes to New Statesman Limited. That is straightforward enough, except that Mr Hargreaves and the senior staff of the magazine who joined after Mr Robinson took it over are employed and paid by Stenbell, Mr Robinson’s private company One magazine, two companies. Not so simple.The explanation offered by Mr Robinson’s confidantes is that when he bought the magazine its finances were in a mess. To smooth the transition and to pay for high-calibre staff such as Hargreaves, Mr Robinson decided to put their salaries and some of the costs on a different pay-roll. The chosen vehicle was Stenbell, his private company.Stenbell publishes only abbreviated accounts, as it is entitled to do. Those accounts disclose that Stenbell charges New Statesman Limited for the services of Mr Hargreaves, other senior staff and other expenses.

The latest accounts show a charge of pounds 511,522.Under the heading “going concern”, Stenbell states that it had a deficit of assets over liabilities of pounds 240,800. So, while Mr Robinson is a discretionary beneficiary of a pounds 12.75m offshore trust, his private company on which he pays tax onshore is not in great shape. However, it gets funds from somewhere, since the note goes on: “The continued trading of the company is dependent upon the continued support of its principal creditor, The Geoffrey Robinson Personal Settlement.” No indication is given as to what this settlement is or where it can be found. One man, Geoffrey Robinson, and two entities, himself and The Geoffrey Robinson Personal Settlement Not so simple.NOW TAKE the case of Joska Bourgeois. She is the glamorous blonde who is said to have made her fortune by importing Jaguar cars into her native Belgium and left a slice of her wealth to Mr Robinson.