Bruce

Bruce Forsyth’s former Wentworth mansion, once shared with widow Lady Wilnelia, has reportedly been left empty and deteriorating years after she sold it for £5.7million

Bruce Forsyth‘s widow Lady Wilnelia has moved on from the lavish Surrey mansion she shared with the TV legend, but the once-glamorous property has reportedly been left abandoned.

The sprawling home, known as Straidarran, sits on the exclusive Wentworth Estate, where huge mansions owned by celebrities, sports stars and wealthy international buyers line the private roads.

Bruce lived at the property for decades before his death in 2017, aged 89, following a battle with bronchial pneumonia. Three years later, in April 2020, Wilnelia, 68, sold the mansion to a Bermuda-based businesswoman for a reported £5.7million.

But despite the hefty price tag, there appears to have been little visible activity at the property since the sale.

Locals say the home has been left largely untouched, with no obvious signs of residents or major refurbishment work.

Once the setting for Bruce and Wilnelia’s glamorous life, the mansion came packed with luxury features including a ten-seat cinema, swimming pool, tennis court, gym, library and wine cellar.

The gates still bear an “F” crest associated with Forsyth’s surname, while warning signs have been erected around the property.

One local said the situation was particularly unusual because overseas buyers on the estate often demolish older properties and replace them with new-build mansions.

“Normally overseas owners on the estate knock these old homes down and build a new one. So it is a very strange situation with Bruce’s old home, where seemingly nothing has happened since Wilnelia sold it six years ago,” they told The Sun.

The source claimed the only noticeable change had been the arrival of security following break-ins. They added: “The only thing I have noticed is that security is present there, the owners certainly aren’t, but that only followed break-ins.”

Security was reportedly stepped up after urban explorers targeted the property, with police confirming reports of break-ins to the publication.

Wentworth Estate manager James Perotin previously said the mansion was now being monitored around the clock. He said: “Security has been increased at Bruce Forsyth’s old house, there is now a van permanently on site, and it is monitored 24 hours a day.”

Perotin also suggested that some wealthy homeowners on the estate spend much of their time abroad, partly because of tax reasons, leaving some properties unoccupied for years.

Wilnelia, meanwhile, downsized after selling the family mansion and bought another home on the same estate for around £3million. The former beauty queen and Bruce were married in 1983 and remained together until his death.

Bruce, who entertained generations of viewers, became a household name through shows including The Generation Game and Play Your Cards Right, before becoming the face of Strictly Come Dancing. He presented the BBC dance show for a decade before stepping down in 2014.

Wilnelia, originally from Puerto Rico, was crowned Miss World in 1975. The couple shared a son, Jonathan Joseph, now 40, with Bruce’s entire estimated £15million fortune being left to his third wife rather than his six children.

In 2018, Wilnelia spoke about the final days she spent with Bruce before his death. She said she felt “lucky” that all the close family members managed to say goodbye.

In December, Tess Daly held back tears as Wilnelia sent her and Claudia Winkleman a sweet message before their Strictly Come Dancing exit. It was shown during the spin off show It Takes Two.

Tess had presented Strictly alongside Bruce from the show’s launch in 2004, with Claudia taking over in 2013. “Hello Tess and Claudia,” Wilnelia told the hosts.

“Sending you both my warmest wishes as you step into this exciting new chapter. Tess, you shared so many wonderful years on Strictly with Bruce and I know he would be so proud of you.”

She continued: “And Claudia, your sparkle and wit have brought so much joy to everyone. Thank you both for the laughter, the elegance and the heart you have given to the show.

“All my love and the very best for the future ahead.” Signing off on her husband’s famous catchphrase, she said: “Don’t forget, life is too short, so… keep dancing!” Tess replied: “What a woman! She’s just a goddess.”

Former Maj. Gen. John Bruce Medaris, the military director of the nation’s unmanned space program who after a seemingly miraculous recovery from cancer devoted his remaining years to the Episcopal priesthood, has died of the disease, it was learned Sunday.

Medaris was 88 when he died Wednesday at his summer home in Highlands, N.C., after a long struggle against bone and lung cancer. The announcement was made by friends in Florida and reported by United Press International.

He had commanded the Army’s early space program, the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, when it orbited America’s first satellite on Jan. 31, 1958. The program was soon turned over to the civilian control of the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Col. Pat Patterson of Maitland, Fla., a friend of Medaris’ for 47 years, said the former general had picked the nation’s first team of space scientists, both military and civilian, “and I have never seen a team surpass that one.”

The historic team that built those first missiles was headed by German scientist Wernher Von Braun, father of the Saturn V rocket that was to send Americans to the moon and a pioneer in the development of Germany’s wartime V-2 rocket. Kurt H. Debus, the Kennedy Space Center’s first director, was another team member.

The expatriated German scientists that included Von Braun had been sent after the war to Ft. Bliss, Tex., and later transferred to the small north Alabama cotton town of Huntsville where Medaris became their commander.

There was little sense of urgency about the nation’s embryonic space program until the Korean War broke out in 1950. Then seven years later, on Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the 184-pound Sputnik I, the world’s first orbiting satellite.

On Dec. 6, Medaris’ team tried to respond by sending a three-pound satellite into orbit, but the Vanguard rocket which was to have propelled it rose two feet off its Cape Canaveral launch pad and exploded into a giant fireball.

America finally got into space Jan. 31 when a Jupiter C booster hurled the 31-pound Explorer I into orbit. The satellite discovered the Van Allen Radiation Belt.

Medaris was born in Milford, Ohio, and at 16 lied about his age to get into the Marines. After a couple of years, he resigned and tried his hand at business, where he made but then lost a fortune.

Medaris entered the Army as a second lieutenant and came through 300 days of World War II combat unscathed.

An ordnance expert, he served as chief of the first Army contingent to Argentina from 1949 to 1952, and in 1955 was named commander of the Ballistic Missile Agency.

He became known as an aggressive, often arrogant commander who would roll over anyone in his way. He even carried a swagger stick for emphasis.

But in 1964, four years after retiring from the service, he was stricken with bone cancer and told he had only 18 months to live. Eighteen months later he was not only still alive, but the cancer somehow had gone into remission.

“The thought had sometimes crossed my mind that perhaps a power, or whatever it was, was keeping me intact because there was some important job that I was destined to do,” he said in a 1970 interview.

He told the Los Angeles Times in a 1982 interview from Cape Canaveral, where he had gone as an honored guest to watch the launch of the space shuttle Columbia, that he decided to repay the debt by service to his church.

He said he originally intended to become only an Episcopal deacon but “soon I found myself irresistibly forced into (other) situations.” He thus became the Very Rev. John B. Medaris, rector of Anglican churches in Maitland and Orlando, Fla.

In recent years, the International Aerospace Hall of Fame made Medaris a fellow, its highest award. The Army awarded him the first Medaris Award to Army Space Pioneers.

In the meantime, the cancer resurfaced in 1970 but again went into remission, returning only recently.

Although he had become a man of God, he did not lose the aggressiveness that had marked his military days and remained particularly critical of the decisions made many years earlier that separated military and civilian space objectives.

“It’s one of the greatest mistakes we ever made.”

Cut to a seedy alley behind a Chinese restaurant in Rome: A dozen mobsters menace a slight young man who suddenly pulls out a pair of nunchucks. He swings the traditional stick-and-chain weapons and makes quick work of his enemies, who fall one by one, groaning in pain.

The comedic, legendary action scene is from the 1972 film “The Way of the Dragon,” written, directed and starring Bruce Lee. The martial arts star was a trailblazer, allowing Asian Americans to see themselves represented in a strong, positive light on-screen.

And now he has secured a place in California history, becoming the first Chinese American in state history to have a day designated in his honor.

Lee was born in 1940 in San Francisco. His mother was of European descent and his father was a Cantonese opera star who was on tour in the city, affording his son birthright citizenship.

Lee grew up in Hong Kong, where he followed his father’s path as a performer, acting in more than a dozen films as a child and studying the close-quarters southern Chinese martial art Wing Chun.

On May 17, 1959, an 18-year-old Lee returned to San Francisco and eventually made his way to Hollywood. He went on to influence an industry that was at the time bereft of Asian American talent, and helped to popularize the genre of martial arts films and ignite Western interest in Hong Kong action cinema.

In recognition of his contributions, state Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) introduced a bill designating May 17 as “Bruce Lee Day” in California. The bill, signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, encourages schools and communities to honor Lee’s life and cultural impact.

Haney has described Lee as a “symbol of pride, resilience and possibility for generations who rarely saw themselves reflected with strength and dignity.”

Lee, who saw himself not only as an actor but also as a poet and philosopher, encountered repeated barriers. Up for the main role in the 1970s television series “Kung Fu,” for example, he was rejected in favor of white actor David Carradine.

In 2020, filmmaker Bao Nguyen sought to show how Lee dispelled anti-Asian sentiment and long-held stereotypes of emasculated Asian men in his ESPN documentary “Be Water.”

“The Asian male was the face of the enemy to many Americans,” Nguyen told The Times in 2020. “It was this vicious cycle of society reflecting media and culture, and media and culture reflecting society. There had to be some kind of intervention there and Bruce, in a way, was that intervention. He was the hero that we hadn’t seen before.”

Lee learned much about the systemic oppression that Black Americans faced from his first student, Jesse Glover, who had been a victim of police brutality.

And scholars have pointed out that, although his films had far-from-perfect politics, they touched on themes of fighting oppression. The 1971 movie “The Big Boss” showed Lee battling alongside laborers. “Fist of Fury” saw him opposing Japanese colonialism and discrimination.

Lee died young in 1973, at age 32 — before he was able to witness the full extent of his stardom. He died just one month before the release of “Enter the Dragon,” which was a box-office sensation and is considered a masterpiece of martial arts filmmaking.