Sir Philip Green welcomes the 'hot felon'
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when that meeting took place. Chloe Green, daughter of Topshop tycoon Sir Philip and his wife, Tina, has formally introduced her folks to her new boyfriend.
He’s Jeremy Meeks, a former convict and gangster turned model, with a rap sheep as colourful and extensive as his tattoo collection, an abandoned wife and a seven-year-old son at home in the U.S.
Known as the ‘hot felon’, he has captured the heart of heiress Chloe, who is the apple of Daddy’s eye. He has enjoyed a passionate summer frolicking on a yacht on the Mediterranean, and hanging out with her in Los Angeles. Now, he’s taken the next step and met the family.
Part of the family: Jeremy Meeks with Chloe Green and (left) her mother, Tina, at a charity ball in Monaco last week
Last week he was seen with Chloe’s mum on the gargantuan £100 million Lionheart yacht owned by Daddy Green.
Since then he’s popped up in Monaco with Lady Green and Chloe, wearing sportswear and an unimpressed expression. He even posed, in evening dress, between mum and daughter at a charity ball last week.
Although they have yet to be pictured together, family sources have confirmed to the Mail that Meeks has met the big man himself. Despite previously dismissing Chloe’s boyfriend as little more than a ‘holiday romance’, the most astonishing twist in this unlikely love story is that Sir Philip, who is worth around £4 billion, gives every impression he approves.
A Monaco-based friend said: ‘Chloe is smitten and all Philip wants is for his little girl to be happy. She gets whatever she wants.’
The word is that the Greens are doing up an apartment in their 29-storey block — the most prestigious address in Monte Carlo — with a view to Chloe moving in . . . with Jeremy.
Their first pad is no starter home. Dame Shirley Bassey has one of the apartments, and Sir Phil and Lady Green’s penthouse is said to be worth £12 million.
Jeremy Meeks and Chloe Green attend the cocktail for the inaugural 'Monte-Carlo Gala for the Global Ocean'
Even the block’s smallest two-bedroom apartment reputedly costs upwards of £4 million. For that, you get unsurpassed views of the sea, use of a beautiful pool and a residents-only cafe and cocktail bar.
A local source said: ‘The felon is moving in with her. I’m not sure when. Philip and Tina have met him and seem to be thinking if they ride it out she will tire of him, but if they put up a fight it will only push her into his arms.’
But, a source within the family denied Chloe and Jeremy are moving in together, and stressed Meeks is due to return to LA next week. He said Chloe has a London flat and splits her time between the UK and LA.
Yet still the subject is the talk of the town. ‘People in Monaco don’t care about Meeks’s criminal past as almost everyone there is a crook in some shape or form,’ the source said.
‘There’s a bit of a people in glass houses attitude. Although they do gossip, and they’re all gossiping about this. It’s all anyone can talk about at the yacht club.’
And there’s plenty to gossip about. A, 6ft 1in figure, all gangster inkings and brooding menace, Meeks more than embodies Somerset Maugham’s observation that Monte Carlo is a ‘sunny place for shady people’.
Born and raised in Stockton, California — his mother was a heroin addict, his father in prison — he maintains his tough childhood drove him to crime. Stockton Police say Meeks, 33, was ‘one of the most violent criminals in the area’.
The US criminal whose mugshot went viral due to his rugged good looks (left) and Philip Green at a Burberry Prorsum show (right)
He was convicted of possessing an unlicensed semi-automatic pistol and jailed for two years in 2014. Before that, he had been in court over offences including resisting arrest, negligent driving and identity theft. In 2002 he served two years for grand theft — stealing £230 worth of goods.
There was also a conviction for ‘robbery and corporal injury to a child’, a shocking incident in which he beat a 16-year-old ‘to a pulp’.
The teardrop tattoo under his left eye symbolises, according to prison lore, the death of a gang member, while another inking on his right forearm shows the word ‘Crips’ — the name of a notorious LA gang involved in hundreds of murders and drug dealing.
His police mugshot taken in 2014 launched a modelling career after his release in 2016. That brought him, this spring, to a party at the Cannes film festival.
There he met Chloe, 26, the daughter of controversial former BHS owner Sir Philip Green. A flamboyant and foul-mouthed billionaire from North London, he moved his family to Monte Carlo’s capital Monaco in 1998. His wife Tina, who is the ultimate owner of his clothing conglomerate, is resident in the principality, where there is a zero per cent rate of income tax.
In a domestic set-up which will have saved paying the British taxman millions, Sir Phil remains domiciled in the UK, and visits the family home in Monte Carlo at weekends. Chloe was raised and went to school there.
She has had an eventful romantic history including an affair with her bisexual Made In Chelsea co- star Ollie Locke, and a romance with J.Lo’s ex-husband Marc Anthony. She’s less well known for working: until three years ago, Chloe designed shoes sold in Topshop, part of Sir Phil’s empire, but she hasn’t worked since.
At that first meeting this spring there was evidently instant chemistry between gilded youth Chloe and her bad boy. Within weeks they were lovers.
Officially she has denied they are betrothed, possibly sensitive to the fact that her intended is still married to someone else, albeit in the process of getting a divorce
Despite protests from his wife of eight years, Melissa, a nurse, who found out she was being replaced via paparazzi photographs of Chloe and Jeremy canoodling on a yacht in the Med, romance ensued.
The pair spent much of the summer in hotels in LA while Melissa and son Jeremy Junior remained at the drab former marital home in Stockton. Meeks and Chloe went to a festival in Barbados in August, and last month she travelled with him to Israel where he was filming a glasses advert. They returned to California, with Meeks posting a picture of them cuddling on the beach, writing: ‘When you find The One.. You Know.’
Rumours they were engaged were fuelled by pictures of Chloe showing off a diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand. Officially she has denied they are betrothed, possibly sensitive to the fact that her intended is still married to someone else, albeit in the process of getting a divorce.
Last week, Meeks had his first taste of the Riviera high society when he and Chloe attended a charity ball thrown by Prince Albert of Monaco. Chloe wrote on Instagram: ‘No one else I would rather have on my arm than you.’
That evening, in the famed Salle Garnier, Meeks listened to live music by Nelly Furtado and Robin Thicke, and mingled with A-list guests including Leonardo DiCaprio and Prince Albert himself.
Some £10.5 million was raised on the night via an auction of items which included paintings by Picasso and Francis Bacon. One theory doing the rounds in Monaco is that Jeremy Meeks is actually proving a calming influence on Chloe.
In a domestic set-up which will have saved paying the British taxman millions, Sir Phil remains domiciled in the UK, and visits the family home in Monte Carlo at weekends. Chloe was raised and went to school there
His eccentric agent Jim Jordan, claims to have a calling ‘to help beautiful people’.
In 2016 he said: ‘For him, the celebrities growing up were, like, gang people. And when I talked to Jeremy and got to know his heart, I understood this is something real. And I chose to have a vision for him.’
That vision is a pledge that Meeks will dissuade teens from carrying guns. Like his promise to have his tattoos lasered off, it has not materialised.
Instead he works out four times a week, claims to have found God, and has embraced modelling, twice appearing at events for Topman in LA.
He’s certainly worked more than Chloe. She has been noted for spending summer partying on her yacht, Lionchase, which is at the disposal of her and her brother, Brandon.
According to her social media, she spent months last year ricocheting from one sun-drenched adventure to the next. There are suggestions that the bill for running her yacht last summer —paid, naturally, by doting Daddy — was well over £1 million.
Now though, she has apparently been on a cookery class in Tuscany and is talking about going into business with her mother, who designs interiors for apartments, planes and yachts via the company Green and Mingarelli Design.
What’s next? No one is ruling out a wedding, although a family source confirmed this week that the pair are definitely not engaged. Not yet, anyway
Her arm of the company would concentrate on the younger, blingier market. Her parents are apparently keen to encourage her in the direction of a job, and this seems as good a bet as any.
What’s next? No one is ruling out a wedding, although a family source confirmed this week that the pair are definitely not engaged. Not yet, anyway.
If they were to marry, Meeks would need to convert to Judaism. Only a year ago, he gave interviews about his new-found Christianity.
Chloe, however, has a renewed interest in her Jewish faith, as evidenced by her visit to the Western Wall in Israel when she was there with Meeks.
She captioned a picture of her touching the wall: ‘If only you could feel what I feel.’
Due to his parole conditions, Chloe’s beau has been declined entry to the UK, which makes the idea of her having a place in Monaco more attractive.
The tiny principality is agog to see what happens next. And, just maybe, Mr Meeks is not Sir Philip’s biggest headache.
His retail empire, the Taveta group reported in June that pre- tax profits have plunged by 79 per cent and turnover is down 17 per cent to £2.02 billion.
The company is reeling from bad publicty over the closure of BHS, which collapsed in 2016 with debts of £1.3 billion, and a tough fashion market, during which Topshop’s UK sales fell for the first time in a decade.
Following the repayment of £363 million into the BHS pension fund this year, Sir Philip has emerged with his knighthood intact, but with significant damage to his reputation.
Would it be too cynical to suggest that with Chloe and her hot felon we have a new villain? The spotlight has at last moved on.