MAIL ON SUNDAY 


March 3, 2002 

SECTION: Pg. 30;31 

LENGTH: 1757 words 

HEADLINE: THE ONLY WAY TO STOP THIS AWFUL MAN IS TO TELL THE PUBLIC THE TRUTH ABOUT HIM...; 
Actress who won landmark legal victory reveals how millionaire lover and racehorse owner tried to ruin her 

BYLINE: Nadia Raafat 

BODY: 


FOR 15 years, actress Glory Anne Clibbery shared an extraordinary life with Ivan Allan, one of the most powerful men on the British horseracing circuit. 

They were regular fixtures at the British and European race courses, hosting glamorous dinner parties at their Newmarket 

home for the British aristocracy and racing's elite. 

They socialised with the turf's premier families Lester and Susan Piggott, the Cecils, the Sangsters and travelled Europe attending race meetings and bloodstock sales. He never married her, although it suited his image when people mistook her for Mrs Allan. 

Then 18 months ago, the relationship went horribly wrong when Allan flaunted his affair with another woman and evicted Glory Anne from the Piccadilly apartment they'd shared since 1985. In a series of court actions against her, he has claimed they had no relationship other than a sexual one . . . insinuating she was nothing more to him than a common prostitute. 

As the months and the cases dragged on, the allegations against her grew worse, while a gagging order meant she could not defend herself. But last month on Valentine's Day a distraught Glory Anne won the right to tell her side of the story for the first time. 

The landmark case, upheld in the Court of Appeal, is expected to lead to less secrecy in Family Court cases such as marital disputes unless there are children. 

While Allan's public image was that of the sophisticated racing trainer with rich and powerful friends, privately he had a much darker side . . . 

that of a paranoid obsessive, an aggressive lover and a compulsive cheat who had a string of mistresses. 

Glory Anne, 48, now a casting agent, claims he smacked her, enjoyed sex wearing women's stockings and suspenders . . . and kept files on how to throw races as well as incriminating information on his horseracing and business associates. 

With tears welling in her eyes, she says: 'I'm too old to have children, I've no pension and I face being kicked onto the streets. I've spent every penny I have fighting a multimillionaire who's determined to bankrupt me. 

'During the past 19 months he's had detectives follow me and I can't go on living like this my story has to be publicised because the safest place for me to be is in plain sight with everything out in the open.' The couple met at a Kensington party in 1985. The busy young actress from Canada had come to England to study drama and had stayed, winning parts in West End plays and films, living in London and dating Michael Crawford. 

Among the party guests were a member of the Malaysian royal family, an arms dealer and Ivan Allan, a 46-year-old millionaire with homes in London, Singapore and Hong Kong. ALLAN was the Singaporebased son of a Eurasian jockey-turned-trainer of Irish descent. He'd given up law to follow his father and become a multiple champion on the Singapore-Malaysia racing circuit, surviving an assassination attempt. 

'Someone said, "That's the owner of Commanche Run, the horse on which Lester Piggott won the St Leger." 

'When he was introduced I told him I loved his horse and he looked me up and down and mumbled, "Good." 

'He looked like an overweight devil and talked like a gangster he's no picture postcard. Then he offered to drive me home in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes. 

When we got to my Battersea flat, I jumped out to avoid being slobbered on but left my satchel behind. 

He got out, passed the bag to me and asked for my number. 

'It was only when I put my keys in the bag that I found GBP 1,000 in GBP 50 notes. My mother ordered me to return it but I just wanted to bank it! 

'I met him next day to return the money and asked why he'd put it in my bag. He said it would guarantee I'd see him again. But he told the court later he'd started paying me for sex directly after we met and that I'd accepted the verbal contract with a payment of GBP 2,300.' Glory Anne was gradually seduced by his intelligence, his experience and the intoxicating world of racing. But it was another year before they consummated their relationship in the Hotel Richmond in Geneva. 

'It was the most romantic setting in the world and we ate caviar with blinis to the music of a string quartet,' she says. 'He told me we'd have the best love affair two people could have.' He also told her he had three-and-a half women in his life but they were chequebook relationships. The 'half' was an illiterate Malay woman. 

When they got back to London, Glory Anne moved in with him to his three-bedroom Piccadilly apartment: 'It was like a page from a Sixties Playboy bunny magazine, all mirrors, brown, gold and silver.' They also took a flat in Mayfair. 

Allan one of the most important trainers on the Singapore-Hong Kong circuit spent half of the year managing his Far East interests. 

Glory Anne's time with him was based around the British flat-racing season from June to October, starting with Ascot and ending with Champions Day in Newmarket. 

They were inseparable. 

'There were first-class hotels, champagne, expensive restaurants.We'd host dinners in London casinos and I'd go all over Europe to race meetings and bloodstock sales. Ivan even bought me a racehorse and said he'd get me my own colours one day.' Lester and Susan Piggott were great friends, she says. And when Henry Cecil left his first wife, Julia, for Natalie, a former stable girl, the couple lived with Glory Anne and Ivan at their Newmarket home, the Gables. 

Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, with whom Ivan had several race winners in partnership, often came to the house and Glory Anne met Robert Sangster who owned a horse with Ivan. 'He was such a big flirt,' she remembers. 

She played the part of hostess and wife to perfection but behind closed doors he liked to dress her like a prostitute and play sex games. 

'Sex with Ivan was always innovative,' she says. 'He was a brilliant lover. He read sex magazines and if there was anything in them, he wanted to try it. But while he's an expert lover, he's not connected sexually. He's a consummate technician. 

'He taught me everything I know about sex. We tried every position there was. He would even wear Pretty Polly hold-ups and suspenders while we had sex.' OTHER sex games included Glory Anne being tied up, blindfolded, singing, dancing and stripping for him. 

'There were lots of horseracing improvisations, too,' she says. 'I was an actress. He'd give me a lead and we'd play the scene. 

'He also bought toys from Soho sex shops but I'd hide them because I was scared. I didn't want to end up in any situation where I couldn't get out of handcuffs or something.' However, sometimes the sex got out of hand because Ivan had a temper. 

'We were getting ready to go out and he screamed at me because he didn't like my dress. He ripped down my underwear and started to hit me hard on my backside with a brush. Then he dragged me on the bed and I was fighting him . 

. . until I started to kiss him back. 

'He said later it was the most exciting sex we'd ever had but I felt disgusted. 

'He'd also lose his temper over the smallest things, like leaving a tea bag by the kettle. And he'd check up on me. He checked up on everyone.' 

Indeed, in the office in his Singapore house he kept files on everyone he had contact with and sometimes he would transfer them to his London flat. 

'The files contained character analyses,' says Glory Anne. 'He enjoyed finding out how fallible people were. It was often to do with women. Anything people told him in confidence went in the files.' She discovered files on Lester Piggott and Henry and Natalie Cecil. 'He even kept files on his own family. There's bound to be one on me.' She also has documents showing that Allan knew a lot about some of the more dubious practices on the Hong Kong racing circuit now engulfed in a racefixing scandal which has seen the arrests of 19 people, including Irish jockey John Egan and South African Robbie Fradd. 

Pages of typewritten notes, many covered in Allan's own unmistakable handwriting, give detailed instructions on how jockeys can deliberately hold their horse back a grave offence punishable by heavy fines without being caught by the stewards. 

Such tactics can be used to ensure that a horse will run its next races carrying less weight and at bigger odds. This can mean huge betting coups if gamblers have been tipped off that a horse will not be out to do its best. 

In one example from the notes, the jockey is told to look as though he is whipping the horse but without touching it. When the race is over he is advised to rub a few marks on the horse's flanks to look as though the whip has been used. THERE are also coded messages to be given to jockeys and to gamblers, informing them of a horse's chances in a race. 

'Roses' means the horse will have the brakes on or will not be allowed to run as fast as he might. 

By now, Glory Anne felt increasingly intimidated by Allan, even though he compensated her with diamonds, rings and necklaces. 

Deep down, she thought he loved her and that the women calling him and sending faxes were just friends. 

But when Robert Sangster let slip that he had seen Ivan at Manton, a Wiltshire training ground, with a young Chinese girl, Glory Anne knew their affair was over. 

In the summer of 2000 they were invited by Lord Hartington, the Queen's Representative and chairman at Ascot, to a reception at Royal Ascot where the seating plan referred to Glory Anne as Mrs Ivan Allan. 'Sheikh Hamdan al Makhtoum's racing manager Angus Gold joked, "Which Mrs Allan?" He obviously knew Ivan was cheating.' A few weeks later the couple had a violent row. 'I ran out of the house and spent the early hours on a park bench. Ivan returned to Hong Kong and told me he wanted me out of the flat by the time he returned.' She and her 75-year-old mother, Peggy, are now staying at Allan's home in Newmarket. But he has begun legal proceedings to force her out of that, too. To meet the court costs, Glory Anne will have to sell her small flat in South London then she says she'll be penniless. 

Yet she clings to the belief that hers was a passionate love story. 

Whatever happened between Ivan and myself, it lasted 15 years. 

At some point both of us must have been doing something right . . . and right up until the last second we were lovers. 

I feel used, humiliated and betrayed but I know that, in his way, Ivan really did love me.'