Red Bull pays Geri Halliwell's husband Christian Horner £33.5million in compensation for 'loss of office' amid texting scandal

Just weeks after the woman who accused him of coercive behaviour was mysteriously released from her latest role in motor racing, a staggering detail about Christian Horner's departure from his Formula One team has come to light.

It's been revealed that the husband of former Spice Girls singer Geri Halliwell was handed an astonishing payout by Red Bull Racing.

Documents filed this week at Companies House disclose that Horner, 52, who quit amid a texting scandal with a teammate, banked £33.5million.

The payment is disclosed in the small print of Red Bull Racing's latest accounts for 2025. It is reported as 'compensation for loss of office'.

His total takings, including the £4.4million in salary paid ahead of his resignation, come in at £38million, the equivalent of £729,000 per week.

Geri Halliwell and Christian Horner pictured in June last year. The former CEO of Red Bull Formula One has received a bumper payout

Daily Mail Sport revealed in August that the woman executive involved in the texting scandal, whose identity cannot be disclosed for legal reasons, parted company from her employers ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix last month.

It is understood her latest position was terminated after her new boss lost confidence in her 'for a lack of discretion'.

Horner was accused of controlling behaviour over the employee. 

He has always denied the claims and was twice cleared of any impropriety in internal investigations at Red Bull, despite a tranche of supposedly intimate text exchanges between the pair being made public in an explosive email sent to F1 figures before the 2024 Bahrain Grand Prix.

Halliwell, 54, has publicly stood by Horner throughout the turmoil and the couple, left, who have three children, continue to split their time between their homes in Oxfordshire and London.

Lady V faces reality in handcuffs

Georgia Harrison and Lady Victoria Hervey on Channel 4's reality show Celebrity Handcuffed

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor will today ask a High Court judge to declare the searches that the police carried out on his homes after his arrest in February were unlawful.

His old friend Lady Victoria Hervey, meanwhile, spent her birthday in handcuffs.

The socialite is taking part in Channel 4's reality show Celebrity Handcuffed and is chained to women's rights campaigner Georgia Harrison, 31, for the next week.

Awkwardly, Lady Victoria's 50th birthday party, at Adelphi Art House in London, was held on the first day of her being cuffed.

'We have to pee together and sleep in the same bed,' she wails.

As King Charles's Lord Great Chamberlain, he's a central figure in some of our most antiquated ceremonies such as the State Opening of Parliament. Lord Carrington's daughter, Francesca, 33, has, though, demonstrated her mastery of new technology to find a husband. She has just got married to New York banker Sean Maloney, 34, whom she met on the dating app Hinge. Sean had been using Hinge for six months and was 'on the verge of giving up the hope of finding someone' just before he 'matched' with Francesca, then working as a journalist in the Big Apple.

Archer's last words on Meghan

Jeffrey Archer, who was described as an 'irrepressible life force' by Queen Camilla, used his final interview to make clear who he thought should be kept well away from the throne.

The best-selling novelist introduced a private member's Bill to the Lords in 1996 that would have ended male-preference primogeniture in the royal succession (it didn't become law until 2013).

Interviewed by The Australian newspaper last week, Lord Archer was told that meant we're only four jumps away from 'Queen Consort Meghan'.

He replied, grinning: 'Never.'

How Elizabeth is casting her net ever wider 

Elizabeth Day in the adaptation of her 2017 novel The Party

She created a popular podcast called How To Fail and has written half a dozen novels.

Now, Elizabeth Day wants to add another string to her bow.

My former newspaper colleague has a cameo role in the adaptation of her 2017 novel The Party, which starts on ITV this Sunday and stars Hollywood actor Luke Evans. Appropriately for a former social diarist, she plays a partygoer.

'I would love to do more,' Elizabeth, 47, tells me at a screening at the BFI in London.

'Hopefully casting directors will now call me up.'

Bridget star's no to marrying again

Bridget Jones star Sally Phillips said she felt 'very lucky' to find love again after her husband walked out on her and their three sons for a Russian yoga teacher.

But now the actress, 56, who plays Bridget's best friend Shazza in the films starring Renee Zellweger, admits the collapse of her 14-year marriage to shipping director Andrew Bermejo has put her off saying 'I do' a second time.

'I'm not getting married again because I don't know how you say those things again,' says Sally, who has been with former Army captain Ian Pilcher for seven years.

She adds of ex-husband Andrew's departure: 'The worst thing happened, the thing I was most frightened of... he would leave me and I would end up having to pay for everything and do the kids on my own.'

Ian has since moved in with the family in London and, Sally says approvingly, is now 'a proper stepdad'.