PAs in the news

With the verdict now in and the Italian sisters who worked as personal assistants for Nigella Lawson having been cleared of fraud, we take a look at what else PAs around the world have been up to recently.

While high-profile clients can be demanding, working for them can also bring its own rewards, as Walter Williams, assistant to singer and actress Jennifer Hudson, found out when the Oscar winner bought him a very generous present for Christmas – his very own home.

The star captured the moment on video and posted the resulting footage on her Instagram account; in the clip, a delighted Walter is seen screaming elatedly at his unexpected good fortune – that is one very lucky member of the PA community.

Sadly, not all PAs are so deserving of such luck, as a court case in Orlando, Florida proves. A local man working as an assistant to an elderly homeowner with dementia has been charged with cajoling the latter into signing cheques worth more than $25,000 for bogus home improvement projects. These were supposed to be carried out by a construction company set up by the accused, but when officials investigated it was found the required work permits had not been obtained and the unsavoury individual concerned has been charge with exploitation.

On a more uplifting note, a famous face provided pause for thought as people everywhere shed a tear at the passing of Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela. The man who was his personal secretary in the 1990s, Armstrong Williams, remembers him with great fondness and recalls his down-to-earth approach: “He would come into the office every day and express his gratitude to staff. He would personally offer cookies and tea to us.”

Another aide to the great man, Zelda La Grange, who worked with him for 19 years, paid her own tribute, saying he “inspired people to forgive, to reconcile, to care, to be selfless, to be tolerant, to maintain dignity no matter what the circumstances.”

Back in the UK and you have to hand it to enterprising 30-year-old Matt Frost who, fed up with working in the retail sector, decided to try his hand in a different role – one for each week of the year in fact. Among his 52 jobs was that of acting as personal assistant to This Morning TV star Phillip Schofield. Matt’s impression of his brief foray into the world of the PA isn’t recorded, but surely it must have been more enjoyable than the profession that comes in at number 44 on his list, the ominous-sounding “zombie zone controller”.