Prince Andrew’s ex-lover Koo Stark faces ruin

Koo Stark, an ex-girlfriend of Prince Andrew, faces ruin after a judge rejected her bid for £50,000 a year from the father of her daughter.

Koo Stark. Picture: AFP

Koo Stark, a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew, faces ruin after a judge rejected her attempt to ­extract £50,000 ($90,000) a year from the father of her daughter.

Lady Justice Asplin dismissed the claim by the photographer and actress, saying that Stark’s case was “totally without merit”. Stark, who dated the prince for about two years in the early 1980s, is now thought to be left with a legal bill of up to £400,000 after the judge said she had been living “beyond her means for years”.

Throughout the legal battle, lawyers for Warren “Robbie” Walker, a US financier, had ­described Stark, 64, as a “gold digger” over her claims that he had promised in 1997 to provide her with £50,000 a year for life for household expenses.

At the time of the relationship between Stark and Prince ­Andrew, she was known in Britain for her leading role in a 1976 film, The Awakening of Emily, which is described as avant garde rather than pornographic.

At the time of their split, Stark and Mr Walker had just had a daughter, Tatiana. She claimed that he had made the promise in return for her giving up plans to write what he regarded as a “distasteful” newspaper column entitled Diary of a Single Mother.

It emerged in the High Court and the latest Court of Appeal hearing that Stark was “furious” when a lawyer for Mr Walker suggested she had sought to blackmail him by threatening to have an abortion.

The hearings were told that ultimately Mr Walker paid about two years of the £50,000 instalments and 20 years later Stark sued him for breaching the ­alleged agreement. She also claimed Mr Walker had breached another agreement to give her £200,000 to buy a house.

Mr Walker, 61, insisted at the Court of Appeal hearing that he owed her nothing and his legal team said the old agreements were not legally binding.

Stark’s claim was rejected by a High Court judge last year. Lady Justice Asplin this week ruled her appeal was “totally without merit”. The judge said there was no point in allowing the appeal to go to a full hearing as Stark stood no chance of overturning the ­earlier decision.

The decision means Stark, who was born in New York, must pay her former lover’s legal costs, which are estimated at £285,000, in addition to her own lawyers’ fees, which are likely to also run into six figures.

The Times