Former glamour model Jodie Marsh has defended taking a meerkat to the pub during a court case to appeal against a council’s decision to refuse her application for a wild animal licence to keep lemurs at her animal sanctuary.
The media personality, who trained as a bodybuilder, said online trolls are behind much of the criticism of her animal sanctuary in Lindsell, nine miles north west of Braintree in Essex. The 46-year-old, who owns Fripps Farm, told Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court on Friday: “I’ve wanted an animal sanctuary since I was five years old – this is my life dream.”
Ms Marsh, who appeared in the ITV series Essex Wives in 2002 and went on to feature in several reality shows and magazines, said that “everybody in the public eye has trolls”, adding: “They lash out, they pick on you, as in my case.” She continued: “When I was bodybuilding they trolled me for that, when I was modelling they trolled me for that; now it’s the animals.”
Her Instagram account describes her as a “former model and documentary maker. Now owner of Fripps Farm animal sanctuary.” Uttlesford District Council last year rejected an application for lemurs to be kept at the animal sanctuary, and Ms Marsh is appealing against this decision.
Her lawyer Paul Oakley asked her a series of questions about a report, prepared for the council by vet Dr Stephen Philp, which raised questions about whether it was appropriate to grant the licence. Ms Marsh said the vet was “basing his evidence off my trolls and neighbours”.
She described as “banter” a comment, made in an interview with Nigel Farage on GB News, that she took a meerkat called Mabel to the pub “four nights per week”. “That was banter, that was me being funny,” she said. “Nigel and I laughed the whole time.”
She said she took the meerkat to a pub “on a few occasions when I was hand-rearing her.” She added: “The pub I would take her to was a friend’s pub a mile from my house. It’s a food pub, not a drinking pub. It’s never busy in the week.”
She said she would go and get a “bowl of chips or something for my dinner then come back.” She told the court: “Most of the time when I did take Mabel to the pub nobody even knew she was there, she was in my jumper or in her case.”
She said that “it’s not illegal to take a meerkat in a pub” and that Mabel “was hand-reared from a baby, she lives with me in the house as well.” Asked about a separate incident, Ms Marsh said: “The only animal I’ve given CBD to was the llama and the vet told me to give it to her.”
She said that an incident, where she lifted a goose by the neck while filming a video about ducklings, was “so it wouldn’t attack the baby ducklings” as the goose approached and that the goose was not hurt. “I plopped it (the goose) onto the pond,” she said. “I didn’t swing it or throw it.”
She told the court that a horse “certainly didn’t bolt” during a photoshoot for a glamour calendar. “The horse wasn’t scared, absolutely not,” she said, adding: “He was loving all the fuss and he was only out for about five minutes tops.”
She said that the animal sanctuary was “not overstocked, we have that in writing from Defra [Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs] who are the only people who matter when it comes to animal welfare.” Asked by Mark Smith, for Uttlesford District Council, about issues of noise in relation to lemurs, Ms Marsh said: “The noise was never a factor.”
“We’re all set in five acres of land,” she said. She added that her application “didn’t get rejected because of noise – it got rejected because I touched a goose by its neck and took a meerkat to bed with me.” Ms Marsh has previously spoken of how she has helped fund the animal sanctuary through her use of the website OnlyFans.
In 2023, she told BBC Essex that OnlyFans was “amazing” and “paid my staff wages for the first year.” She said: “They all joke and say ‘your boobs pay our wages’.” The case continues.
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