Squalor the butler saw in £10m Harley Street home of aristocrat

The junk-filled, cluttered rooms with damp walls and filthy carpets are in the basement of Jacqueline Lady Killearn's five-storey town house.

The 98-year-old diplomat's widow, who has dined with Sir Winston Churchill and been invited to Clarence House by Prince Charles, also owns a 145-acre, 16th-century estate called Haremere Hall in Sussex.

But today her former butler, Paolo Sclarandis, gave a disturbing insight into the upstairs-downstairs life in one of London's most famous streets after he won £1,200 from his former employer for unfair dismissal.

Mr Sclarandis, 64, told a tribunal in Ashford, Kent, that Lady Killearn treated him like a slave and made him live in filthy quarters for which she deducted rent from his £14,400 wage.

The panel ruled in his favour after he told how he was forced to work 67-hour weeks and was called a "monster" and a "toad".

The Italian said his four-year ordeal with Lady Killearn had left him a broken man. He said: "I hate her and her toy boy boyfriend, they made my life hell. My situation has deteriorated in such a desperate way, psychologically and financially. But I have had a moral revenge for what I have suffered."

Lady Killearn, the widow of Baron Killearn, a former British ambassador to Cairo, was well-known on the society circuit, hosting an annual birthday party at her Harley Street home for 300 of her friends.

The tribunal heard that during Mr Sclarandis's four years in Harley Street, he shopped, cleaned and decorated for his wealthy boss. He also said he gave her hamburgers and doughnuts from McDonald's.

He claimed he was never given a contract or put on the payroll, and was evicted after making plans to get another job with better pay and living conditions.

Lady Killearn's part-time secretary Lydia Skerry, however, told the hearing the butler would routinely bully and shout at his mistress, feed her pasta drenched in olive oil and "virtually raw" meat.

She said: "He often stood over Lady Killearn bullying her and I would sometimes come back from work to find her shaking.

"Paolo complained bitterly about many things and was grumbling and unwilling. His prime concern should have been Lady Killearn and her safety."

Speaking from his Hammersmith apartment Mr Sclarandis said: "What happened with Lady Killearn may be attributed to a problem with the English upper classes.

"She treated me like a skivvy, like a slave. She had no consideration for my physical life. I chose to be a butler because I thought I would be with someone as nice as my old friends from London 30 years ago.

"Society, including high society, has changed and London has changed. It was gloomy when I first arrived here but it was more pleasant, more humane."

Speaking after the tribunal, Lady Killearn's friend and land agent, the businessman Robert Hay, 61, said: "I suppose this is what is called justice but it's not in our eyes."