JAN MOIR: She met Epstein solely as soon as, however Melinda Gates recognised ‘evil personified’ – so why did nobody else?

Few people emerge well or with dignity or with their moral compass intact if they dipped even a toe in the fetid pool that bubbled around Jeffrey Epstein for all those years, but Melinda French Gates is one of them.

Perhaps even the only one. Or at least the only one who wasn’t a victim.

The former wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates met the deceased sex offender ‘precisely once’ and alarm bells started shrieking in her head straight away. It was 2013, at a dinner in Epstein’s New York townhouse, she was there with her husband, all very nice, pass the salt, let’s raise money for charidee, what could possibly go wrong?

Only everything.

Mrs Gates found Epstein ‘abhorrent’ and ‘evil personified’. She hated him on sight and felt so uncomfortable in his home and his presence that she tried to stop her husband from fraternising with him. And when he refused, she eventually divorced him in 2021, after 27 years of marriage.

What was it that made her so apprehensive? Was it the décor of the notorious mansion on the Upper East Side?

The sculpture of a woman in a bridal dress hanging by a rope from the ceiling; the first-edition copy of the novel Lolita on prominent display; the chessboard with naked female figures; the profusion of young girls flitting about the place; the flagrant misogyny that seeped through the walls of this honeytrap hive of carnality, with queen bee Ghislaine Maxwell presiding over the evil revels? And if Melinda felt the prophetic essence of it all, why couldn’t everyone else?

All those smart guys such as Gates and Bill Clinton and the not-so-smarts like Donald Trump and the former Prince Andrew. All their wives, such as Hillary Clinton, the assorted Mrs Trumps and chaotic Sarah Ferguson; women who were blind to their husbands’ whereabouts, or who turned a blind eye or were so consumed by blind greed that they simply didn’t care what was going on.

Everyone is now scrambling for distance and pretending they didn’t have a clue, but it was certainly no secret. Epstein was a boaster who delighted in hiding in plain sight and he had no shame; indeed, he was proud of himself and particularly delighted in taking the virginity of these poor girls.

He doesn’t like to be reminded of it now but in 2002 Donald Trump said that his pal Jeffrey Epstein was a ‘terrific guy’ and added: ‘It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.’

Now Trump has just signed a Bill directing the Justice Department to open the vaults and release the so-called Epstein Files, which might reveal at last which men were or were not ­willing ­participants in this giant, sex-­trafficking racket.

The files have become an ­obsession in America, with ­Democrats convinced they might contain damaging kompromat about Trump, and Republicans convinced that the truth about Bill Clinton and high-profile ­Democrat supporters such as Bill Gates will finally come out.

In the most recent tranche of papers, Elon Musk’s name appears in flight records, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon pops up in emails and former Treasury ­Secretary Larry Summers has already announced he will step back from public roles after his name appeared.

It certainly seems strange – I can’t quite bring myself to use the word unfair – that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the only alleged abuser to have been publicly named, shamed and ruined.

Will President Donald J. Trump be the next?

To be honest, I don’t think so. His personality, behaviour ­patterns and taste in women ­suggest not. For Trump is one of those men who sees women as trophies. His three wives were all models, each one a high-maintenance, impeccably groomed, swishy haired glamazon whose shine reflects on him.

It seems unlikely the scrambled ego lurking under his own unlikely swish of marmalade hair could take the sociosexual demotion from beauty queen to gauche teen. In 1997, when a journalist from New Yorker magazine asked Trump if he considered himself ideal company, he replied: ‘You really want to know what I ­consider ideal company? A total piece of a**.’

And a lank-haired 17-year-old in a crop top and a pair of Britney Spears jeans – a la Virginia Giuffre on the night she met Prince Andrew – hardly fits that bill.

Yet as Melinda Gates perhaps understands, who knows what men will do when temptation is served to them on a tropical fruit platter on a private island far from prying eyes? She felt ‘unsettled’ and ‘furious’ that her husband continued to have ties with Epstein because it ‘betrayed everything I believed we stood for’.

Despite this, Bill Gates ­continued to meet with Epstein for ten more years because he believed it would help secure large philanthropic donations for his global health initiatives.

You see? He’s all heart. Just like Andrew, who also carried on ­seeing Epstein for the noblest of reasons – he didn’t want to end their friendship over the phone.

Bill Gates has since called his devotion to Epstein a ‘huge mistake’ and an ‘error in judgment’.

He should have listened to his wife. In fact, they all should have listened to Melinda.

By George! Give that man an Oscar…

Jay Kelly is the new film in which George Clooney plays a handsome but ageing movie star with a strong resemblance to George Clooney.

It hasn’t had fabulous reviews, but I couldn’t have loved it more. Touching and funny, melancholic and uproarious, it reminds us of how we are all shaped by where we have been and what we have done in life. Regrets? Jay has had a few. His is the sad dad story of career over kids, of missing the moments, and of self, self, self above all.

‘All my memories are ­movies,’ he says. Jay’s hollow and haunted, walking through life like a ghost, surrounded by an entourage yet somehow always alone. George is 64 but as Jay he seems older, thin-lipped and haggard, like a windswept tortoise.

‘Can we go again? I’d like another one,’ this is Jay’s plea both onstage and off. He wants another take, a second chance to reclaim what he has lost.

He’s not the father he should have been, he’s not the ­husband he could have been. In fact, the wife and mother of his children is barely mentioned, unlike the glowing Amal, always at his side in life and on the red carpet.

How strange celebrity must be, but is this George’s turn to seize an Oscar? If not, the film is still a powerful reminder to seize the moment.

This statue is a Bridget too far

We all love Bridget Jones, especially as depicted by the ­wonderful Renee Zellweger in four hit films.

But is the diary-writing super ditz really deserving of a statue in London’s Leicester Square?

You might as well stick Olive Oyl or Cheryl from Girls Aloud up there, if the bar is going to be set so low.

Actress Renee herself turned up to the unveiling of the bronze statue this week (left) and tried to explain the secret of Bridget’s enduring appeal. ‘Her vulnerability, her humanness, we ­recognise ourselves in her,’ she said.

Do we really? Aren’t statues supposed to be inspirational, not pitiable wrecks with whom we can empathise?

Even author Helen Fielding is a bit tired of grown women who can’t walk across a carpet without laddering their tights breathlessly telling her that they are ‘the real Bridget Jones’.

She had a suggestion. ‘Perhaps they can come and tell the statue now,’ she said.

Get well wishes and a big hug to Maud, my colleague Tom Parker Bowles’s dog who was savaged by a 10st mastiff in the streets near our office. Darling little Maud is a Jack Russell who nearly died, and has been left with injuries from which she might never fully recover. Heroically, Tom is not calling for the attack dog to be put down, but he does want owners to be more responsible and for these dogs to be muzzled. What are they even doing on the streets? I’m a canine lover but I’m beginning to think the unthinkable – are there just too many dogs now? 

How can trans row NHS boss retire early with her pension?

Well, well, well. Exit stage left Carol ­Potter, the chief executive of NHS Fife who oversaw the Sandie Peggie debacle.

You might recall Nurse Peggie was suspended from her job after she complained about the presence of male-born Dr Beth Upton in the female staff changing room of the hospital where they both worked.

Peggie went on to sue for discrimination and harassment – with the Employment Tribunal judgment due to be handed down in the next few weeks. But, conveniently, Carol Potter is taking early retirement and may slip away from the fracas ­without ­censure or blame.

This seems remarkable, given it has been established that not only did NHS Fife break the law by allowing transgender Dr Upton to use the changing room, but it was also planning to spend hundreds of ­thousands of pounds defending its ‘right’ to do so. The farcical tribunal that followed found an NHS Fife doctor saying that sex was a ‘nebulous’ concept, while an executive NHS colleague told the tribunal she didn’t know if she was a woman or not.

No one stood up for Peggie, a frontline nurse who has given the NHS many years of impeccable service.

Not the Scottish government, not the NHS and not Scottish health secretary Neil Gray, who has stated he has every ­confidence in the board of NHS Fife, an assessment that makes him unique and in a majority of one.

Carol Potter was part of a woke ­coalition, high on the SNP’s disastrous gender­politics, who tried to destroy a woman’s life. But after things didn’t quite go her way, Potter can look forward to heading off into the sunset with her pension and ­without rebuke.

Another fine mess the SNP has got us into. Scotland deserves more.