Celebrity News, and Gossip

Angelina Jollie and Brad Pitt are living in a billionaire’s villa. With a maternity suite that is only eight minutes by a helicopter.

Villa Maryland Owned by Paul Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, is a vast Florentine-styled palace. It has 12 bedrooms, with easy access to indoor and outdoor pools, and a formal garden to rival any in other the South of France. Just foe even easier access the Villa Maryland boasts not one but two helipads.

For Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, access to such a convenient escape route is the chief appeal of this location.

With Angelina expecting the new arrivals in August, the Hollywood couple are leaving nothing to chance.

Just like any mother-to-be, Angelina Jolie is making sure that help is available should the twins decide on an early arrival.

So Brad Pitt has been busy working with Angelina putting together, a military-style plan that has already been tried and tested.

Just to get the timing right, the couple and their four children boarded Mr. Allen’s gold-painted helicopter for a dummy run to the $4,000-a-night maternity unit of the Princess Grace Hospital in nearby Monaco, where a medical suite has been reserved for Angelina.

Brad Pitt has successfully trimmed the trip down to eight minutes door-to-door, and an army-trained pilot put in place to be on 24-hour standby in case of emergencies.

Notwithstanding the weather if it is so bad as to make it impossible to fly, Angelina and Brad have a Plan B.

Brad and Angelina earlier this week, they climbed into a blacked-out, chauffeur-driven Mercedes and, that was escorted by two SUVs containing their round-the-clock security detail, to time how long it takes to get to another private hospital in Grasse. 30 minutes is all it took!

All of this you might think is way too much, especially as Angelina and Brad are already traveling with not one but two trained nurses and a midwife. With another eminent baby specialist, Dr Jason Rothbart, on hand in Los Angeles to offer advice over the phone to her medical team in France.

However if you are in a new country you want things to go as planned and you are a little more cautious. So it is understandable that Angelina Jolie is adamant that she would be safe rather than sorry.

Also if the rumors circulating in Hollywood this week have any element of truth, Brad Pitt has been trying to persuade Angelina to make life simpler by having the babies back home in America, where she had her other biological child, Shiloh, two years ago.

Angelina is also at odds with Brad Pitt over her insistence on carting her children around the world with her. Reports in the States this week suggested that the upheaval caused by their constant traveling - the trip to France is the 18th time she has uprooted her children in the past year - is starting to tell on the two boys, Maddox and Pax. Although the media argue that the boys are displaying behavioral problems due to the constant moving about, it sounds more to me that they are lacking in routine. As most of us know children need a stable routine. So as long as there is routine in their lives I cannot see what the media are concerned over.

Besides Angelina Jolie feels more secure in France for there were a series of drug-related shootings near their home in the exclusive suburb of Los Feliz and earlier this month the window of a camper van owned by the couple was shattered after bullets were fired from a passing car.

So the South of France is at least more secure for Angelina’s family. However Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have just shelled out $20 million on an 850-year-old, seven-bedroom French farmhouse near Aix- en-Provence. Despite the high price they have not been able to move in there because the air conditioning they have had installed is still not working and Angelina refuses to return until workmen have solved a mould problem in the ancient house for fear it will affect the children’s health.

Brad Pitt is also waiting for work to begin on a motorcycle track on the property for which Brad has recently been granted planning permission. Brad’s has had his favourite Ducati motorbike specially shipped to France.

Friends say Angelina is keen for Brad Pitt to concentrate on their charitable foundation and their project to build 150 homes in New Orleans for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, plus his fledgling political career. Brad, on the other hand, seems happy with flying his light aircraft (he has just won his pilot licence).

So France has many attractions for family life that Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would be hard pressed to find at home.