EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Eccentric gun nut Sir Benjamin Slade becomes a father at the age of 75
Eccentric aristocrat Sir Benjamin Slade, who once placed an advertisement for a wife who could provide him with two sons, has become a father at the age of 75.
The baby is, however, a girl, which means that his decades-long quest continues for a male heir who can inherit his baronetcy and 2,000-acre Somerset pile, Maunsel House.
‘It’s an awkward situation,’ one of his friends tells me. ‘He’s pleased to have had a child, but it’s not clear if he is still going out with her mother. She is now living in France with the baby.’
The mother is understood to be Sahara Sunday Spain, a poet/composer 46 years his junior.
Eccentric aristocrat Sir Benjamin Slade, who once placed an advertisement for a wife who could provide him with two sons, has become a father at the age of 75. The baby is, however, a girl, which means that his decades-long quest continues for a male heir who can inherit his baronetcy and 2,000-acre Somerset pile, Maunsel House
Last summer, I revealed that Sir Benjamin, a keen shot who has 80 firearms on display in his bar room, was due to be married to Sahara, the daughter of Johnny Spain, a member of the Black Panthers who was jailed for murder.
‘It’s all top secret because Ben’s relations are furious,’ one of his friends told me at the time. ‘They’re very suspicious, because it’s all happened in such a hurry.’
The mother is understood to be Sahara Sunday Spain, a poet/composer 46 years his junior
The wedding is understood to have been called off at the 11th hour.
The usually talkative Sir Benjamin declines to discuss his fatherhood, but he confirmed in 2020 that he had embarked on an unlikely relationship with Sahara. ‘We’re sort of dating,’ Sir Benjamin told me.
‘When lockdown happened, one of the people that came to stay was Miss Sahara Spain. She’s still here.’
It’s a far cry from where she was brought up in the urban desolation of Dogtown in Oakland, on the east shore of San Francisco Bay. Her mother, Elisabeth Sunday, is a photographer while her father gained infamy as a member of the San Quentin Six, a group of prisoners who attempted a breakout.
His daughter had been helping deal with the legal problems of Sir Benjamin, who was ordered to pay more than £150,000 in damages in 2019 to two women forced out of their jobs because they were pregnant.
The baronet had expressed his determination to produce a male heir. ‘I would like to start a family,’ he said. ‘My relatives don’t want to take on the house. They’re very rich and would sell it.’
I’m A Celebrity winner Harry Redknapp is a loser at the sport of kings. I learn the former Spurs manager is axing his horse-racing business, Three Kings Racing Ltd, after it racked up losses of more than £133,000.
Redknapp, 74, set up the business in 2016 and has filed for it to be struck off the Companies House register.
On I’m A Celebrity, Redknapp revealed how he chatted about his bookmaker grandmother to ‘this girl’, unaware who she was.
When she mentioned her own grandma, he twigged that she was Princess Beatrice talking about the Queen.
Bang go Rob Brydon’s chances of a knighthood. ‘We all have an age at which we peak,’ the Gavin & Stacey star says.
‘The example I always give is Prince William. Do you remember as a teenager, he had about a year when he was gorgeous. For just 12 months, he looked like a model . . . then the gene pool kicked in.’
The stand-up comic adds: ‘For a while, he could have been on the cover of a magazine. After, he could still have been on the cover of a magazine, but it would have been Horse & Hound and somebody would have been riding him.’ Off with his head!
The smart set’s talking about…
Churchill scion’s happy news
Sir Winston Churchill once said his ‘most brilliant achievement’ was persuading Clementine to marry him. And his great-granddaughter Flora Soames is equally pleased with some news of her own
Sir Winston Churchill once said his ‘most brilliant achievement’ was persuading Clementine to marry him.
And his great-granddaughter Flora Soames is equally pleased with some news of her own.
Top interior designer Flora, 39, has got engaged to ceramic artist Alexander Macdonald-Buchanan, 51.
‘I’m thrilled,’ she tells me. ‘I feel very lucky to have met him.’
The couple — who have a two-year-old daughter, Lily — hope to exchange vows later this year at her family home in Norfolk.
Her fiance also has two children from a previous marriage and Flora is sure all three will be part of the bridal party.
‘It’s just great to have some uplifting news,’ she adds. ‘We couldn’t be happier.’
Flora suffered heartbreak in 2018 when her boyfriend, much-loved voice coach Anthony ‘Ant’ Gordon Lennox, died at the age of 48.
Advantage Emma! Tennis ace hits town
The 19-year-old tennis champion hit Shoreditch, East London, to attend a launch party for Evian, for which she’s a ‘global brand ambassador’
As our new sporting heroine, Emma Raducanu has been collecting multi-million-pound sponsorships even quicker than she’s been attracting potential boyfriends.
But let’s hope her new patrons are not working her too hard.
On Thursday night, the 19-year-old tennis champion hit Shoreditch, East London, to attend a launch party for Evian, for which she’s a ‘global brand ambassador’.
And she managed to kill two birds with one stone by wearing a bejewelled purple mesh dress by Dior, the fashion house which signed her up to wear its outfits after her shock U.S. Open win last year.
Raducanu, who topped Tatler magazine’s annual list of the most eligible Brits, paired her eye-catching dress with strappy stilettos and a slick blazer draped over her shoulders.
After her first Grand Slam victory last September, she admitted: ‘I’ll want to switch off completely, to be honest,’ and duly went on her first holiday in seven years.
Is all well between Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas and her stage actor boyfriend of three years, Danny Taylor?
I ask only because Ballas, 61, and Taylor, 48, were previously said to be living together and on the verge of marriage, but now she admits they see each other only ‘occasionally’.
‘Right now, most of the time I live on my own — I see Danny occasionally, but not all the time,’ the dancer explains.
‘My relationship with Danny isn’t normal, but it works in its own way. Danny is a touring actor. I’m also busy and we have an understanding of each other’s jobs.
‘He calls me several times a day and I try to see him at least once a week or every few weeks but I find it quite difficult to be apart.’
Tony Blair’s wife Cherie and son Euan are winners in the pandemic house price boom. I can disclose that their property company has made its first million.
The pair run Oldbury Residential Ltd, which manages more than ten flats in Manchester and Stockport, and accounts filed this week reveal the pair are sitting on a £792,000 upturn in their value, as well as £274,000 in accumulated profits.
Their investment property was worth £3.4 million in April last year. Euan, 38, is said to be even more wealthy than his father after setting up an apprenticeship business, Multiverse, valued at £639 million.
New film Boiling Point vividly depicts the extraordinary pressures in top restaurant kitchens. Back home, the tensions can be just as great.
I hear one of the restaurant world’s most devoted marriages is over after a decade.
Matt Abe, 36, who is one of Gordon Ramsay’s top chefs and has appeared on television programmes including MasterChef: The Professionals has separated from his wife, Sally, 34, a Great British Menu star who was head chef at London’s only Michelin-starred pub, the Harwood Arms.
‘It’s a real shame, but unfortunately they’ve just drifted apart,’ a source close to the pair tells me. ‘There’s nobody else involved — Matt and Sally have simply decided they’re better off as friends.’
The pair declined to comment.
Now another blue blood weds American actress
Where Prince Harry leads . . . others follow. I hear the son of hereditary peer Lord Colgrain has also fallen for the charms of a divorced American actress.
This week, art adviser Nick Campbell, 35, got married in Texas to Kelly Frye, 37, who’s best known for her role in TV drama Criminal Minds.
The couple met at a party when Frye was visiting a friend in London. ‘He looked like Hugh Grant,’ she says, referring to two Anglo-American romantic comedies. ‘I was having a Holiday meets Notting Hill moment.’
Campbell, who used to go out with Made In Chelsea star Caggie Dunlop, says: ‘Kelly stood out because of her red hair. My goal was to speak to her.’
After she returned to Los Angeles, he followed her on social media but she embarked on a serious relationship with someone else.
However, she couldn’t get Campbell out of her head and he was the first she told after breaking up with his love rival. Last October, he proposed at his parents’ 1,000-acre estate in Kent and they exchanged vows last week in her native Houston.
Campbell gushes: ‘My life is so much better and bigger with her.’
Brick Lane author Monica Ali has already sold the TV rights to her racy new novel, Love Marriage, even though it was published just this week. ‘We haven’t cast anyone yet, but if we could get Tilda Swinton to play [bohemian single mother] Harriet, that would be so cool,’ she tells me at the launch party at the Union Club in Soho.
It’s being adapted for the BBC by New Pictures, which made Catherine The Great starring Dame Helen Mirren.
(Very) modern manners
Electric bicycles and scooters have turned the previously tranquil retreat of Kensington Gardens, where J. M. Barrie was inspired to write Peter Pan, into a danger zone, according to Martha Sitwell.
The socialite is calling for a crackdown on the modern menaces after her dog was almost killed.
‘My bull lurcher, Earnest, was hit by a bicycle,’ she tells me. ‘Luckily, he’s a big dog, and only sustained a bad sprain and several grazes, but, of course, the bicycle was uninsured so I had to cover his expensive X-ray costs.’
The ex-wife of film-producing baronet Sir George Sitwell adds: ‘This week, I had a horrible day at the park —within the space of an hour, I said to ten people on scooters: “This isn’t a bicycle path — you need to be over there.”
‘Half of them swore at me and half didn’t know they were in the wrong place because it isn’t well signed.
‘Everyone in the park is fed up. Can’t we just keep our parks as one place of peace?’
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