Pink Floyd star’s adopted son cut out of ‘real’ dad’s will
When Charlie Gilmour, the adopted son of legendary Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour, was jailed for his role in the student riots of 2010, he blamed it on his rejection by his natural father.
In a tragic postscript to the story, I can reveal that his biological father, heathcote Williams (right), has, in a final act of paternal repudiation, omitted all mention of Charlie from his will.
Drafted on April 27, 2016, and revoking all earlier wills, the Old etonian poet and enthusiastic environmentalist, who died last summer aged 75, left his entire estate of £239,547 to his daughters China and Lily Williams.
Gilmour shocked the nation when he was photographed swinging from the Cenotaph by a Union Flag in 2010. The Cambridge University student also leapt onto the bonnet of a Jaguar in a convoy taking the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to the theatre, and was one of a mob that smashed the windows of a Topshop store. Pleading guilty to violent disorder, the then 21- year- old explained his mind had been scrambled by bingeing on drink and drugs after being spurned by his father, who played almost no part in his life. In 2010, Charlie, hearing that Williams was apparently seriously ill, tracked him down to a house in Oxford where they enjoyed what he believed was a happy reunion. But, months later, Williams told him he was cutting him out of his life. The judge was unmoved, sending Gilmour to jail. he served four months of a 16-month sentence. The maverick Williams had a relationship with Sixties model Jean Shrimpton, accidentally setting himself on fire when demonstrating fire-eating at her front door. Later, he moved in with Diana Senior, an Oxford historian, by
whom he had China and Lily, before becoming enamoured of novelist Polly Samson, by whom he fathered Charlie.
While with Polly, Williams arrived for a weekend at Port Eliot, the Cornwall estate owned by Peregrine Eliot, 10th Earl of St Germans, only to stay for eight years.
Polly returned to London long beforehand, explaining to Eliot that Williams had had a breakdown. Not long afterwards, she met David Gilmour, who married her and adopted Charlie as a child.
In an interview 18 months ago, Charlie, 28, recalled his ambivalent feelings about his father. ‘The one thing that I did feel very strongly was the hypocrisy of someone wanting to save the otters but not really being able to care for his own child.’