Love at last: Viscount, 58, weds for first time ...

As the elder son of the 8th earl of Mexborough, and heir to North Yorkshire estates extending to 20,000 acres, Viscount Pollington might seem enviably blessed.

Yet Johnny Pollington’s life has been defined by tragedy, having lost his mother and sister to addiction.

But now, after his own battles with drink and drugs, he is to marry for the first time, at the age of 58. his bride is Norma Phoenix, 55, who has one son from a previous marriage. ‘I’m very happy for him,’ says his halfsister, Lady Lucinda Ankarcrona, 45.

Young Johnny and late sister Alethea had an unconventional upbringing and moved to London with their erratic mother, elizabeth, who sometimes had breakfast brought to her at 4am. ‘It was a tricky childhood,’ recalls a contemporary. ‘Johnny was always snivelling.’

In adulthood, Alethea believed herself trapped in a love triangle

involving her one-time fiance, James Gilbey, and Gilbey’s closest female friend, Diana, Princess of Wales, whom Gilbey nicknamed ‘Squidgy’.

Alethea was shattered by the socalled ‘Squidgy Tapes’ — recordings released of intimate conversations between Gilbey and the Princess of Wales, in which Gilbey said to Diana: ‘Oh Squidgy, I love you.’

In September 1994, Pollington found Alethea dead in her Chelsea flat, dosed with heroin, cocaine and antidepressants. The inquest heard how, instead of reporting her death, he attempted to hunt down those he believed had sold her the drugs, became involved in ‘a scuffle’ in a house in Barnes, South-West London, then went to a pub where he downed ‘three or four doubles’.

The next year, Pollington was arrested for threatening customers of the Grove Tavern in Knightsbridge.

It’s unlikely that he’ll lapse back into bad behaviour now he’s with Norma — a former counsellor who is now a polygraph examiner working for one of the UK’s leading lie detection services.