Aristocracy’s most poisonous feud turns even MORE toxic...
ONCE convicted of violating the Public Order Act, Otis Ferry and fellow members of the so-called ‘Westminster Eight’ were star guests as the Game Fair opened yesterday at Ragley, the Marquess of Hertford’s magnificent 6,000-acre Warwickshire estate — 18 years after audaciously bursting into the House of Commons during a fox-hunting debate.
But there is to be no such welcome for someone with whom the Marquess is rather better acquainted and who has never been taken into police custody — his elder son and heir, William Seymour, Earl of Yarmouth.
Instead, I can reveal that William and his wife, former Goldman Sachs banker Kelsey Wells, will join the 120,000 others expected at the threeday Fair by stumping up the admission price.
‘Lord and Lady Yarmouth have bought tickets to attend the Game Fair in a personal capacity,’ a spokesman for St Maur, the elderflower liqueur company the couple established four years ago, tells me.
The move is not without risk. ‘Harry [the Marquess] wrote to William to say that should we, or anyone associated with us, set foot on the estate, he would treat that as trespass and would use whatever legal means available to prevent us from doing so,’ Kelsey claimed last year.
She had spoken out, after allegedly being subjected to withering scorn by William’s family for committing social solecisms such as calling the butler by his Christian name and using her mother-in-law Lady Hertford’s bathroom without permission.
‘He specifically included his oneyear-old grandson in that edict,’ added Kelsey who, since then, has given birth to a second son. The
Game Fair appeared to offer a wonderful opportunity for rapprochement, especially if St Maur secured a stand at the event. ‘Our application was declined,’ a St Maur spokesman tells me. ‘The Game Fair said they were oversubscribed for drinks providers. We asked if they had a particular problem with St Maur taking part, given the connection that Lord Yarmouth has [with Ragley]. They declined to answer that question.’
DESPITE their disappointment, the Yarmouths have, I’m told, donated a prize worth £1,500 to the Game Fair raffle, which raises funds to alleviate food poverty.
The Game Fair insists that St Maur’s application was declined simply because of a lack of space.
Lord and Lady Hertford decline to say whether William and Kelsey will be treated as trespassers. Doubtless they will, in any case, steel themselves for a chance encounter with William’s aunt, Lady Carolyn Seymour, who wrote to tell him that his wedding invitation was ‘embarrassingly awful’ and signed off: ‘You pompous ass/t*t/ p **** — take your pick.’