Aspinall girl has a wounding encounter with Damian’s wolf

AS INQUIRIES continue into the killing of Harambe the gorilla, who was shot dead after a four-year- old boy fell into his zoo enclosure in America, British conservationist Damian Aspinall’s fiancee is recovering from her own close encounter with wild animals.

Burberry executive Victoria Fisher, 29, suffered a nasty wound in an incident with a wolf at Howletts Wild Animal Park, near Canterbury, which Damian inherited from his colourful father, John.

‘The wound looked terrifying,’ one of Victoria’s chums tells me. ‘ I was shocked. It’s a gash just above her right eye — any further down and it could have been a complete disaster.’

Oxford graduate Victoria declines to discuss the incident, but a friend insists it was a ‘minor’ wound which did not require hospital treatment: ‘Victoria regularly goes in with the wolves and this was a scratch from one of the animals she has reared.’

Yet Miss Fisher could be forgiven for fearing she’s dicing with danger by marrying into the casino-owning Aspinall tribe. Multi-millionaire Damian, 56, believes in a hands-on approach to the creatures at Howletts and Port Lympne, his other wildlife reserve in Kent. Five zoo-keepers were killed by animals while his father ran the parks.

Aspinall Snr was so close to the creatures he used to take his pet tiger with him to the Clermont Club in Mayfair, where he gambled with pals including late billionaire Sir James Goldsmith and the fugitive 7th Earl of Lucan.

Sir James’s stepson, nightclub owner Robin Birley, was mauled by a tiger at Howletts when he was 12 years old and left permanently disfigured.

By way of apology, John Aspinall stripped naked in front of Robin to show submission, in an act inspired by the gorillas’ behaviour in his reserve. Robin said later ‘the performance cheered us both enormously’.

After the latest incident, Damian seemed keen to encourage Victoria back into the wolves’ den. He posted a photograph of his fiancee, with the scar clearly visible, smiling with one of the animals. ‘Love this,’ Aspinall purred.

Damian has a 12-year-old daughter, Freya, with former girlfriend Donna Air and two others, Tansy, 26, and Clary, 23, by ex-wife Louise Sebag-Montefiore.

Howlett’s violent history was highlighted earlier this year when a friend of Lord Lucan claimed that the body of the peer — who disappeared after his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, was bludgeoned to death at his home in 1974 — was fed to the park’s tigers.