To lose one wife... Bride No 2 ditches lovelorn Earl
AMIABLE restaurateur the Earl of Bradford was devastated when his beloved first wife, Jo, abandoned him just days after their silver wedding anniversary.
So I’m sorry to hear that he’s now bereft again after his second wife, Penelope, left him. He confirms the split, telling me: ‘I’m very sorry that our marriage has ended in divorce.’
The Earl, 74, also known as Richard Bridgeman, declines to discuss the breakdown of his marriage, but one of his friends tells me: ‘He’s devastated. Penny instructed the powerful divorce lawyers Vardags, who are pushing for a big settlement, but Richard simply doesn’t have that sort of money.’
Yesterday, there was a divorce hearing at the High Court in London.
The Countess of Bradford, 60, is an obstetrician and gynaecologist known as Dr Penelope Law at London’s private Portland Hospital, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s son, Archie, was born.
Author of the birthing guide Expecting A Baby, she’s light-heartedly referred to as the doctor who’s ‘too posh to pull’ because of the number of Caesarean sections she’s performed.
She married former Ukip candidate Richard in 2008 (pictured). They were introduced by his daughter Alicia at a prize-giving at £38,454per-year Rugby School. She is the mother of one of Alicia’s classmates. The wedding took place near Weston Park, his family’s former stately home on the Shropshire-Staffordshire border.
Penny has admitted in the past that her professional success has come at a cost to her personal life and that being on call wreaked havoc with her social life. ‘Nobody would come to my house for lunch,’ she has said. ‘Because on two previous occasions I’ve left them to make their own lunch.’ The Earl, who ran Porters English Restaurant in Covent Garden, has four children with his first wife, daughter of Mayfair bookmaker Benjamin Miller.
DAVID CAmeron was distinctly unamused by the indiscretions about him recorded in the diaries of Sasha Swire, wife of his old chum and fellow etonian Hugo Swire. now, former Foreign office minister Hugo has tried to cheer up Cameron, who has been embroiled in a lobbying scandal over his involvement with the failed Greensill Capital company. ‘Hugo exchanged texts with David and suggested lunch,’ Sasha reveals at the Cheltenham Literature Festival. ‘But David said, why would he want to end up as the first chapter of your wife’s next collection of diaries? Hugo told him not to worry — Sasha was too busy writing Greensill The musical.’
EMPLOYING Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie as his ‘spin doctor’ seems to have emboldened casino and wildlife park heir Damian Aspinall to make strange requests to No 10. I can reveal he emailed to demand the PM shut down London Zoo. Aspinall said: ‘In ten years or less, urban zoos, or zoos less than 50 acres should be closed, or only hold a maximum number of animals.’
The email was sent in April, three months after Carrie started working for him. It has been released under Freedom of Information laws.