Colourful Duke separates from his second wife
HIS immense inheritance includes 11,500 Oxfordshire acres and a stately pile larger than Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle — a disparity which caused George III to acknowledge that he had ‘nothing to equal’ it.
But it was his second marriage that moved a friend to describe Jamie Blandford — now the Duke of Marlborough and resident of Blenheim Palace — as ‘a very lucky man’.
His bride was the delightful, downtoearth Edla Griffiths, from Monmouthshire, whom the then Marquess of Blandford encountered while she was living in Chelsea, perfecting her craft as a ceramicist. They married in 2002, at the register office in Woodstock.
But, to the dismay of friends, the union now appears to have run its course. ‘Jamie and Edla have separated,’ one tells me. ‘It’s very sad.’
THE Duke, 68, who has a son and daughter, both teenagers, with Edla, 56, declines to comment. But he is not, apparently, bereft of female company. ‘He’s being comforted by a friend, Doune Murray,’ I’m told.
Those hoping the marriage may yet be salvaged mention previous marital squalls. The first was in 2004, when Edla moved out, unamused that Jamie had wandered off for eight weeks — first to Australia, where he watched the Rugby World Cup, then to Switzerland, where he went skiing in Verbier, the resort where his chum, Paddy McNally — Fergie’s first great love — entertained in style at his chalet.
Three years later came a still sterner test when a series of motoring and ‘road-rage’ offences saw Jamie jailed for six months. By then, Edla had already been credited by many — Jamie included — for ‘settling him down’ after his turbulent 20s and 30s, during which, at his lowest point, his desire for drugs regularly led him to the notorious Mozart Estate in North London.
She made it plain that he was going to lose her unless he reformed for good. He duly did — aware that his first marriage, to Becky Few Brown, with whom he had a son, George, now the Marquess of Blandford, had foundered because of hard-partying ways which once saw him shoot out Verbier’s streetlights with a shotgun, perhaps destabilised by McNally’s hospitality.
In recent years, he has done nothing more controversial than form a bond with Donald Trump, in whose honour a banquet was held at Blenheim in 2018. That couldn’t have persuaded Edla to call it a day . . . could it?