Porn baron buys ‘orgy’ mansion for £25mfrom fake lord
OVER the years, it has played host to supermodels, singers and playboys. The property was even the favoured venue for sex parties thrown by one of the Duchess of Cambridge’s erstwhile chums.
Now 33 Portland Place, the Grade II-listed Georgian mansion owned by fraudster ‘fast Eddie’, is to be sold to an equally colourful character – porn publisher David Sullivan.
When self-styled ‘Lord’ Edward Daven- port was convicted of a multimillion-pound fraud and jailed for eight years in 2011, he was told to pay a confiscation order of £12million as well as £2million to 51 victims. Released from prison on compassionate grounds last May after a kidney transplant, Davenport has been loath to part with his London home, despite it descending into faded grandeur over the past few years.
But unable to raise funds to pay his victims he has been forced to sell the Marylebone mansion he bought in 1998 for a knockdown price – for £25million.
Sullivan intends to spend a further £25million restoring the building to its former splendour with his wife, Emma Benton-Hughes, overseeing the refurbishment.
‘David intends to spare no expense on its restoration,’ said one of Sullivan’s circle. ‘He intends to sell it on for a huge profit.’
Built in 1776, the 24-bedroom house was the location for the Oscarwinning film The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter, and was also used in 2004 for The Life and Death Of Peter Sellers and Vera Drake.
Kate Moss was filmed on the staircase in a racy basque and stockings for an Agent Provocateur advertisement and Amy Winehouse shot a video for her single Rehab there.
More recently, the address had become a byword for decadence and promiscuity. Davenport had a lucrative sideline hiring out his home to Emma Sayle, who used to go to school with the Duchess of Cambridge. Amid its increasingly seedy and shabby surroundings, she hosted marathon sex parties.
The lower ground floor, with its nightclub area, hot tub and flashing lights, featured in scores of her infamous Killing Kittens get-togethers as well as in porn movies. At one party, Courvoisier built a swimming pool and filled it with 4,000 litres of cocktail so revellers could row across it. But the louche parties ended abruptly in 2010 when the High Court ruled that commercial activity at the house was banned.
Last night, friends said Davenport, who rose to fame in the 1980s with his boozy Gatecrasher balls, was heartbroken to lose his home. ‘Eddie is incredibly unhappy about the sale, but he doesn’t have a choice,’ one said. ‘The truth is he is devastated. He thinks it is all shockingly unfair.’