What could possibly go wrong!
By Barbara Davies and Alexis Parr Scores of Lord Bath’s warring wifelets gathering at his memorial for the Lothario dubbed the Loins of Longleat...
ON THE edge of Longleat Estate and Safari Park in Wiltshire, the beauty spot known as Heaven’s Gate boasts views which, on a clear day, stretch as far as Wales. It was here, on a hill overlooking his Elizabethan ancestral pile, that the late Marquess of Bath erected a giant granite ring sculpture to mark the Millennium. It was here, too, that the colourful aristocrat’s ashes were scattered when, aged 87, he died from Covid in April 2020. Alas, because of lockdown restrictions, that sad task had to be carried out by an undertaker, meaning that the vast gaggle of women in his life – cheekily dubbed ‘wifelets’ by lusty Lord Bath – were prevented from saying their final fond farewells.
But four years on, some of the wifelets – Bath notched up 75 of them in his lifetime – are now hatching a plan for a memorial service at Heaven’s Gate with flowers, candles, self-penned poems and, quite possibly, a glass of fizz.
Yes, you read that correctly, the famously warring wifelets of Bath gathered together to jointly mourn the wealthy aristocrat whose bed they once shared; on occasions, at the same time.
They didn’t like each other and all seemed slightly deranged
What could possibly go wrong? For as Lord Bath’s official biographer Nesta Wyn Ellis told the Mail this week: ‘I’ll be amazed if they can get on with each other long enough to hold a memorial. At the same time, if it goes ahead, none of them will want to miss out. They will all be jostling with each other and trying to show they are more important than the others.’
Not so, says 74-year-old former model and nurse Trudi Juggernauth-Sharma, who told the Mail this week that she was ‘thrilled’ about the prospect of holding a memorial with the other women who featured in Bath’s life.
‘We are all agreed. In principle it would be a lovely thing to gather where Alexander’s ashes have been scattered,’ cooed Mauritius-born Trudi who became Lord Bath’s girlfriend and wifelet number 68 in 1998 after she spotted him swallowing a whole mackerel at a party in London. She has in the past described herself as his ‘favoured mistress’.
‘There is nothing I’d like more than for all of us to open a bottle of champagne, propose a toast to him and raise a glass to his memory,’ she continued. ‘Heaven’s Gate is a very special place and I hope he is at peace there. Sadly some of his other wifelets cannot seem to find any peace for themselves though and that is a real shame for them.
‘Other women in his life have done and said hurtful things. But I am not possessive and I was always happy to share him.’
The memorial is the brainchild of Bridget Thynne, who has previously claimed to be a distant relative of Lord Bath; he dropped the ‘e’ from his family name and was known as Alexander Thynn.
While not specifying who has been invited and who has accepted – aside from Trudi who, Bridget claims, has been on the phone asking to attend – she tactfully describes the prospective invitees as Bath’s ‘dear friends’ and says she gets on with all of them.
‘I think it is because I am a lot like him [Lord Bath],’ said Bridget, talking to the Mail this week from her home in Australia. ‘We never had a chance to say goodbye. But we are still here. We grieve. So we decided to do something about it.’
Bridget, who once ran a design company with Lord Bath, lived in a cottage on the estate and spent time at his bolthole in the South of France. ‘We feel we need to be together, light candles and speak some readings of our love for Alexander,’ she added.
So who else is likely to be in attendance? Not, by the sound of things, Amanda Doyle who became wifelet number 69 after meeting Lord Bath at a Tommy Hilfiger launch party 23 years ago and still lives in a cottage on the Longleat estate. Insisting that Bridget is a ‘family friend’ and was never a wifelet, 59-year-old Amanda told the Mail this week: ‘She and Alexander were never lovers. She’s notorious for wanting to get attention and create a bit of publicity.’ No doubt Bridget’s recollections may vary.
According to Amanda, Bridget ‘loves organising parties and events, she’d sometimes invite half the village and they’d end up being quite the fiasco.
‘I’m sure she’s a lovely person but things go pear-shaped when she’s around’. She said she had not yet even been invited to the memorial by Bridget and, even if she was, wouldn’t go. ‘I think it would be lovely to have a true memorial for Alexander but I’m not sure this is going to be in the right light, so to speak,’ she added.
‘Is it really going to be about Alexander? Because I just don’t think it’s going to be spiritual.
‘Trudi’s not going to want to miss it because she does like a bit of publicity as well and she won’t want to miss the moment.
‘But I often go to Heaven’s Gate and pray for Alexander anyway. I don’t think I can get much closer to him than that.’ During his lifetime, Lord Bath was one of the nation’s most notorious – and wellheeled – Lotharios.
Although married since 1969 to Hungarian actress Anna Gael, the mother of his daughter Lady Lenka, now 54, and 49-year-old son Ceawlin who is now the 8th Marquess, the Eton and Oxfordeducated peer was dubbed ‘the Loins of Longleat’ and surrounded himself with mistresses.
‘I like the excitement of variation,’ he once said.
At the family’s 10,000-acre Wiltshire estate, Lord Bath kept a ‘Bluebeard’s Gallery’ of 75 or so numbered portraits of his concubines, fashioned from oil paint and sawdust and hung in numerical
order up the walls of a spiral staircase. During his heyday, he painted Kama Sutra murals on the walls of his 130-room Grade I-listed home.
According to biographer Nesta Wyn Ellis: ‘He could have quietly had mistresses on the side but he called them his wifelets and wanted them in full view, all mixed up together. They all clustered around him and they didn’t like each other. They all seemed slightly deranged.
‘They all thought they were going to become Lady Bath which was never going to happen. (He and Anna, who died in 2022, remained married until his death although she too had a lover and spent most of her time in Paris.) Judging from what I saw and knew of him, he enjoyed the conflict and rivalry between all the women, even when they came to blows.’ In one infamous spat, between Amanda and Trudi in his private rooms in 2011, matters became so heated the police were called. ‘It meant he was at the centre of everything and always in the eye of the storm,’ said Nesta.
Wifelet number 54, former model Cherri Gilham, who also once had a cottage on the estate, told the
Mail this week she ‘knows nothing’ about the Heaven’s Gate memorial. She added that she ‘totally regrets’ ever getting involved with Lord Bath. ‘It was an idiot time of my life,’ she said.
Back in 1993, when she publicly quit her wifelet role, she revealed the problems she faced at Longleat came from her female rivals.
‘I thought it was a hippy-like commune but it was a nest of vipers. Many wifelets were backbiting, treacherous and doubledealing,’ she said.
Another female friend of Lord Bath’s was also resolute this week that she would not be attending.
‘Nobody has asked me but I won’t go anyway,’ says Danish-born exmodel turned artist Ulla Plougmand who bonded with Lord Bath over their shared love of art after meeting at an exhibition in 2000.
‘I think it sounds distasteful, reciting a few trashy poems. I will never forget him but I don’t need to go down there.’
She became close friends with the womanising aristocrat and enjoyed intimate dinners at Longleat where the housekeeper, she recalls, ‘would let us get on with it and keep the other “ladies” away, if you can call them that’.
She spent holidays alongside the wifelets at his villa in St Tropez but turned down Lord Bath’s offer of a cottage on the estate. ‘I did have a good, long look but it wasn’t for me,’ she says. She eventually settled down with an Oxford don.
Despite turning up her nose at the memorial idea, she remains good friends with Bridget but has cooler feelings towards the rest of the clan. ‘I don’t want to bitch but most of the wifelets are just divas who have too little to do,’ she says.
‘I know some of them and the others I don’t want to know. I saw a lot of their behaviour. Alexander just let them get on with it. He was a lovely man.
‘Deep down, he knew the wifelets were out for what they could get but he was lonely.’
Many of the women drawn into his circle appeared to enjoy the VIP status that went hand-in-hand with being a wifelet. As well as living like royalty at Longleat, they accompanied him to glitzy society events in London where he kept a flat in Notting Hill.
Among those who appeared in his gallery of lovers were writer Shirley Conran, wifelet number 19. He dated her briefly in 1969.
Other wifelets included Bond girl Sylvana Henriques, cabaret artist Nola Fontaine and Jo Jo, ex-wife of Moody Blues and Wings guitarist Denny Laine.
While dozens of these women lived at Longleat over the years, at the time of his death only three remained. Amanda, Trudi and Mariella Antonella, who also worked for Lord Bath and was said to have been transcribing his diaries, still live in properties belonging to the 400-year-old £23million Longleat Estate.
This has caused further strife and legal wrangles over whether they should be allowed to remain in their homes now that their benefactor is dead. The trio have long insisted that Lord Bath, who snubbed them in his will, promised they would be looked after when he was dead. But like everything else in this unconventional tale, little is clear cut.
Soon after Lord Bath’s death, Trudi received a letter notifying her that she was trespassing by staying in her cottage. She said this week that there had been no further eviction threats.
‘We have an uneasy truce at present,’ she said. ‘Lines of communication are open.’
As well as fighting to stay in her Longleat cottage, Amanda Doyle has made a claim against Lord Bath’s estate on the basis that she was financially dependent on him for 21 years leading up to his death and his will failed to make reasonable financial provision for her.
She underwent IVF with Lord Bath and suffered multiple miscarriages which she says have
It was a nest of vipers, many wifelets were treacherous
I don’t want to bitch but most ot them were just divas
taken a toll on her body. ‘I deserve to be compensated for what I’ve been through,’ she said. ‘Alexander said I would never ever have to move. When he died I was angry with him for leaving me alone. I was brokenhearted to be left without him. I’m not going to walk away. I’m going to put up a fight as I’ve been through so much.
‘It’s different for Trudi and Mariella, they were just close friends. They weren’t in a close personal relationship like I was.’
Trudi, meanwhile, has insisted that she was in a close personal relationship with him.
Having been left high and dry by the man to whom they devoted themselves, the wonder is that the women wish to remember him at all, let alone hold a memorial for him. What then would Lord Bath make of such a spectacle?
Biographer Nesta says: ‘You think he’d want to be left in peace rather than have all these women jostling around him.
‘But maybe it’s a fitting tribute to Alexander to have them all squabbling at his graveside.’