At Charles’s Scots mansion... playboy billionaire whose dad was a drug-dealing pig farmer
PLAYBOY billionaire Calvin Ayre isn’t averse to living up to his motto: ‘Gamblin’, drinkin’ and carryin’ on.’
Indeed, photographs posted on social media by the gambling tycoon tend to show him on yachts and in nightclubs surrounded by scantily clad women and with champagne in hand.
So images of the 60-year-old in the refined surroundings of Dumfries House, the Palladian mansion in Ayrshire lovingly restored by Prince Charles for the nation, will come as quite a surprise to some.
But what could the son of a convicted drug-smuggling Canadian pig farmer be doing enjoying the run of what has been dubbed the future King’s ‘passion project’?
Intriguingly, just months after Mr Ayre visited Dumfries House, near Cumnock, in October 2019, he signed a joint venture with Charles’s charitable foundation to build 22 new homes on the Caribbean isle of Barbuda – part of the Commonwealth – to replace those wiped out by Hurricane Irma.
The project may raise eyebrows among those critical of the Prince’s Foundation, especially in the wake of a ‘cash-for-honours’ scandal that has seen its former chief executive Michael Fawcett, one of Charles’s closest aides, accused of offering support to a Saudi donor Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz to obtain a knighthood. A police investigation is ongoing, with Mr Fawcett and Mr bin Mahfouz both denying any wrongdoing.
There is no suggestion of any impropriety by Mr Ayre, a generous philanthropist, according to islanders on Antigua where he has a £15million beachfront mansion, but he is unquestionably colourful.
Born in Canada, Mr Ayre’s first brush with the law came in 1987 when his father Ken, a pig farmer, was arrested for importing marijuana from Jamaica to Canada and was sentenced to four years in jail. The trial judge referred to the younger Mr Ayre as an alleged ‘co-conspirator’ who ‘undoubtedly played a part’ – though the billionaire has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and was never charged.
He built his fortune from Bodog, an online gambling company, and was once named by People magazine as among the world’s ‘hottest bachelors’.
Charles toured Antigua and Barbuda, part of the Leeward Islands, in November 2017 and described the damage he witnessed as ‘painful beyond words’. Seven months after his visit to Dumfries House, Mr Ayre announced that his and Charles’s respective foundations were teaming up to build 22 new homes on Barbuda to replace homes destroyed by the hurricane.
Norman Baker, the former Liberal Democrat MP who wrote to Scotland Yard calling for an investigation into the alleged ‘cashfor-honours’ scandal, last night said: ‘Prince Charles’s foundation has a history of taking money from unsavoury characters and it really needs to stop now.’
In a statement, Mr Ayre said: ‘I am not involved in any commercial developments in Barbuda of any sort and I am not aware of any commercial relationship between myself and anyone in the British Royal Family. My involvement in Barbuda is purely charitable. I am doing a hurricane relief project there and the Prince’s Foundation is involved but only in a ceremonial way. The project is being funded by my foundation.’
A spokesman for the Prince’s Foundation said it had offered its expertise ‘to support and restore safety and dignity to some of the many destitute families’.