DIARY
NIGEL DEMPSTER Royal Ascot this week reminded me of a passage in the autobiography of the late Lord Clark of 'Civilisation'. In it he recounted how in the early summer of 1940, when he was with the Ministry of Information, he was sent to Paris and expected to find the French capital batten- ing down the hatches in the face of the impending German advance. Instead, the city was as if en fete, with nary a sign of panic, and Clark wrote in explanation: 'I realised then they had no intention of fight- ing.' For me the most noticeable group at Ascot was the Lloyd's losers, many of them old pals of mine whose indebtedness ranges from between £1 million each to, in one spectacular case, over £5 million. An Old Harrovian former 'name' even successfully applied for a voucher for the Royal Enclo- sure despite the fact that he was declared bankrupt two years ago owing almost £1 million (his further Lloyd's losses would have doubled that by now). Far from being down-hearted the Lloyd's losers were in the thick of the roistering, being greeted and entertained by their more fortunate con- temporaries who had never been gulled into 'investing' in the insurance market. Quite simply, their enjoyment of this most sociable of occasions was heightened by the knowledge that Lloyd's could whistle for the money. Like the Parisians in May 1940, they have no intention of fighting, or pay- ing. Almost all the seven-figure losers I know (around 100) should never have been allowed into the market in the first place as their net worth was a fraction of the demands they now face — one even had his £3,000 cheque for his entrance fee bounced by Coutts yet was still welcomed by Lloyd's after the cheque cleared on re-presenta- tion. They were simply the cannon-fodder being trawled in the mid-Eighties to sop up the multi-billion claims looming on the horizon, and never saw a cheque — indeed the first communication they received from their agents was a demand for cash.
By a sad coincidence, Colonel Sir Piers Bengough, who for 12 years has been Her Majesty's Representative at Royal Ascot (the course has been owned by the sovereign since Queen Anne's time), is a Lloyd's casualty. So much so that Ben- gough, a former amateur jockey and com- mander of the Royal Hussars, is contem- plating selling his fine Herefordshire house. His son Andrew, known as Bengo, has simi- larly been afflicted, and has left his job as an underwriting agent at Lloyd's. If Sir Piers hands over next year, as expected, he will be succeeded by the Marquess of Hart- ington, son and heir of the Duke of Devon- shire, who is also Senior Steward of the Jockey Club. Known as 'Stoker', he, I'm happy to report, has never been involved in Lloyd's.
If the telephone calls and faxes I am receiving are anything to go by, it appears that I am regarded as a Lord Lucan expert. This November will be the 20th anniversary of the murder of Sandra Rivett, his chil- dren's nanny, and his disappearance, and a film, a mock-murder trial staged by Grana- da TV, and a new book (by Dave Gerring, the former Detective Chief Inspector who was second in command of the murder inquiry) are planned. My expertise, if it is so, stems, I suppose, from the fact that my Mail diary made the first mention, in 1973, of the separation of Lord and Lady Lucan after ten years of marriage and three chil- dren, a separation which precipitated the events leading up to the murder. During my later researches, all of those to whom I spoke, including Sir James Goldsmith, John Aspinall, Lord White of Hull and Bill Shand Kydd, believed that John Lucan had committed the murder and had, in Aspinall's words, 'fallen on his sword' as the honourable thing to do. Over the years, several have changed their mind; for instance, Shand Kydd, whose sister-in-law `Your job's going to a dog in the reshuffle.' Veronica is the Countess of Lucan, now firmly believes that Lucan did not murder poor Sandra Rivett. All, however, believe the errant earl to be dead. All except Inspector Gerring, who told me last week that he is of the firm opinion that Lucan is still with us, being taken care of. At the time of his disappearance Lucan, who would now be 59, was on his uppers, but should he return he will find his financial situation vastly improved. His family trust owns land in the Laleham area of Surrey, including the golf course and 100 acres leased for gravel extraction, its worth esti- mated in excess of £1.5 million And there is an estate at Castlebar, County Mayo where tenants have refused to pay ground- rents since the peer's disappearance, saying they will only hand over the money to Lucan 'in person'. Two years ago a local county councillor put the amount owed at more than IR£400,000. There has been, also, a growing feeling in legal circles that if Lucan was to return and face trial he would get off, if only on the grounds that the vast publicity has prejudiced his case. Come back, Lucky, all is forgiven!
I, for one, am delighted that Jimmy Gold- smith, as he is known in France, was elected a Euro MP this week, and will head his own party in Brussels, returning to the forefront of European politics rather than becoming a Howard Hughes-type figure on his huge Mexican estate, patrolled by a private army. His is too fine and iconoclastic a mind to be wasted, and certainly the campaigning has given Goldsmith, whose late father, Frank, was an MP in the Thirties, a new taste for combat. Eighteen years ago I spent most of a fine summer in court facing legal barrages from Goldsmith, which were likely to cost me my job and my savings, and despite being likened to 'pus' by him during his bravura performances in the witness box came to admire him. My favourite memory was of a day in Bow Street when Richard Ingrams and Patrick Marnham were con- vinced they were about to be committed to prison for criminal libel. The lanky Jimmy had been craning out of the box, maniacally gesturing at his enemies in the well of the court, and had been told by the magistrate to stop 'pacing about like a caged tiger'. He had a horse running that afternoon at Goodwood and news reached me that it had won. I passed up a note to Goldsmith, who was in the witness box directly above me, which read: 'Your horse won at Goodwood. The Stewards have demanded a dope test on its owner.' In mid-reply to a deeply seri- ous question from his QC, Lewis Hawser, Goldsmith read my note and burst into demonic laughter. Ingrams and Marnham were, of course, reprieved.
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