The truth about my friend Boris and my feud with Earl Spencer

By Jane Flanagan, in Cape Town Published: 9:00PM GMT twenty February 2010

Previous of Images Next Darius Guppy with Charles Spencer, for whom he was majority appropriate man. The dual after fell out spectacularly Photo: REX Darius Guppy and Benedict Marsh are driven afar from Snaresbrook Crown Court carrying been found guilty Photo: GRAHAM TROTT Darius Guppy: Since portion his prison judgment he has slipped, definitely deliberately, off the radio detector Photo: PA

Darius Guppy is sporting a black and bloodied nose a fumble from a armed forces humanities ring session, he is discerning to point out.

It might be twenty years since he completed roughly mime knave standing in the play surrounding Diana, Princess of Wales, but his feistiness stays undimmed.

Darius Guppy: the universe balances on a sea of debt Bullingdon Club docu-drama to underline David Cameron and Boris Johnson Mayfairs dim secrets laid unclothed

In those days he was frequency out of the newspapers. Best man at the marriage of Princess Diana"s brother, Earl Spencer, the dual fell out spectacularly.

A piece of of the Bullingdon Club, of that David Cameron and Boris Johnson were additionally members, he was after indicted of conspiring with Mr Johnson to kick up a journalist.

And, majority notoriously, he was locked up for his piece in a £1.8 million word fraud that could have come constant from a Hollywood script.

Since portion his prison judgment he has slipped, definitely deliberately, off the radar, relocating initial to Ireland and afterwards South Africa.

Now, in an disdainful talk with The Sunday Telegraph, he speaks for the initial time of those escapades and the hold up he has forged out for himself, and says: "I have no enterprise to reinvent myself if that were the box I"d sinecure a PR agent."

With Mr Cameron, his Old Etonian schoolmate, behest to turn Prime Minister of a nation in mercantile turmoil, he additionally expresses clever views, in an letter for the paper, about the dignified failings of the promissory note system.

He talks of the significance of religion, and family in his life; and an issue really close to his heart loyalty.

As a immature man, he altered in the majority chosen circles, but when his father lost his home and roughly all he owned in the Lloyd"s word meltdown, his son swore revenge.

He set out to revive the family happening by faking a spoliation in that he claimed he had lost a accumulate of gems. Lloyd"s paid up inside of weeks and Mr Guppy at the age of twenty-five was a millionaire.

However, the brazen tract was unclosed when he and his co-conspirators were tricked by an confederate and he was after jailed.

Since his recover in 1996, he has lived with his family in still obscurity, but accepts that he might usually be remembered for his gems heist or his purported ardour for revenge.

Tapes emerged last year of a write review in in in between Mr Guppy and Boris Johnson, afterwards a publisher with The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Guppy longed for his old propagandize and university crony to lane down a News of the World contributor who had been origination inquiries in to his personal hold up and have him knocked about up.

The Mayor of London"s shambling piece in the phone call, in that he is listened to determine notwithstanding reluctantly to try to find the reporter"s address, continues to be used by domestic opponents to theme Mr Johnson"s own integrity.

Mr Guppy leans brazen on the large lounge in his wife"s study, assumingly concerned to scold a small of the "facts" that have been reported about the scandal.

But far from denying the incident, he wants to settle his constant motive.

"Let me be clear, on those tapes where I"m articulate to Boris, I didn"t wish that guy from the News of the World knocked about up since he was questioning any rapist allegations.

"I longed for him sorted out since I thought he was seeking to allegation members of my family, together with my wife-to-be," he explains.

"The usually distress I feel is that I didn"t finish the job. I should be since a medal, not brickbats," he adds, violation in to laughter.

Mr Johnson never detected the reporter"s residence and has distanced himself from his old friend, in open at least.

Although Mr Guppy is vicious of British politicians "even the noblest souls are eroded by the process" he singles out the London mayor as an exception.

"Boris is the one chairman I perspective detached from the rest and not simply since he was my good friend. I knew and desired him not since of his droll side definitely the discordant but since of his critical side.

"It was his genius rather than his humour that I appreciated, notwithstanding all the laughter.

"He had a honestly open mind and I charge this to his churned racial and informative background. I goal he has not altered as well much."

As I run by a integrate of of his alternative "acts of retribution", as Wikipedia annals them, he jokingly offers a integrate some-more that I had not been wakeful of. His mom of twenty years, Patricia, comes in to the room and smiles with sexual despair.

Mr Guppy has regularly confirmed that the calculated spoliation should have remained "a in isolation matter" in in in between him and Lloyd"s.

"Anyone celebration of the mass about the events that led to my self-assurance would pretence that I was the usually chairman involved.

"In fact, there were a series of people, together with the military adviser who was obliged for the arrest.

"And my principal co-accused (Benedict Marsh) was since usually the same low mark for usually the same offences nonetheless the volume of coverage that he has perceived could be propitious onto the behind of a postage stamp by comparison.

"Stephen Fry once served a prison tenure there are large alternative examples, nothing of that we ever listen to about.

"How could this be? I can usually interpretation that my repute has small to do with what I did and really most to do with complicated British obsessions about class, Eton, royalty, the Bullingdon and all that.

"I could have responded to the unconstrained invitations for interviews. I could have "done a Jonathan Aitken" and since a mea culpa, but these would have been definitely feigned open expressions of remorse, not to discuss a small snitching on obvious friends in lapse for really large sums of money."

Mention of his improved well known friends or some-more fairly former friends takes us on to the theme of Earl Spencer.

Best man at his marriage to Victoria Lockwood, the dual fell out after Mr Guppy indicted his crony of perplexing to charm Patricia whilst he was in prison something he usually turn wakeful of prolonged after the event.

A journal told of them grappling on the really grass that I can see by the window over Mr Guppy"s shoulder in what incited out to be a really biased fight.

Earl Spencer, who denied any incorrectness with Patricia, is pronounced to have limped behind to his mansion, in the rich suburb of Constantia, sporting a damaged cheekbone and full of blood nose.

Was he a plant of what Mr Johnson their mutual crony once described as Guppy"s "Homeric formula of honour, faithfulness and revenge"?

"I miss all the friends I no longer see, but there are things that friends usually don"t do," Mr Guppy explains. "He crossed the line. But whatever has upheld in in in between us, the secrets that were common by all of my friends will go with me to the grave.

"My family and I are not grasses and have followed the conflicting march to that so depressingly prevalent in complicated Britain. We do not misuse confidences. The out-of-date British way, funnily enough."

Earl Spencer aside, Mr Guppy stays in occasional hold with his Eton and Bullingdon friends.

"I desired them similar to brothers," he says, but obviously feels their common practice are cramped to his past.

"I am not one of those self-hating old Etonians or ex-Bullingdonians and I have usually disregard for those who find to minimise that aspect of their past for domestic or career reasons.

"I will never forgo them simply since a small chippy publisher or statesman or blogger has a lament since he didn"t go to Eton.

"In particular, the thought of carrying to reject them in lapse for the capitulation of people who hatred Eton but admire Big Brother is as prejudiced as it is demeaning," he says.

Sipping his tea, he adds quietly, "But future moves even brothers apart. It was a smashing impulse in time but we are, all of us, on opposite paths now."

Ideological differences might have distanced Mr Guppy from his "brothers" as most as his self-assurance or ostracise life.

Although brought up in England, he right away feels some-more spiritually drawn to Iran, the place of his mother"s birth, even though she herself left as a teenager.

He speaks with roughly companion fervour about the suggestion he finds there, though he stays decorous about his own work in the Middle East, divulgence only: "The people I admire and do commercial operation with are not regularly the friends of your Government or your media.

"You should not review as well most in to this. Discretion is both a commercial operation plan and a counterclaim opposite ill will and misled policy."

A practising Muslim, Mr Guppy prays five times a day and additionally attends a mosque each Friday, either in Cape Town or the Middle East a request pad is kept in his investigate at home.

But he mostly accompanies his Catholic mom and identical tiwn sons to Mass on Sundays.

His parents" accomplishments and renowned stock sojourn a good source of pride.

His mom was the renouned writer, composer and thespian Shusha Guppy, who died dual years ago from cancer.

Mr Guppy keeps her photographs and books close by, along with those of his father, Nicholas, who led a series of expeditions to the northern Amazonian jungle when most of it was still uncharted.

His Persian grandfather was a distinguished reflective thinker and Ayatollah in Iran and pronounced to be a approach successor of the Prophet Mohammed.

"My mom and father and grandparents were conspicuous intellects strange and carrying that rarest of combinations, toleration and rigour.

"When my mom was terminally ill and knew that, at most, she had usually a integrate of weeks left to live she one after another to investigate German, her eighth language. That says it all," he says, sketch down a duplicate of her published memoirs.

Although Nicholas and Shusha divorced in 1976, they remained neighbours in London for thirty years and their eldest son believes that, in after life, they both came to bewail their preference to part.

As for his own marriage, friends of the integrate inform that "Darius positively worships" Patricia whose "bottomless strength, illusory clarity of humour and acquire clarity of perspective" has been consistent during their eventful years together.

Their 3 young kids seventeen year-old Isabella and 9 year-old twins Lorcan and Edmund are described as "delightful and refreshingly unspoilt".

They abstain from Cape Town"s rich white "scene", preferring to contend still friendships with a small organisation of constant friends, together with Victoria, Earl Spencer"s initial mom who, along with her five children, are visit repast guests.

In a provocative letter published in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Guppy launches a ardent conflict on the promissory note system.

He argues that the approach the complement manufactures income "out of nothing" represents a "Three Card Trick"", devaluing the resources of the village and hijacking carry out of mercantile process from politicians.

And he asserts that the insane origination of paper income not corroborated up in resources by banks is no opposite from the actions of counterfeiters he served time with in jail.

He knows how such a hypothesis, in perspective of the events that led him to jail, will be received.

"There will be those who contend they are not about to take lessons from Al Capone, and those who will disagree that if everybody thought similar to me we"d still be vital in caves," he admits.

"They"ll repartee that if one followed the proof of my argument, a large basin would occur as in 1929.

"But in 1929 the universe rainforests were still flattering most untouched, the frigid ice caps were intact, the oceans unpolluted, the world"s race a fragment of what it is now.

"There was still copiousness of room to enhance your approach out of difficulty and in the future this is what occurred. That state of affairs no longer prevails".

Returning to one of his prime themes sacrament he concludes, "We should recognize that, far from being the work of the Devil maybe what we are witnessing is in actuality the work of God."