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Viscount Linley goes cold on his Russian business pal

By Richard Kay for the Daily Mail
Updated: 06:37 EST, 12 September 2011

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To Viscount Linley it must have seemed the answer to all his dreams when the stratospherically wealthy Russian oligarch Sergei Pugachev offered to take a multi-million-pound stake in his bespoke furniture business.

For the deal would allow him to expand an interest that already stretched to upholstery, yacht design and interior decoration into global markets.

But after three years of sharing the equivalent of a corporate four-poster, the Queen’s nephew and the tycoon known as ‘Cashier to the Kremlin’ seem to have gone their separate ways.

Separation: Russian oligarch Sergei Pugachev (left) and Viscount Linley (right)

Pugachev, I learn, is no longer a director of David Linley & Co, the furniture-maker’s company. And while a Linley aide confirms the termination of the directorships of Pugachev and his two older sons, Alexander and Victor, no one is explaining why.

It could be that Linley, 12th in line to the throne, wishes to distance himself from the controversial Russian. There were allegations that Pugachev, 47, helped bribe Prince Albert of Monaco to secure his vote for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.

But the Russian, who is married to socialite Alexandra Tolstoy, has also attracted unfortunate publicity in recent months following the collapse of his Moscow bank.

Certainly Pugachev, worth an estimated £3.5 billion, was able to use his connection with Linley as his entree to British high society.

He made his fortune in shipyards and property deals and joined the board of David Linley & Co after becoming friends with Princess Margaret’s son while bear-hunting in Siberia.

Father-of-two Linley allegedly reciprocated by inviting the Russian to a pheasant shoot in Windsor Great Park. He numbers Oprah Winfrey, Sir Elton John, Sir Mick Jagger and Lord Archer among his clients.

Documents at Companies House confirm the change to the business. In Pugachev’s place is Jamie Edmiston, a scion of the super-yacht group. An old friend, Edmiston has reportedly ploughed £4 million into the company.
Asked about Pugachev’s exit, a spokeswoman for Linley says: ‘Yes, you are along the right lines.’

Lib Dem's extra source of income

While disgraced Lib Dem David Laws kills time in the hope of one day returning to the Cabinet, I gather he’s turned to speech-making as a source of income. Laws, who quit as chief secretary to the Treasury after being exposed for expenses irregularities to the tune of £40,000 just 17 days into the Coalition, has signed up with Bournemouth-based Parliament Speakers.

He has already earned £4,000 for an event this summer. His Lib Dem colleague Vince Cable is with the same agency but, unlike Laws, he makes clear on its website he gives ‘every penny’ of his income as a speaker to charity.

Family affair for Zac and Alice

Things are moving apace for Zac Goldsmith and his lissom heiress girlfriend Alice Rothschild. The pair have been tip-toeing around together since his divorce from Sheherazade in June.

Family matters: Alice Rothschild attended the wedding Ben Elliot and Mary-Clare Winwood with her boyfriend Zac Goldsmith

And matters must be getting serious, as Alice, 26, joined the Goldsmith clan at Ben Elliot’s wedding to Mary-Clare Winwood at the weekend, with Zac’s formidable mother Lady Annabel very much to the fore.

‘Annabel loves being with Alice, who has had a troubled life after her father Amschel committed suicide,’ says a family friend. ‘Lady Annabel finds her endearing.’

All the same the couple went out of their way to avoid being snapped together at the wedding in Northleach, Glos, where Prince Charles and Ben’s aunt, the Duchess of Cornwall, led the guest list .

Chelsey parades new beau

Any lingering doubts that Chelsy Davy has not got over Prince Harry were surely swept away in the moment she enjoyed a passionate clinch with her new beau Taylor McWilliams. The two were canoodling in a corner at a party in the Natural History Museum.

‘It was very full-on between them,’ says a fellow partygoer.

‘They looked like they were in a world of their own, but as soon as Chelsy realised people were watching she pulled away.’

Chemmy seeks life of adventure

Respect: Chemmy Alcott

Nine months after a horrendous high-speed crash that shattered her right leg, Britain’s leading skier Chemmy Alcott is considering hanging up her salopettes. . . to become an adventurer.

‘We’ve men like James Cracknell and Ben Fogle, but there isn’t a credible female equivalent who people can look up to,’ Chemmy, 29, tells me at The Global Party at the Natural History Museum.

‘I like to think because I hurl myself down steep mountains at 90mph that people will respect me if I push myself to be an adventurer.’ Chemmy, accompanied to the bash by her chum Rick Parfitt Jnr, lifted her red gown to reveal an 18in scar running down her leg in which surgeons inserted nine screws and a metal plate after the accident on the Canadian slopes.

‘I will come back to skiing only if I know I can be the best,’ she tells me. ‘I don’t want to do an Eddie The Eagle. What he did was great, but I am a serious athlete and unless I can be sure of winning at the Olympics, I won’t come back.’

Theatrical naming game

Princess Jean Galitzine has nothing personal against Lady Antonia Fraser, but as president of the Terence Rattigan Society she feels the playwright should have been honoured with a theatre named after him before Antonia’s late husband, Harold Pinter.

In the wake of London’s Comedy Theatre being named after Pinter, Princess Galitzine, 86, has launched a campaign to honour Rattigan. The Princess, who as Dior model Jean Dawnay was Rattigan’s muse and friend, tells me: ‘I believe he is a better playwright than Pinter and should be honoured with his name over a theatre.’

Ed Vaizey's Serpentine slip

AS a leading light in the Chipping Norton set and loyal friend of David Cameron, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey could never be called a Tory wet. But all that may have to change after an unfortunate incident in the Serpentine left him dripping from head to toe.

To the rescue: Ed Vaizey, 43, pulled his daughter Martha, three-and-a-half, out of the Serpentine (pictured)

It happened when Vaizey, 43, his wife Alex and their children, Martha and Joseph, paid a visit to the Lido in Hyde Park last week. Martha, three-and-a-half, who had just been given an ice cream, was standing at the edge of the water when she slipped, closely followed by the MP for Wantage.

‘She had been standing on the edge where it’s like a skating rink underfoot,’ says Vaizey. ‘Suddenly she went in and I went in after her — our heads were completely underwater.’

Happily, father and daughter were quickly back on dry land and Vaizey can laugh about the episode — especially the sangfroid of his little girl. ‘She came up to the surface still holding her ice cream,’ he tells me.

PS When Alan Bennett portrayed the Queen as a bibliophile who had perfected the technique of waving from the State coach with one hand while clutching a volume in the other in An Uncommon Reader, it was considered far-fetched.

But could life be imitating art? HM has just granted a Royal Warrant to Heywood Hill, the Mayfair bookshop owned by the Duke of Devonshire, who until this year was the Queen’s representative at Royal Ascot, and run by his son-in-law Nicky Dunne.