I first came across James Stunt's notorious cavalcade of cars in Dover Street, parked outside a gallery. Two enormous, jet-black Range Rovers, their windows opaque, sat behind an equally jet-black, equally opaque-windowed Lamborghini Aventador, with two massive, pitch-black Rolls-Royces in front, at least one of which seemed to be a bullet- and-bomb-proof, long-wheelbase Phantom, adapted by Mansory, the German luxury car-modification firm. Each car bore a personalised number plate riffing on his surname, the actual numerals climbing consecutively onwards and upwards. Large men in dark suits stood beside the cars, listening intently to their earpieces. The car engines purred, oozing emissions and ready for the off.
And when they did leave, they would have left in convoy, those tinted windows shrouding the mystery that is James Stunt, the 34-year- old, Bradfield College-educated paragon of restraint who married billionaire Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone's daughter Petra in a £12m wedding in 2011, moved into a 57,000 sq foot mansion in Los Angeles that was bought for £52m - it's currently on the market for £88m - and is now the proud owner of multitudinous exotic cars and a David Linley-designed cabinet to house his treasure trove of Château Pétrus, as well as master of two substantial Belgravia/Chelsea properties. It was absurd, and it was amusing. I smiled.
Not everyone does. Drusilla Beyfus, a long-term resident of Eaton Square, where Stunt's five-car flotilla often idled, waiting for its commander outside the house he has shared with his 27-year-old wife,two-year-old daughter Lavinia and 11-month-old twin sons James Jr and Andrew, said, 'Have you seen the Rolls-Royces? Built like tanks. It's a bit like a shot from a JamesBond movie; they look like they might be full of surprisinghardware. And there's always a posse of security guards standing around. Why does he need so much security? You might draw a comparison with Mrs Thatcher - she had a house in Chester Square and had far less security.' It's a good point, and one that Stunt has been disinclined to address. 'I have always said I didn't want publicity,' he told me. 'I have never wanted to be famous. I'm a normal guy.'
Told me? James Stunt? The man who's never given an interview in his life? The one whose lawyers told the Mail on Sunday that 'Mr Stunt is a private person who has never courted publicity nor sought a media profile. Indeed, Mr Stunt goes to considerable lengths to retain his privacy and that of his family' - despite making an indelible imprint on the eyes of myriad Londoners with his scarcely anonymous armada of cars?
Yes: him. He wanted, he added, 'to set the record straight'. But why me? Well, I'd been fleshing out a little article on him and his passions, and I'd wanted to check the details of a report that he'd given his old school a donation to help renovate a pavilion - after all, one contemporary had remembered him as 'mildly amusing in a petulant way, always rubbing the teachers up,' which didn't sound like the sort of cove who'd be throbbing with love for the old alma mater. (Another alumnus took one look at Stunt's photograph and said, 'Yup, looks sleazy enough to be an Old Bradfieldian.')
So I talked to a couple of delightful people at Bradfield who said they'd call me back. They didn't, so I left a voicemail and the school bursar rang. A charming fellow, he 'didn't want to be unhelpful' and, yes, he could 'happily' confirm that James Stunt had given money, but he couldn't discuss details, like the sum involved or any future donations - that courtesy was afforded to all donors. He couldn't even tell me if the pavilion was called the Stunt Pavilion - 'we've got lots of buildings named after people with no money at all'- even though Bradfield's various web presences have several references to 'the Stunt Pavilion'. Still, he was very nice, if only as forthcoming as he needed to be. And in that, he was just like many people I called who'd had dealings with Stunt. Discretion was their watchword.
But four days later, the phone rang at Tatler. It was Stunt, much miffed by a disobliging article in the previous day's Mail on Sunday. I'd been asking round about him, he told the PA who answered the phone, and I sounded a better sort than the dross at the Mail - could he talk to me? Well, I was out and about, but the message reached me and I rang him back. When we spoke, he was amazed - amazed - that I'd called just after he'd been speaking to my editor and suggesting that her twins might have a play date with his twins.
Anyway, he said, in the well-spoken if slightly manic voice you'd expect of a Wentworth-raised public-school boy, he was fed up with the 'crap' the Mail was publishing, so he was 'going to give up my privacy' and talk to me, although his lawyers would freak out about that.After all, Tatler was sort of aristocratic- 'not that I'm saying I'm an aristocrat,' he hastened to add. But people had been saying silly things; he wanted 'someone like-minded to see through the nonsense'.
Why didn't I come to his office in Curzon Street, in the old MI5 building? Tatler, alas, wouldn't be able to photograph all the expensive pictures there - 'not because I'm being a dick', but because the art he lent to museums he did so anonymously, and if the pictures could be seen in photographs, well...(A bit puzzling, this, as he'd been the prominently named lead sponsor ofan exhibition at the Courtauld and a lauded lender of 'major British paintings' to an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, but hey, collectors can do what collectors want to do.) Unfortunately too, a lot of his business dealings were 'tied up in NDAs' [non-disclosure agreements], so he couldn't discuss those. But surely, he said, a one-on-one conversation was better than phoning up his society chums and 'getting breadcrumbs'.
Great, I said. How about tomorrow? Or the next day? Oh no, he said, sounding a little agitated, it was his daughter's school play tomorrow - he didn't know what role she was playing, but it wasn't Shakespeare - and he had meeting after meeting to catch up with: he'd had 'terrible gastric flu, horrible - I'm not lying'. If he'd wanted to avoid me, he'd 'hide behind lawyers'. So how about next Monday, at 12.30? His office was almost opposite Aspinall's; ask the doormen there. Then, when we'd finished in the office, we could head off to 5 Hertford Street, and 'at lunch you can ask me whatever you like'. There was just one thing he was clear about: 'I don't want to be famous. I hate it. I can't stand the scrutiny. If I'd wanted to be famous, I could have been.' With which, he wished me a 'super' week and thanked me for calling him on my day off; he 'really appreciated it'. Bradfield trains its sons well. The 5 Hertford Street bit was exciting. Stunt is, I'd been told, 'very gracious' to the staff there and ever eager to lash out on vats of caviar and lagoons of Château Lafite. And he was, one seasoned observer said, a 'phenomenon, a whirlwind' of expenditure - those cars! Those bodyguards! Those charity donations! Those nights at the Ritz casino! Those pictures! Those trousers! That astrakhan coat! - the likes of which she'd never seen in London in her lifetime.
In light of the news that James Stunt is among eight accused of involvement in a £266 million Bradford money-laundering operation, revisit Tatler’s exclusive 2018 interview with the controversial businessman – when he talked addiction, art, and his ex-wife, Petra Ecclestone
Mind you, even as a young blade around town, the 'sparky and amusing' Stunt had driven a Ferrari - or was it a Lamborghini? - and been insistent on picking up the tab at smart restaurants, paying for the best tables at chic clubs and sharing his winnings at the casino. He'd had a flat at Chelsea Harbour - still does - and a succession of very attractive, well-bred young women on his arm; Camilla al-Fayed was a long-term girlfriend. So it would seem that Stunt has never been short ofa bob or two - after all, his mother Lorraine has been described on Wikipedia as 'affluent' and his father Geoffrey as a 'corporate printing and publishing tycoon', although Stunt's Wikipedia page seems to be changing by the day, of which more later. But it's the magnitude of his current spending that raises eyebrows - that and the insistence that his are self-made billions. Cynics, of course, point to his father-in-law's colossal fortune and the generosity he feels towards his adored daughters. All that lolly must come from Stunt's wife, they argue. But 'it's not Petra's', one very well-informed if ultimately reticent source told me. Bernie Ecclestone apparently agrees - he rang the Daily Express in July last year to say: 'I've seen he's a guy who deals in art and I know he really is a billionaire. And most of all, he makes my daughter happy.' Bless. And double bless that it was Stunt who insisted on a prenup before his spectacular wedding.
Still, where have those funds come from? It's been reported that in 2003, Stunt invested 'a few million' in shipping, focusing on Eighties cargo vessels with which to profit from China's burgeoning steel market. This is entirely possible, said one big-time shipping contact; he'd never heard of Stunt, but that had been exactly the right time to get into shipping. Clever boy. Still, Stunt is said only to have made a few million from this - not peanuts, but not billions.
But there's also talk of Stunt's gambling endeavours. One source says he won the 'biggest ever bet' placed on Betfair, but that it's covered by an NDA, so that is by definition uncheckable. Gaming sources told me they'd heard nothing of this but would have, had it happened. He wasn't, they added, really a gambler. What he did, they said, was introduce rich clients to Betfair - and one particularly rich one at that. Which is something all betting firms yearn for: Kerry Packer, for instance, was a famously huge gambler and just as vast a loser, which made the bookies a packet. Introduce someone like him and you too will make money - but not billions. Still, Stunt was, I'm told, a 'face' around the scene, 'nice enough, if not overly bright'. He was, indeed, involved in an attempt in 2007 to revivify Heathorns, one of Britain's oldest gentlemen's bookies, but that came to nought when the firm went out of business in 2009 - the year ES Magazine reported that Stunt 'owns a gambling company for VIPs called Betfair Profit Select'.
A current enterprise is Stunt & Co, whose website proclaims it to
be 'a UK-based, family-owned precious-metals business' that procures, refines and sells 'the highest-quality bullion for our investor clients'
and has a 'seven-year exclusive contract for commemorative coins with Formula One' - which is itself, via his father-in-law, something of a family business. Perhaps Stunt & Co will prosper, unlike Select Global Management, another Stunt enterprise that foundered - as well as London Area Properties and SGA Management, both Stunt-affiliated ventures that Companies House struck off. But companies come and companies go - there are, for instance, getting on for 250 operating out of the fifth floor of the building in which Stunt has his office, none of them connected to him.
But, as Ecclestone told the Daily Express, Stunt deals in art. And there is, as Stunt pointed out, all that expensive art on the walls of his office. We know he's bought at Sotheby's - much-mocked pictures of Stunt's myrmidons carrying bubble-wrapped pictures back to those Rollers and Range Rovers have seen to that, as has the joyous sight of a traffic warden ticketing one of the convoy outside Christie's. As for Daniel Hunt Fine Art of Turk's Row, Chelsea - well, the motorcade very nearly knocked over a bicyclist of my acquaintance there: 'very rude' they were too, he said. Daniel Hunt's not rude, though: in his very jolly voice he said, 'Dan Hunt here. How's it going at the magnificent Tatler magazine? What can I do for this by word for international reporting?' Well, I said, I know James Stunt's a client of yours and I was wondering... 'Can't discuss,' Hunt chortled. 'Can't do. Won't do. Not ever do. I'm afraid we can't ever discuss clients. Full stop. It's been my policy since day one.' He chuckled. 'You speak to James,' he went on, laughing. 'That's the way forward. Yep. Speak to him.'
Or, I thought, to Philip Mould, art dealer and TV frontman of
Fake or Fortune? It was Mould who sold Stunt a Van Dyck self-portrait for £12.5m in 2013 - a self-portrait Stunt selflessly withdrew from purchasing after a public campaign to keep the picture in Britain. He had intended to hang it with his numerous Lelys and Knellers in his LA palace. But he was, he said, moved by 'the huge swell of public opinion and strength of emotion' the possibility of export had inspired. Philip Mould, sadly, did not return Tatler's call.
Meantime, Stunt himself inspires a 'huge swell of emotion'. One source went 'ugh' at the mention of his name; a second said: 'He's a very strange man. I asked him why he always carried that little bottle of water with him, and he said, "Someone might try and poison me"' - which could, of course, be his little joke; a third aped Sir Martin Charteris's verdict on the Duchess of York: 'Vulgar, vulgar, vulgar.' A fourth gnashed her teeth as she remembered her encounters with his cars and their noisome emissions.
Certainly, one person lucky enough to have penetrated one of Stunt's London homes - he and his wife have added a large property in Old Church Street, Chelsea, to their Eaton Square house - called it 'very vulgar - like a plush Dubai hotel. You know, crystalline chandeliers, staff everywhere, buttons opening windows, cars being brought to the surface by electronic lifts.' Still, she added, 'there's something fascinating about him.'
And, according to Ben Goldsmith, who has known him for some years, something very 'good-hearted'. Stunt is, says Goldsmith, 'someone who stands by his friends unfailingly - you can call on him in any situation. Enormously generous, and always has been. If there's an opportunity to give money to charity, he'll give the maximum possible - and does so in quite an old-fashioned, quite ostentatious way. But in an endearing sense: there isn't enough ostentatious generosity to charity in the world. He's a genuinely good-hearted and generous soul.'
Tell that to Rick Stroud, until recently chairman of the Chelsea Arts Club, which abuts the glowering black gates of the Stunts' Old Church Street house. 'We used to joke about tunnelling through and getting to the swimming pool,' recalls Stroud, who's got little patience with the Stuntmobiles: 'Those vast Rolls-Royces - it's so pretentious and overblown. And when you see all those security men with wiggly black things coming out of their ears stopping the traffic so that ludicrous cavalcade can come down the road - that's when it gets on my tits.' Which, in its way, is like Bernie Ecclestone's verdict on his son-in-law - 'a flash bastard'. An anonymity-requesting Old Church Street habitué had his take on the flashness: 'We always laugh! It's always five cars and it's so not an English thing. I suppose in LA you can imagine it. But not in London - it's not a showy culture.' His wife said: 'Those security guards - I wouldn't want to meet them down a dark alley; they're 100 per cent big and bulky.' She paused, thoughtfully, and added: 'But fit.'
They were still looking pretty fit when I last saw them, parked near Stunt's office. Fit and forbidding - a point picked up by James Wright, chairman of the Belgravia Residents Association. Wright has had 'quite a number of residents asking, "Who are these people with all their heavies? What's going on?'" But Wright is charitable about the couple: 'We accept it as part of the rich tapestry of what Belgravia is today. And it's better to have people who actually live here, as opposed to all those "gold boxes" [apartments] people buy as investments and never use.' Wright had, he said, talked to the Stunts about residents' concerns - he always thinks that's the best way - and they'd been co-operative. 'I'd say,' he went on, 'that we treat it with amusement, but we accept the need for security.'
Mind you, all those gleaming black cars and mountainous minders seem counterproductive to another Chelsea-ite: 'It's a security risk in itself; it's like screaming, "I'm super-rich! Rob me!"' Up to a point: you'd need a SWAT team to take on Stunt's army. In fact, said Wright, 'In one way, it's fortuitous - one old lady who got mugged a while back told me she feels it heightens her security, so she's pleased.' He paused, then continued, a hint of a laugh in his voice: 'Bernie Ecclestone got mugged once. Pity the Stunts weren't around then.'
Nor, sadly, was James Stunt around for me at 12.30pm on the promised Monday afternoon. Not that he'd 'hidden' behind his lawyers; they interposed themselves. They asked, the day after Stunt's phone call, for copy approval - which Tatler never gives, as we at once told them. They wanted to see examples of my previous work and to know what questions I'd be asking - it wasn't a specific Q&A, we said; it would, as usual, be a wide-ranging conversation about Stunt's life, times, work and passions. Silence reigned.
And then I proposed that he sit for a portrait by, say, David Bailey. 'I'm not a fashion model,' he replied by text. 'I may crack the lens X.' Aw, come on, I said: all Tatler profiles have great portraits with them. 'I will not pose,' he declared. No 'X' this time. Two days later - and not for publication - his lawyers demanded something they'd already been refused. And the interview was cancelled. Thus robbing me of the chance to experience the charm, the good-heartedness, even the whiff of the unexpected that appealed to so many of those I spoke to.
Since then, Stunt's Wikipedia page has shrunk and shrunk. As I write, it's on the point of deletion. Don't do it, James. I know you value your privacy, despite those omnipresent cars and that loud, loud presence you bring to the city. But please don't go the whole hog - please don't disappear.
