[Deathwatch] Sir Dai Llewellyn, British playboy, 62

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Sir Dai Llewellyn

Notorious Lothario known as the 'Conquistador of the Canapé Circuit? ?
or simply 'Dirty Dai? .

Dai Llewellyn

Sir Dai Llewellyn, 4th Bt, who died on Tuesday aged 62, became famous
as a playboy, bon viveur and darling of the gossip columns, his
reputation reflected in soubriquets such as ?Seducer of the Valleys?,
?Conquistador of the Canapé Circuit?, ?Dai 'Lock Up Your Daughters?
Llewellyn? or simply ?Dirty Dai?.

The son and heir of the gold-medal-winning equestrian baronet Sir Harry
?Foxhunter? Llewellyn, and brother of Princess Margaret?s one-time
paramour Roddy Llewellyn, Dai Llewellyn was celebrated for his serial
seductions of ?It? girls, models and actresses, his relentless appetite
for partying and his outrageous indiscretions.

Good-looking in his youth, with dark Welsh curls, his success with
women was famous. He claimed, in his heyday, to be in the habit of
going through Queen Charlotte?s Balls ?like a dose of salts?. He
insisted, though, that he ?never got up in the morning and thought,
'I?m going to screw three girls today?.? But: ?If it happened, it
happened.?

His seduction methods were direct and somewhat lacking in refinement:
?I am not one of these oily Italian method-pullers,? he said. ?Thirty
years, and I still can?t undo a bra. The only trick is that I do not
waver. I know what I want and so do they.?

Stories of Llewellyn?s priapic exploits, mostly gleefully retailed by
the Don Juan himself, proved irresistible to the tabloid press. The
journalist Peter McKay, who became a friend, was once having lunch with
him at San Lorenzo when Llewellyn suddenly leapt from the table and
disappeared for half an hour. ?What happened?? asked McKay when his
host returned, looking flushed. ?Oh, I just remembered,? said
Llewellyn. ?I left my secretary tied up in the bath.?

Nor, it seemed, were members of the opposite sex put off by his claim
that women were ?past it by the age of 30?, a fact which, in his view,
gave older men the ?right? to have affairs with young girls. In later
life, however, he admitted that time and the accretion of several
stones in superfluous body fat were taking their toll on his technique:
?At my age and weight, it?s taking me about a month to laugh the ladies
into bed.?

Quite what Llewellyn did by way of a career was never entirely clear.
He once described himself as a ?a kind of upper-class redcoat? who
?earned his living out of being Dai Llewellyn?. In practice this seemed
to involve a bit of PR work, organising the odd celebrity party, and a
lot of schmoozing of rich toffs in jet-set nightclubs such as Tramp and
Annabel?s. ?Dai Llewellyn?s London,? wrote one interviewer, ?is a web
of reciprocal favours, backhanders and feuds which require all his
reputed Machiavellianism to manage.?

One feud was that with his younger brother Roddy, with whom he fell out
in the 1970s after he spilt the beans in the press about Roddy?s
relationship with Princess Margaret. Dai claimed that his indiscretion
(?for which I have eaten humble pie ever since?) was merely a ?pretty
tame? section of a four-part autobiographical series about his own
life, published when the affair with Princess Margaret was already
?common knowledge?. Roddy Llewellyn, though, took a different view.

If truth be told, Dai?s appetite for humble pie had its limits. When
Roddy Llewellyn told the Daily Mail in 2006 that he could not forgive
his brother?s ?betrayal?, Dai dismissed him, with characteristic
insouciance, as a ?snob and a resentful, chippy little twerp?,
proclaiming that he had become ?bored to tears by the little twit?. The
brothers were reconciled shortly before Dai?s death.

David St Vincent Llewellyn was born at Aberdare on April 2 1946,
followed, 18 months later, by his brother. Their family were
Monmouthshire yeomanry who found coal under the farm in the 19th
century and then wangled a Lloyd George baronetcy. Their father, Sir
Harry Llewellyn, 3rd Bt, would win a gold medal for showjumping at the
1952 Olympics on his horse Foxhunter. A second son, he had already been
knighted for services to sport when he inherited the baronetcy from his
elder brother, Rhys, in 1978. Dai?s mother was the second daughter of
the 5th Lord de Saumarez and a descendant of Admiral Sir James
Saumarez, second-in-command to Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. ?I
hardly had a relation who wasn?t titled,? Dai Llewellyn claimed.

After an early childhood spent at Gobion Manor near Abergavenny, the
family moved to Llanvair Grange in Monmouthshire. Dai was sent to prep
school at Hawtrees, and then to Eton, where his romantic inclinations
were aroused by the custom of soliciting letters from girls at nearby
schools. ?All the letters that came back were put in a rack, and if the
postmark said 'Ascot? then you knew it was from a Heathfield girl; West
Sussex was 'Southover?.? Unfortunately, Dai was a late developer. His
voice did not break until he was 15, so the coveted letters never did
arrive in his rack.

He made up for lost time when he went to study Philosophy at the
University of Aix-en-Provence. There he lost his virginity to an older,
American woman ?who smelt so disgusting that it put me off doing it
again for several months?.

On his return to Britain, however, he ?met someone wonderful and never
looked back?. His career as a fully fledged cad and bounder had begun.

After Aix, Llewellyn got a salesman?s job with Qantas, ran a travel
agency in Cardiff and moved for a while into advertising. Then, in the
late 1960s, he was invited to lunch by Victor Lownes, who ran the
Playboy Club and had recently bought the Clermont casino from John
Aspinall and wanted Llewellyn?s advice. When Llewellyn suggested that
it needed ?more window-dressing to bring the Arabs in?, Lownes
responded my making him the club?s ?social secretary?. ?Start on
Monday,? Lownes ordered. ?Double the salary.?

According to Llewellyn, his job description was ?to sit at a table,
drink a lot of claret, eat a lot and have a simply lovely time?. Though
he subsequently left the Clermont and opened Tokyo Joe?s in Piccadilly
and Wedgies on the King?s Road (eventually resigning from both,
?exhausted?), he continued to live the onerous life of a Mayfair
boulevardier into the 21st century.

It was Nigel Dempster, in the early 1970s, who first noticed
Llewellyn?s impressive track record in the bedroom and elevated him to
the status of gossip column fixture: ?There was no Aids or anything ?
it was a marvellous time,? Llewellyn reminisced. Quite what Sir Harry
Llewellyn made of his son?s chosen career is not recorded. While Dai
admitted that his father would probably have preferred him to be
?slightly more sensible?, he felt that his parents were at least
relieved that he had not turned out to be a ?pansy?.

Llewellyn claimed to have fallen in love three times, firstly with Lady
Charlotte Curzon, to whom he claimed to have proposed 100 times in a
single evening (she turned him down). In the 1970s he was engaged to
Beatrice Welles, daughter of Orson, but their relationship became so
tempestuous that people stopped inviting them to parties. Inevitably,
he broke it off.

In 1980 he married Vanessa Hubbard, the convent-educated niece of the
Duke of Norfolk. Signalling his determination to go on as if nothing
much had happened, he reportedly rolled up at the wedding, reached out
of the car and handed a near-empty bottle of champagne to a group of
gawping youths. The couple had two daughters but divorced seven years
later.

Other women in his life included the 1960s pin-up Annegret Tree, Tessa
Dahl, daughter of Roald (?much prettier than Sophie?), Judith (now
Lady) Wilcox and the Swedish-born interior designer Christel Jurgenson,
to whom he was briefly engaged in 2006.

After succeeding in the baronetcy on the death of his father in 1999,
Dai Llewellyn bought a house at Aberbeeg, near Abertillery, and briefly
flirted with the idea of returning to his roots and becoming a
respectable pillar of Welsh society. In practice he spent little time
in Wales, and in 2003 he announced he was packing his bags, claiming he
had been forced out by rampant nationalism.

Llewellyn promised the (largely indifferent) Welsh people that he would
return across the Severn Bridge only for his own funeral, but in 2007
he injected some excitement into the Welsh Assembly election campaign
by announcing that he would fight the marginal Cardiff North seat for
the UK Independence Party. Britain?s withdrawal from the EU was ?the
most important issue there is?, he proclaimed, and the Assembly was ?a
load of Horlicks?.

He never grew up. On a visit to South Africa aged 60, he claimed to
have fallen through a bedroom floor into a cellar while ?attempting to
roger a girl called Nettie?, the girlfriend of a friend. ?I wish I
could tell you this was an isolated incident,? he told a journalist.

Sir Dai Llewellyn is survived by his two daughters and numerous former
girlfriends. His brother succeeds him in the baronetcy.


Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary