Baronets Bride Reveals Wedding Drama Amid Crisis

He is nothing if not a fighter, as his epic battle against some of the most venal figures in the City of London proved in the late 1990s and into the new millennium.

But time seemed to have run out for Old Etonian baronet Sir William Jaffray three weeks ago when he was admitted to London’s Chelsea & Westminster Hospital suffering from aspiration .

Three doctors took his fiancee, Gowri Siva, aside and warned her to brace herself for the worst.

‘They said: “You’ve got to be prepared. The right lung is severely congested with infection,” ’ Gowri tells me, adding that the shock warning came just hours after she and Sir William had settled on a time and place for their wedding – ‘July 7 in the Rossetti Room at Chelsea Old Town Hall’.

In the hours that followed, Jaffray, 74, showed the same spirit as he had during his protracted fight against the hierarchy of Lloyd’s, which he waged on behalf of investors who, like him, suffered catastrophic losses in the London insurance market.

‘He’s got a tenacious will to live,’ adds high-octane lawyer-turned-art specialist Gowri, 60, who, though blessed with brains and beauty, had at that point never been married. ‘We decided we’d marry immediately.

‘William said: “You need to bring my charcoal-grey suit, my Hermes tie and my cufflinks,’ says Gowri, who met Jaffray, who has three adult sons and a daughter by the first of his two previous marriages, at a Christmas party in Chelsea in 2023. 

After a call to the registrars – and with his clothes and cufflinks safely retrieved – the couple went ahead.

‘We had two witnesses – the nurses who’d taken care of him. They were great. The registrars were there and were perfectly charming. I brought a figurine of the Virgin Mary and a picture of my mother who died 18 months ago. William had his suit on – not his trousers, obviously – and I sat on the bed with him.

‘It’s not how I ever thought I’d get married,’ acknowledges the new Lady Jaffray, who is overjoyed that her husband is now home and putting the finishing touches to his memoir, Pinstripe Warriors: At War With Lloyd’s. As for a honeymoon? ‘We want to go on the Orient Express,’ she tells me.

Now Fearne ditches Jesse Wood’s name

She started the year with admirable candour, explaining that, despite being author of the cookbook Happy Vegan, she’s tucking into cheese and eggs – a consequence of needing to ‘remain flexible’ because of a ‘pretty severe eating disorder’ suffered in her 20s.

But that, I can disclose, isn’t the only element of personal reconfiguration that Fearne Cotton, 44, has indulged in. 

She’s just changed the name she uses as a director of We Are Happy Place, the private firm into which she pays her pennies – and pounds – earned as a Radio 2 presenter and podcast host.

Out goes ‘Mrs Fearne Wood’ and in comes ‘Ms Fearne Cotton’ – two months after her husband, Jesse Wood, from whom Fearne parted in 2024, announced that his new girlfriend, Made In Chelsea’s Gemma Gregory, is expecting his child. 

Two of Jesse’s four previous children were with Fearne. Her representatives decline to say whether her divorce has been finalised.

Emilia’s £7.2m treasure

Queen of Dragons Emilia Clarke was warned by her father never to expect to get rich through acting. ‘He wanted me to  be very realistic about the whole thing, about how nobody makes any money,’ she said of the late theatre sound engineer.

But the money keeps rolling in for the Game Of Thrones star, 39. I learn that the company she uses to channel her earnings, Scenic Root, has amassed £7.2million in assets.

Newly published accounts disclose that her fortune is made up of cash holdings of almost £3.1million and nearly £4.5million owed by debtors. She added £1.2million to her riches last year.

The actress owes creditors £400,000, leaving her with enough to help her maintain her reported homes in Islington, north London, and Venice Beach, Los Angeles.

Robin, 90, gets on his water-bike

Explorer Robin Hanbury-Tenison celebrated his 80th year by knocking off a marathon, climbing Ben Nevis and plunging 14,000 ft from an aeroplane – while harnessed, I’m glad to say, to an expert parachutist – among other self-selected tests to prove that age is but a number.

Demonstrating that his philosophy remains undimmed, indomitable Robin, 90 last month, sets off from Magdalen Bridge in Oxford next Friday on a water-bike to pedal 104 miles along the Thames to Teddington Lock.

The Old Etonian, who’s raising £150,000 for the Thousand Year Trust charity, spent three weeks on a ventilator during Covid in early 2020. ‘I feel I have been reborn,’ he later remarked, ‘so am now determined to make the most of every minute.’

Film-maker Martha Fiennes’s husband, the rare book dealer Simon Finch, has bought and sold the original works of Austen and Shakespeare. 

Now, he’s tickled to have sold a signed first edition of Dame Jilly Cooper’s 1988 bonkbuster Rivals for a racy £475. ‘A lovely gentleman bought it as an anniversary present for his wife,’ Finch tells me.

Orlando Bloom battled orcs in The Lord Of The Rings. His mother, Sonia Copeland Bloom, wants to protect another unsightly species. 

She’s written to a newspaper to argue: ‘Despite being unpopular, slugs have a positive role in our gardens, eating garden debris and helping make soil more fertile.’ 

She insists: ‘There are many humane ways of deterring slugs that will enrich your soil, including surrounding plants with coffee grounds.’ 

Pioneering chef Skye Gyngell, who died from cancer last November aged 62, didn’t leave just a remarkable culinary legacy. 

Probate documents reveal Skye, who turned the Petersham Nurseries in west London into a Michelin-starred restaurant, left £1.4million to her two daughters.