Reclusive Viscount Dies Without Will: Who Will Inherit £65 Million Aristocratic Estate? Eden Confidential Investigation.

He lived frugally, favouring second-hand cars, flying economy and keeping his house in a condition unaltered since the 1950s. 

But Shane Hugh Maryon Gough, 5th and last Viscount Gough, did not do so because he’d been reduced to penury.

Far from it: I can reveal that the peer, a lifelong bachelor, left an immense fortune of more than £65million when he died last April aged 81. 

But quite who – if anyone – will inherit this mouth-watering sum is open to question, following the publication this week of what is known as ‘a Grant of Letters of Administration’.

This, it explains, is ‘a legal document issued by the Probate Registry when a person has died without making a valid will (called intestate)’.

Solicitors for the late viscount, who was an only child, decline to comment. But a financial adviser to similar aristocratic families tells me that all manner of secrets and surprises can emerge while executors unravel a deceased client’s affairs.

‘If he had assets in other places, you have to get probate in more than one jurisdiction,’ she tells me. In the case of Viscount Gough, this seems likely to include diligent work in Australia where he’d acquired a significant property portfolio in Melbourne and elsewhere.

Sometimes, she adds, the surprises can be very lively indeed. ‘That’s when there are illegitimate children, for whom trusts were set up which the main family knew nothing about.’

Viscount Gough undoubtedly did have some relations in Australia – on his mother’s side. 

Christened Margaretta but known as Bettine, she was the only daughter of Sir Spencer Maryon Wilson, 11th baronet. Her only brother, Thomas, died in 1938 – three years before Shane was born – so there was no heir to the baronetcy when Sir Spencer died in 1944.

There are also distant Gough relations – a family revered for its extraordinary military record which has earned it no fewer than three Victoria Crosses.

After leaving his public school, Winchester, Shane also followed the drum, becoming an officer in the Irish Guards in the 1960s, before Northern Ireland exploded into violence. 

‘He was stationed over here for a very short spell,’ his kinsman, Johnny Gough, 99, who served in the Irish Guards in World War II, tells me. ‘He called in, so I met him then. But he was rather reclusive.’

The sentiment is endorsed by others. Although listed as a member of White’s, Pratt’s and the MCC, he was seldom seen at any of any of them. 

Nor, it seems, was he active with the Royal Company of Archers – the Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland, headed by the Duke of Atholl – even though he continued to list it in his Who’s Who entry.

His business activities – and freemasonry – were more rewarding. 

He was three times Worshipful Master of the Lodge of Assistance, while, in the City, he was a stockbroker before establishing a venture capital company which identified and invested in start-ups in the fields of life sciences and clean technology.

Although he never frittered money on himself, either at his London house in south Kensington, which he bought for £595,000 in 1998, or at his Scottish estate, Keppoch, near Inverness, he was generous to causes and institutions close to his heart – whether his old school and regiment or the RNLI and the RNIB, and lesser known beneficiaries like the Woolwich Garrison Church Trust.

If no valid will ever emerges, the law governing intestacy gives a detailed order of precedence – decreeing that half-cousins are the most distant relations who can inherit. If all else fails, everything goes to the Treasury…

Johnny Gough believes that his kinsman will have ensured that some delightful surprises will emerge – eventually. ‘I’m sure it will all work its way out in the end,’ he tells me. ‘I’m certainly not expecting anything.’

Stone son’s fiancee is a real Iron Maiden 

How about this for a rock’n’roll wedding? I hear that Faye Harris, the fiancee of Tyrone Wood, son of Rolling Stone Ronnie, is the daughter of a heavy metal legend.

‘Her dad is Steve Harris, from Iron Maiden,’ Ty’s mother, the Strictly Come Dancing contestant Jo Wood tells me.

I reported last month that art curator Ty, 40, whose ex-girlfriends include model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and pop star Rita Ora, had proposed to perfumier Faye.

It was, however, a secret that she had a famous father, too.

Steve Harris has been the bassist and main songwriter of Iron Maiden since he formed the band in East London in 1975. 

The head-bangers have gone on to sell more than 130 million albums, including toe-tappers Number Of The Beast and Dance Of Death.

The smart set’s talking about… Rocco’s slick-back vintage Brit style  

His mother, Queen of Pop Madonna, is an American fashion icon, but young Rocco Ritchie’s style is quintessentially British.

During a night out in Mayfair this week, he showed why he’s become one of London’s most talked-about trend-setters.

The moustachioed son of film director Guy Ritchie had his hair perfectly coiffed and was dressed in a elegant camel overcoat, which he wore with a suit and a check-print tie as he headed to a restaurant in Bond Street. 

Rocco, 23, who studied at the Royal Drawing School, has developed a taste for tailored and vintage apparel.

Having spent his childhood between New York and London with his parents, who divorced in 2008, Rocco is now an artist who paints under the name Rhed.

His work has sold for five-figure sums.

‘Neither of my parents are painters, but both are artists in their own right and they taught me to appreciate and respect it,’ he has said.

(Very) modern manners    

It was hard to miss Davina McCall at Abba Voyage, the London concert at which digital avatars of the band recreate their appearance in their heyday.

‘Someone told me everyone got dressed up, so I went all-out and wore a sequinned catsuit,’ reveals The Masked Singer panellist, 56.

‘It turned out they had lied, and it was quite embarrassing. There was one other person there in a sparkly T-shirt, but that was about it.’

 Fine Romance star Susan ups anchor

Tales of the riverbank have lost their charm for actress Susan Penhaligon, who was described as ‘the face of the decade’ in the 1970s. She is selling her houseboat on the Thames in West London.

‘I’ve done 25 years and I want to spend my last years by the sea in Cornwall,’ says the thrice-married star of dramas such as Bouquet Of Barbed Wire.

Penhaligon, 74, who played Dame Judi Dench’s sister in hit sitcom A Fine Romance, has put her beloved Dutch barge on the market for a staggering £850,000.

‘My price reflects the fact that you own the mooring and there are no fees,’ she tells me.

‘The best thing about it is peace: you might come back from a bad day in the office and you walk across the gangway onto the boat, and there’s something about the tide going in and out that is very peaceful.’

 Why Scots would love a pint with Stella

Stella McCartney’s plans to build a home in a remote part of the Scottish Highlands have faced objections from neighbours.

But that hasn’t stopped residents from asking the fashion designer and her husband, Alasdhair Willis, to help fund a community buyout of their local pub, The Glenuig Inn, on the northernmost tip of the Moidart peninsula.

‘We would love them to contribute and help fund the buyout, and maybe Stella could design the staff’s uniforms,’ local Highland councillor Angus MacDonald says.

‘We welcome them as residents, but unfortunately their house plans are wrongly positioned and a bit brutish. It needs a redesign.’

Ricky Gervais fails to amuse fellow stand-up comic Stewart Lee. 

‘He still kind of copies me, which is the weird thing,’ claims Lee. 

‘There’s still a lot of cadences of what I do but they’re used in the service of evil. 

‘In Star Wars, he’s Darth Vader and he’s taken the Force, which is me, and used it for evil purposes. 

He was a fanboy, he was actually the booker at University of London and used to book me and [comic] Sean Lock all the time. And when he became famous for The Office, he wrote an hour-long act that was so indebted to us it was awkward.’

Game Of Thrones Brienne reveals a dramatic new look

If you thought Gwendoline Christie cut an imposing figure as Brienne of Tarth, the sword-wielding warrior in sex-and-dragons drama Game Of Thrones, take a look at this.

The 6ft 3in actress was even more striking on the catwalk at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week, where she wore a billowy, corseted gown overlaid with tinted rubber.

Adding to the peculiar effect, she sported a pair of gloves that resembled bandages. It was part of the British designer John Galliano’s show for Maison Margiela, the French fashion house.

‘I’ve loved fashion for such a long time and for over 30 years I have wanted to be in a show like this,’ says the West Sussex-born star, 45, whose boyfriend is designer Giles Deacon. He created the wedding dress for the Princess of Wales’s sister, Pippa Middleton.

Back to the fuchsia for colourful Prue!

Dame Prue Leith wore a typically colourful outfit to the Adelphi Theatre in London to watch the 1,000th performance of Back To The Future: The Musical.

But The Great British Bake Off judge, 83, was keen to pooh-pooh the findings of a study published this week that older people wear brighter clothes to make up for failing eyesight.

‘I’ve only been colourful since I married this guy,’ says Leith, pointing to her husband, the retired fashion designer John Playfair, 77. ‘He’s obsessed with colour.’

Clearly, the proof is in the pudding.