Why I split up from Mick's daughter

When Ben Elliot, the Old Etonian nephew of Camilla Parker Bowles walked into the Chanel boutique in Chelsea for a glitzy book launch last night the paparazzi had every right to be disappointed.

Instead of having Mick Jagger's beautiful daughter, Jade, hanging off his arm, the 26-year-old entrepreneur-about-town was accompanied by the writer Lucia van der Post. And no, she is certainly not his new girlfriend - simply a colleague from his "lifestyle organiser" company Quintessentially. And yes, he and Jade have definitely split up.

Like any member of the lip-sealed Parker Bowles clan, Elliot refuses to be drawn on exactly why he and Jade are no longer stepping out as one of the more impossibly glamorous couples on the London circuit. According to a close friend, Elliot is "all right" about the break-up. Had he been willing to spend more time shuttling back and forth to Jade's base on the island of Ibiza - say, two weeks a month - and had he been willing to put his ambitious business plans on hold, the couple would probably still be together.

But Elliot does not like doing anything by half measures. Besides, the newly available bachelor is only 26. "Ben was quite a bit younger than Jade," says the close friend. "There's no doubt they fancied each other incredibly from the very start. They only got together after photos were taken in Ibiza which claimed to be of Ben and Jade naked on the beach - they only met up to work out how to deny the story.

"The split wasn't anything to do with anyone else, or the fact that she has a daughter. It was just a distance thing.

He just couldn't have a relationship with somebody who lived in a different country. He wasn't prepared to sacrifice the work he has put into his business."

Elliot himself is not much more forthcoming when I try to set the record straight about reports that jewellery designer Jade was moving back to London after buying a £1 million house in upwardlymobile-Kensal Rise. He laughs when I ask if they ever planned to move in together. "She's had the house for three years," he says.

"Jade has a work studio there, with a bedroom off the back," adds a friend. "She's only here for five days a month. It's an incredible space. It's very open, and huge, which suits her as she's a bit of a hippie and an earth mum."

One person who is said to be disappointed about the split is Mick Jagger, who gave full approval to Elliot's liaison with his daughter, to the point of telling friends that he would have been delighted to have had Ben as his son-in-law. Elliot has been previously linked with model Erica Baxter, TV presenter Cat Deeley, Tania Strecker and Vogue cover girl Amy Lemons. Is there a pattern to his girlfriends ? "I think people might say I'm a bit of a sucker for punishment," he says. "I went out with a psychiatrist for a year. She called me emotionally retarded. But I don't go out in London that much. I go out once or twice a week. Otherwise, I'm running in the park."

Although Elliot is often pictured on the London party circuit, he mostly hangs around with a tightly-knit group of male friends, most of whom he's known since school. One regular fixture in his diary is poker on a Wednesday night with Zac Goldsmith (Elliot was best man at his wedding), Michael Gove of The Times, "best mate" Tom Parker Bowles and one of his business partners, Luca del Bono. When I ring him later to see if he wants to join me for dinner with seven girls, he calls back to say that he can't, as he is doing his weekly yoga class at the Bliss studios in Notting Hill.

Now that he is very much "single" again, Elliot is "totally energised" about building up Quintessentially, the firm he started with several partners back in 2000. The company services a niche market of wealthy people (those happy to pay at least £400 a year) who are either too busy to organise their own lives, or simply don't want the hassle of trying to get a table at Nobu, tickets for Madonna's West End acting debut, or finding someone to replace their walnut gun-stocks. Clients include Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Moss.

While Elliot admits that he may not always be able to get his members into The Ivy, he has a highly persuasive charm and enormous drive. This engaging mix comes from his father, Simon, and grandfather, and the experience of growing up in a slightly mad country house in Dorset. It became an "open house" for eccentric relations and friends who came to stay and never left.

He has a particularly close relationship with his 85-year-old grandfather, Sir William Elliot. "A remarkable man," he says. "A real gentleman, incredibly erudite. My grandmother sadly died about eight years ago, after a very long and painful illness. She was an incredibly feisty and to-the-point person. My father instilled in me an attitude that you couldn't really enjoy yourself unless you had done something to deserve it. So, my childhood was spent working on farms or local shops or, when I got older, in banks. I could never work in a bank today. I have to be passionate about everything I do." Although Elliot is reluctant to talk about his family, and is particularly careful in what he says about Aunt Camilla - his mother Annabel's sister - he also has a business to run and cannot exactly hide his royal connections.

"My father has strong views on appearing in the Press. He is of the 'Births, Deaths and Marriages' school of thinking. I remember when the whole Parker Bowles thing first blew up - I was about 16 or 17 - it was very difficult, and I've been very nervous ever since. That's why, although I am approached a lot to do interviews, I rarely do any." If his aunt were

ever to become queen, would it make it difficult for him to continue his business; wouldn't people think he was exploiting his royal connections? "In terms of embarrassing my family, I would hate to do that, and I don't think I ever have."

Perhaps any future royal connection might also affect his choice of girlfriends? Elliot seems sanguine about long-term relationships. Even if the right girl comes along - and there is no shortage of applicants - marriage doesn't have much appeal for him at the moment. Admitting to being a "faithful old dog type by nature", he goes on to say: "It's not marriage that I crave. Many of my friends who have married are pretty miserable. Within a year and a half most of them are either unhappy or divorced.

"I love the idea of being with somebody and having wonderful children, but marriage itself is not what I aspire to," he says.