The real fast Eddie Davenport

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10 April 2012

Last weekend, they were celebrating — albeit not too loudly — at 33 Portland Place, the run-down West End mansion acquired by Edward Davenport in controversial circumstances about 10 years ago.

The slick-haired millionaire, 44 this Sunday, who first attracted public notoriety in the late Eighties with his Gatecrasher Balls — and continued with swingers' parties and pole-dancing lessons at his august new address — had just been cleared of breaking a noise abatement order served by Westminster City Council and awarded most of his £28,000 costs.

The defence? His delicate little head shoots like a snake from his too-high collar. "I shouldn't have been served with the order at all, as I wasn't in the country when some people in the area complained about two parties held in 2008 and 2009 — which I didn't organise — and I have received no help from the council in resolving the matter since then. As far as I'm concerned, this was a vindictive action. My ability to do deals could have suffered, and I'll do anything to protect my reputation."

So what reputation would that be, exactly? Since the Gatecrasher days, when he drew 10,000 at a time to rural stately homes, a quick trawl of "Fast" Eddie Davenport's press cuttings reveals he was accused by the BBC of sharp practice in a pub-leasing firm he ran (which he denies) and involved in two companies that went bust owing millions (which he also denies).

The 24-room house, formerly the High Commission of Sierra Leone (its leasehold was obtained for £50,000 while the African country was in the throes of a coup d'etat) has a market value of about £30 million, and comes complete with Adam ceilings and wall panels and one of the finest Georgian staircases in London.

Add that to the estimated £70 million-worth of stock Davenport claims to have bought in the capital since he went into property, the apartments in Monaco and Thailand, the fleet of luxury cars and control of Patrick Cox shoes and this trim, glassy eyed playboy should be happy as a fox in a chicken coop.

After all, he can still hold private parties, launches, film and photo shoots to fund his "hobby" of restoring these 22,000sq ft of prime real estate. He can still slip downstairs from the flat at the top of the house — which he shares with "seven friends who contribute to the bills" — and press the flesh of celebrating celebrities who unwittingly find themselves in his vicinity.

He can still upload photographs of himself with the likes of Mick Jagger, Russell Brand and Simon Cowell onto his website, where he advertises his (manorial) lordship to impress foreign businessmen. He can still dress in suits and ties from the Savile Row tailor William Hunt. So what could blot his recently designed escutcheon?

Davenport rolls up a shiny trouser leg, pulls down a silk sock and reveals a piece of apparel more commonly worn beneath Primark trackie bottoms: an electronic tracking device, or "tag". Then he gives an alarming chuckle.

"My conditions of bail are absolutely ridiculous," he says. "They're more appropriate to a Colombian drug-dealer. I've already spent four months on remand this year — which by my calculation is as much as you serve for a one-year prison sentence — and posted a £1 million surety.

"My passport has been taken, I have to report some of my business dealings to the Serious Fraud Office, and sign in at a police station three times a week."

And all because he's been arrested for "ramping" the purchase price of an office block by £2.4 million — oh, and for allegedly conspiring in a £12.5 million scam to take arrangement fees from prospective borrowers when he had no intention of making the loans.

Needless to say, milord protests his innocence and says: "Well, life's always got hiccups. You've just got to survive each day, and fight your battles one by one."

So far, this one has allegedly cost him dear. Davenport says he has had to let go of his yacht and private jet, most of his Monaco staff and some very lucrative deals abroad. "But why would I be a flight risk'?" he asks. "I have considerable attachments to Britain, quite apart from the £40 million of assets that I've already disclosed to the SFO. My mother still lives in the house in Fulham where I was brought up."

Born Edward Ormus Sharington Davenport in London on July 11, 1966, he is the son of a successful restaurateur and by 15 was making money selling clothes on Portobello Market and cultivating his love of the good life.

"I've always loved parties," he says, "my own and other people's, and they have been a huge element in my career. When I was 14, everyone always came round to my place.

"Later, I held them in nightclubs. Then came the Gatecrasher Balls. I'm a very sociable character . . ."

One can think of other adjectives — sleazy, perhaps — but he protests: "There has been nothing sleazy about the activities in this house." Not the pole dancing? "It was innocent fun for women who work in the area." And the swinging? "The Killing Kittens events were attended by a good-looking, upmarket crowd who are into a hedonistic sexual scene. That's not illegal." It turns out that Davenport draws a distinction between "naughtiness" and criminality.

"You can call me flamboyant and an opportunist," he says, "and I suppose I am a bit flash. But I'm trying to create the image of someone who can deliver on an international scale. People in Hong Kong and China are going to expect you to have some kind of presence. So when they go to my website and see my title and the pictures of all the celebrities who have genuinely been to my house and said hi' to me, they're going to take me seriously."

If only he had the same effect on the home crowd. Instead, he says, "There will always be a small number of people in the anti-Eddie Davenport Fan Club. I'm told by those close to me that these people are jealous, but it's not an emotion I have, so I can't really understand it."

What Davenport does understand is the getting and spending of money. "Making progressive steps forward is very, very important to me. I moved from my mother's to a flat, to a house, to a bigger house, and eventually to this." He makes a sweeping gesture to take in his tatty empire.

And then Davenport makes his first understatement in an hour of rapid-fire self-justification. "Every now and again, the progress stops and you realise you've made a mistake. Life was quite good, but it's gone back a bit in the last year. Now I have to get back to where I was before the SFO investigation — an investigation that has put a sledgehammer through a lot of my activities, left others on hold and damaged my reputation."

Oh, Eddie, you have good lawyers — but why not concentrate on your business deals and forget your reputation?

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