He is a brash playboy who has admitted to a rampant cocaine addiction and whose godfather was a notorious ex-crime boss. But despite leading a life of hedonistic excess, James Stunt, the ex-husband of Formula 1 heiress Petra Ecclestone, inveigled his way into the very highest of royal circles. Astonishingly, he was able to forge a close association with the King when he was still Prince of Wales.
Perhaps predictably, however, it was a relationship that ended in acute embarrassment when Charles, whom Stunt had loaned a series of supposed masterpiece paintings, was embroiled in an audacious fake art scandal first exposed by this newspaper.
Now, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Stunt’s former butler John Gilmour has lifted the lid on how gold bullion dealer Stunt, who also donated £140,000 to the Prince’s charities, was repeatedly welcomed at royal palaces and won the unlikely friendship and affection of the future King.
Mr Gilmour, a 54-year-old Canadian, claims:
He listened in to a private conversation between his boss and the then-Prince of Wales after Stunt, without telling Charles, put him on speakerphone;
Stunt attended a private audience with Charles at Clarence House and a banquet at Buckingham Palace;
Michael Fawcett, Charles’s former key aide, was chauffeured around in Stunt’s Rolls-Royce Phantom and regularly visited the tycoon’s Belgravia mansion to view paintings;
During one visit, Stunt handed Fawcett a luxury watch from Harrods as a present for Charles;
Stunt spent thousands of pounds a week on cocaine and hired prostitutes costing several thousand pounds a night;
The tycoon also regularly hosted his godfather Terry Adams, the notorious boss of Britain’s most feared crime family, at his home for Sunday lunch.
James Stunt was repeatedly welcomed at royal palaces and won the unlikely friendship and affection of the future King, according to Stunt’s former butler John Gilmour. Pictured with the then-Prince of Wales in Clarence House
Our revelations will once again raise questions about Charles’s relationship with those who make generous donations to his pet projects. It emerged in 2022 that Qatar’s former prime minister handed over a million euros in cash to Charles stuffed into carrier bags from the luxury store Fortnum & Mason. The money was passed immediately to one of Charles’s charities.
The son of a self-made publishing entrepreneur from Brixton, James Stunt was known for ostentatious displays of wealth. He would cruise London’s streets in a cavalcade of expensive cars and his lavish £12 million wedding to Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone in an Italian castle featured performances from Eric Clapton and the Black Eyed Peas.
In March, Stunt, 43, was dramatically cleared of being at the heart of a £266 million money laundering operation after being accused of allowing the Mayfair offices of his gold-trading company to be used to collect illicit cash.
Four other men were convicted over the ‘eye-watering’ operation to turn criminal cash into untraceable gold in one of the UK’s largest ever money laundering cases.
That a man with such a colourful past could forge close links with Charles is extraordinary but perhaps not unexpected: the King has always seemed to have a blind spot for those willing to support his cherished projects.
Indeed, Stunt first gained access to Charles after he donated to his charities between 2014 and 2016, including £65,000 to the Prince’s Trust and £50,000 to Dumfries House, the Scottish mansion his charity saved for the nation.
In early 2017, Stunt, an avid art collector, loaned 17 paintings from his collection to Dumfries House in what Charles later described in a gushing letter as a ‘truly remarkable’ act of generosity.
They included what appeared to be a Monet, a Salvador Dali, a Chagall and a Picasso. Two years later, however, the MoS exposed how these four paintings were, in fact, fakes. Instead of being the work of master painters, they had actually been knocked up on a kitchen table in California by Tony Tetro, a man who once served a prison sentence for art forgery.
Stunt married Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone in a lavish £12 million ceremony in an Italian castle
The ten-year loan of the paintings had been organised by Charles’s controversial former valet, Michael Fawcett.
For decades Mr Fawcett, 62, was Charles’s indispensable right-hand man but on three separate occasions he was forced to resign following scandals, including in 2003 when he was dubbed Fawcett The Fence for selling royal gifts.
The MoS can reveal it was Mr Fawcett who ensured Stunt enjoyed the privilege of a private meeting with Charles at Clarence House – the King’s cherished residence where only his closest friends and associates are welcome.
Sources close to Stunt say the tycoon was invited to park his Rolls-Royce in the car park at St James’s Palace, next to Clarence House. He then met Fawcett and was ushered into a private audience with Charles, which is said to have lasted around 15 minutes. A prized photo of Charles with Stunt in Clarence House was revealed during court proceedings in 2022.
This newspaper has also established that Charles invited Stunt to a dinner and garden party at Buckingham Palace in June 2017 alongside several hundred supporters of Dumfries House, which is the HQ of the King’s charitable foundation. Stunt is believed to have met Charles on a third occasion in 2018.
Mr Gilmour said Stunt ‘loved talking’ about his relationship with Charles and proudly displayed letters he received from him in gold frames in his office.
In one, dated February 2017, Charles warmly praised Stunt for his loan of paintings to Dumfries House, saying: ‘Your kindness and generosity are truly remarkable and I appreciate such a gesture more than you can ever know.’
He added: ‘I do hope that during one of my forthcoming visits to Dumfries House you will be able to join me and see all your magnificent artwork on display?’
In another deeply personal letter, Charles expressed his sympathy over what he described as the ‘sudden and tragic death’ of Stunt’s brother, Lee, who died of an accidental drugs overdose in 2016.
Mr Gilmour said his former boss ‘loved talking’ about his relationship with Charles and proudly displayed letters he received from him in gold frames
The MoS can also reveal Charles sent Stunt a Christmas card in 2017 in which the Prince wrote: ‘With endless gratitude for your marvellous support.’
For around six months in 2017 Stunt rented a six-bedroom Georgian mansion in Chester Square, an elegant enclave in the heart of London’s Belgravia that was previously home to Margaret Thatcher, Mick Jagger, Nigella Lawson and Roman Abramovich. He later bought an £11 million mews house in nearby South Eaton Place.
On one occasion at the Chester Square property, Mr Gilmour claimed he watched as Stunt spoke to Charles on the phone, putting the Prince on loudspeaker. The conversation took place in the evening while Stunt was by the window of his third-floor sitting room, Mr Gilmour claimed.
‘I remember James sitting at the window with his sat[ellite] phone and he was saying ‘Your Highness’. You could hear Charles because he has a very distinct voice. Afterwards he said ‘that was Prince Charles on the phone’.’ Another well-placed source recalls being told to not go upstairs in the mansion because the tycoon was on a call with Charles.
According to Mr Gilmour, Mr Fawcett regularly visited Stunt at his home in 2017 for impromptu ‘art shows’ featuring paintings from Mr Stunt’s large collection.
Mr Fawcett was so indispensable to Charles that he reportedly squeezed toothpaste onto the then-Prince’s toothbrush when he broke his arm playing polo. The aide’s key role for many years, according to royal sources, was to act as a fixer and cultivate wealthy donors who might be able to bankroll Charles’s pet projects.
Mr Gilmour told of the preparations for Mr Fawcett’s visits to Stunt’s home, which typically took place on a Friday, saying: ‘One of the bodyguards would come with the art maybe 45 minutes before Fawcett arrived. I then put them against the wall and then James would come and reorganise them.
‘I’d then take him [Mr Fawcett] upstairs. James was always there ready and sitting in the living room. There would normally be four or five paintings but one time there were ten or 11.’
Mr Gilmour said Stunt would insist that the royal aide was served either Chateau Petrus, costing £4,500 a bottle, or Château Latour at £2,000 a bottle. Lesser guests would be served supermarket wine disguised in Chateau Petrus bottles, Mr Gilmour claimed.
‘When Fawcett arrived the red carpet was rolled out and everyone was required to leave the room. But [despite the secrecy] James still boasted about his relationship with Fawcett and Charles.’
Mr Gilmour said Mr Fawcett, who was chief executive of the trust that managed Dumfries House, would be picked up by one of Stunt’s drivers in one of the tycoon’s two Rolls-Royces and then driven home after his visit.
During this period, Stunt was in the grip of major cocaine addiction. He told a court in 2022 that he started using the class A drug after his wife left him in March 2017 and took it every day for two years.
In a video posted on social media, which has now been deleted, Stunt bragged: ‘Do I take cocaine? Yeah, get over it. Do I s**g prostitutes from time to time? Yes, I love it.’
Mr Gilmour said his former boss would spend thousands of pounds a week on cocaine and was unable to leave his home without taking a hidden stash with him. The former butler even claimed he would even help lace Stunt’s cigarettes with cocaine, something he dubbed ‘cocoa puffs’, so he always had an available supply.
‘I would put it either in his cigarette packet, at the bottom, or he’d put it in his underwear. I would put coke into his cigarettes to make cocoa puffs,’ Mr Gilmour said.
‘He couldn’t leave the house without it, and any time he would go out, it didn’t matter where he was going, I had to fix it. His addiction ruled his life. When you are dealing with someone like James, it’s like being in a speeding car without any brakes.’
In a dispute related to his bankruptcy, an insolvency judge last year ruled that Stunt ‘turned to cocaine from about April/June 2017’, with his addiction ending at the beginning of 2020.
‘The evidence from Mr James Stunt is that he became a recluse and in effect wallowed in his substance abuse to the extent that his mind was addled as the mind of any serious cocaine addict will be,’ Judge Clive Jones stated.
Shining a light on the sordid world of ‘elite escorts’, Mr Gilmour claimed Stunt regularly used prostitutes, including twice selecting sex workers from a glossy catalogue in which escorts charge up to £20,000 a night. It is understood Mr Stunt denies using such a catalogue. His use of prostitutes was also detailed during the 2020 trial of his former bodyguard Justinas Ivaskevicius, who was accused of stealing a £515,000 yellow diamond from Stunt’s home.
Southwark Crown Court heard how Stunt met ‘up to five women a week’ and once ordered his security guard to pay one of them with a gold bar. His use of drugs and prostitutes was said to have made Stunt ‘ripe for exploitation’.
Stunt has denied his staff used a gold bar as payment.
In his closing speech, defence lawyer Michael Lavers said: ‘There was clearly a degree of drugs and prostitution, I know there was a reluctance to say that word from the witnesses but let’s call a spade a spade.’
Ivaskevicius was cleared of stealing the diamond but jailed for two years and nine months after he was found with blank cheques belonging to Stunt.
Mr Fawcett’s visits to Stunt appear to have come shortly after the tycoon loaned his paintings to Dumfries House.
A new documentary called The Royal Stunt will claim that doubts were raised over the authenticity of many of the loaned paintings. Documents unearthed by US filmmaker Giampiero Ambrosi and seen by the MoS, detail how it was claimed Stunt’s paintings were worth an astonishing £229 million.
The papers show how the controversial businessman then tried to secure a loan of up to £120 million by using the art collection as collateral. A catalogue detailing the so-called ‘Stunt Collection’, which was sent to at least one prospective lender, described the artwork as a ‘fascinating and eclectic mix of Old Masters, modernist, surrealist and impressionist paintings from great names such as Van Dyck, Picasso, Chagall, Monet and Dali’.
Stressing the importance of the collection’s royal link, the catalogue claimed the manager of Dumfries House had declared they could now run art tours at the property ‘due to the quality and diversity that Mr Stunt’s paintings have brought to the collection’.
The deal, however, collapsed after the prospective lender, a US finance firm, valued the tycoon’s paintings at just £8.6 million and offered to lend £4.3 million.
It is understood that Mr Stunt denies attempting to borrow money against the paintings he loaned Dumfries House.
Stunt was declared bankrupt in June 2019, with debts of more than £5 million.
He was convicted last April of racially aggravated harassment, after repeatedly calling a police officer an ‘Uncle Tom’, an offensive phrase first used to refer to black slaves who co-operated with their white captors.
