Page 32 Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Botham’s son
bankrupt over
£50,000 bill
for pheasants
Lady Pamela’s most
unusual ruling on her
granddaughter’s name
WHAT’S in a name? The
Queen’s bridesmaid
Lady Pamela Hicks, who
is the younger daughter
of the 1st Earl Mount-
batten of Burma and
cousin of the Duke of
Edinburgh, is so averse
to her own moniker
that she banned her
daughter, India, from
passing it down to the
next generation.
‘I had my own
daughter, Domino, after
four boys,’ recalls India,
a former bridesmaid
of Princess Diana’s,in her eponymous
new podcast.
‘I said to my mother:
“Can you believe it, I’m
finally getting a girl?”
‘She replied: “You
are not to call her
Pamela! I don’t like the
name Pamela.”
‘We are very close, so
it would have crossed
my mind. But I was
allowed to take the
name Carmen.
‘My mother is Pamela
Carmen, and now my
daughter is called
Domino Carmen.’E
ngland cricketing
legend Sir Ian Both-
am’s son liam
showed that he was
a chip off the old
block by playing rugby for
England Under-21, as well as
cricket for Hampshire.
But Botham junior, 41, who these
days runs two shooting estates, is
now on a stickier wicket than any-
thing Sir Ian ever encountered: he
has, I can disclose, been declared
bankrupt owing nearly £50,000.
The sorry development stems from
an unpaid bill for seven-week-old
pheasants supplied last June to
liam’s acclaimed shoots — dunskey,
on Scotland’s north-west coast, and
Wisperdale in north lincolnshire.
‘We supplied the birds to him,’ a
spokesman for Welham lane game
Farm, in leicestershire, tells me.
‘We got a deposit. Then we got
another lump sum.’
But payment for the balance
remained outstanding. after receiv-
ing assurances that the money would
soon be forthcoming, the farm own-
ers went on holiday last September.
‘We came back, expecting to see the
remainder of the money in the bank:
there was nothing.
‘So we sent him a formal letter,
saying: “We’re going to take you to
court if you don’t pay up within
ten days”.’
liam Botham sent three successive
cheques. ‘They bounced,’ claims the
Welham lane game Farm
spokesman, adding that Bothammade four separate assurances that
the debt would be paid. But it wasn’t,
so a county court judgment was
secured against him, leading to
his bankruptcy.
Botham, who married his second
wife, former beauty queen lisa
Harrison, in Mustique in 2013, admits
to feeling hit for six. ‘I am devastated
about this,’ he tells me.
He insists he stopped two of
the cheques and ascribes his financial
difficulties to the loss of ‘a
huge amount of money in two
business deals’.
‘I did try to pay the debt, did not
want to be made bankrupt and have
instructed an insolvency specialist
to help me to pay everyone in full.’
It’s been a bad year for liam, who
received a six-month driving ban in
February after being caught speed-
ing in his £100,000 Range Rover.IN HIT BBC drama Sherlock, they
are deadly enemies, but in real
life Benedict Cumberbatch and
Andrew Scott, who plays the
detective’s nemesis Moriarty,
can’t keep away from each other.
I hear Cumberbatch was in the
audience at London’s Old Vic
theatre on Monday to watchScott perform in the Noel Coward
comedy Present Laughter.
‘He seemed to love it and vigor-
ously applauded Scott,’ a fellow
audience member tells me.
Scott recently made female —
and a few male — viewers swoon
as the ‘hot priest’ in acclaimed
comedy Fleabag.Another one bites the dust. Actor Anthony Andrews,
who played Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead revisited, is the
latest celebrity to spurn an invitation to appear on Strictly
Come Dancing, which might explain this year’s disappointing
line-up. ‘I’ve said no to Strictly more than once,’ he tells me,
‘I’m just not in a place to do it. each time I’ve been asked, I
think I’ve just considered other things. there are people
much better at it than me. You notice that the actors who go
on it tend to be very good and, although I did study dance
when I was very young, I’m just not sure it would be for me.’■Hit for six: Liam with Sir IanSherlock catches his rival
Moriarty ... at the Old Vi c
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