RICHARD KAY: Hard-drinking toff who consoled Charles over his cut up with Diana, taught William and Harry to hunt and was adored by girls… however met a sadly undignified finish

There must always be a place for sympathy when it comes to the unfortunate manner of his passing – trapped between his bed and the wall, upside down, with legs akimbo.

That is how, it emerged this week, his body was found by a carer.

It is hardly the sort of dignified departure one would have imagined for the hard-riding, hard-living Captain Ian Farquhar, admired and envied by other men as much for his skills on horseback as his prowess with the opposite sex.

Dying in bed? No excitement in that. Far too commonplace. Boring even. This was certainly not the ending the legendary joint master of the Beaufort Hunt, friend of the royals and former equerry to the Queen Mother would have envisaged when joshing with friends over a late night whisky and water. 

Surely a last blaze of glory leading that group of female devotees who rode in his wake over the Gloucestershire countryside and gloried in the politically incorrect nickname of ‘the bitch pack’?

Local beauties were said to sigh at the very mention of his often deliberately mispronounced name, particularly after he left his wife Pammie-Jane for rich heiress then Charlotte Monckton when the two were described suggestively as riding ‘knee to knee’.

Or perhaps in a nod to his ageing frame, having broken every bone in his body bar his neck, his exit would involve reclining on his favourite Corfu beach with a tumbler of something cold within reach. 

Alas, in recent years drink was more than just a prop for the man whose taut, handsome profile was once a pin-up of the Shires thanks to his tireless campaigning against New Labour’s ban on foxhunting and its assault, as he saw it, on the traditions of rural England.

His rasping voice could regularly be heard rallying the country’s beleaguered hunting community after the ban was enacted in 2004.

Farquhar attributed it to the ignorance of what he called ‘misguided urban idealists’ and deplored it as ‘class hatred’, adding: ‘It is as if everything we felt strongly about and believed in has been eroded. It has been eroded by bigotry, jealousy and lack of knowledge.’

On Wednesday, an inquest into Captain Farquhar’s death last March at the age of 78 heard how the Old Etonian, who was once so close to the then Prince Charles that he took him to his local pub to discuss their joint marital woes, had developed a drinking problem.

His daughter Victoria said her father would consume a litre of gin and a couple of bottles of wine in a day. Salisbury coroner’s court heard his blood alcohol level was 4.5 times the drink-drive limit when he died.

An empty gin bottle, two empty wine bottles and a half drunk bottle of whisky were found at his home where he lived alone near Chippenham, Wiltshire.

In a statement, Victoria described the father-of-three’s love of horses but said his drinking issues stemmed from his involvement in hunting, an activity renowned for its social element. ‘There would be a dinner afterwards,’ she said.

‘The amount of drinking was considered normal but, as time went on, we thought he had a drinking problem. He did try and stop and he would for a couple of weeks.’

But, she added, doctors had advised the former soldier that ‘if he did not look after himself he would die’. It was a pitiful ending – a misadventure verdict recorded by coroner Ian Singleton cited alcohol toxicity and ‘inversion of the body’ – for a figure at the gilded centre of royal life residing in a farmhouse called ‘Happy Lands’ on the King’s Highgrove estate.

These were the days when, as well as running the Duke of Beaufort’s hunt at nearby Badminton and becoming one of the leading breeders of the modern English foxhound, he was also a shoulder to cry on for the Prince of Wales as his marriage to Princess Diana was hitting the rocks.

The huntsman celebrated for his bravery on horseback, was a trusted friend, not least because he protected the prince’s then mistress, the former Camilla Parker Bowles, who loved to hunt with the Beaufort but feared being ambushed by paparazzi.

After his death, Queen Camilla was among the close friends who remembered Farquhar’s life at a thanksgiving service and whose ex-husband Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles described his fellow cavalry officer as ‘wild as a hawk in his youth, but always great fun’.

But the other reason for the princely affection was Farquhar’s own marital indiscretions. He had left his wife for the charms of Ms Monckton, who inherited her £450million fortune from her father, the 9th Viscount Galway, who died in 1971, and her mother, Lady Teresa, daughter of the 7th Earl of Ilchester, who died in 1990. Both her brothers died in accidents.

Her vast country estates include the 15,000 acres surrounding her Dorset home, Melbury, and 3,000 acres in Nottinghamshire, as well as property in Yorkshire.

She also has almost 40 acres in central London, mostly in Holland Park, where she owns the freehold of the turreted mansion once home to the late film director Michael Winner who sold it to singer Robbie Williams.

Ian and Charlotte, who is the only person in Britain other than the monarch entitled to own swans, lived together off and on for four years and their passionate affair was the talk of the hunting field.

When Pammie-Jane filed for divorce, it was thought the couple would marry but Ms Monckton instead became the wife of landowner James Townshend.

For all the gossip about his womanising, friends insist that Farquhar was, in fact, no boulevardier in the mould of his friend Parker Bowles.

‘His real love was the countryside and being among farming people,’ says one friend.

Indeed, the county set have always scoffed at suggestions that Farquhar might have been one of the models for Rupert Campbell-Black, the raffish hero of Jilly Cooper’s racy novels Riders and Rivals, part of her Rutshire Chronicles novels and now an acclaimed TV series.

‘He never claimed to be whiter than the driven snow but he was never a cad,’ says the friend. ‘After all he used to refer to women in a very old fashioned and quaint phrase, ‘the fair sex’.’

Farquhar later described his domestic upheaval as ‘all very sad’ and blamed himself. ‘It was all my fault,’ he said.

And 15 months after their divorce, ‘the Captain’ as he was known to all, and his ex-wife were partly reconciled and lived together again for several years.

He and Charles, meanwhile, found common cause as they contemplated the end of their respective marriages when they met up in local hostelries.

Sometimes, Farquhar made the ill-advised decision to drive home after a few drinks and he was once interviewed by police after abandoning his car in a hedgerow. On another occasion, he attempted to drive back over muddy fields after a dinner at Highgrove and his car became so bogged down it had to be dragged out by a tractor.

He was never quite as skilful behind the wheel as he was on horseback. On leaving Viscount Linley‘s wedding reception in 1993, he drove into the railings at Clarence House and lost his licence.

Other scrapes included being found guilty of illegally blocking badger setts to prevent them being used by foxes (he was later cleared on appeal) and suspected of polluting a stretch of the River Avon with sheep dip, wiping out a colony of rare crayfish.

But his relationship with the royals survived them all.

Even when his daughter Emma once disrupted Tony Blair‘s speech at the Labour Party conference to protest against the Government’s proposed ban on foxhunting, it barely raised a royal eyebrow.

If anything, the two families became closer after 18-year-old Prince William enjoyed a romance with Farquhar’s youngest daughter Rose when he left Eton in 2000.

She was said to be his first love after they spent the summer months enjoying afternoon strolls and picnics around Highgrove. According to one account it was a ‘very sweet and innocent love affair’.

On one occasion, it was reported, the couple were stealing a private moment in a field when they were ‘rudely interrupted’ by a farmer who stumbled across them.

The romance petered out when William headed off on his gap year and then to St Andrews University, where he met Kate Middleton. But the couple remained friends and, when Rose – who auditioned for the singing reality show The Voice – married professional polo player George Gemmel in 2022, William slipped in discreetly through the back door of St Mary the Virgin church in Tetbury, to witness the ceremony.

There may have been one other reason for Charles’s princely solicitous attention, however.

According to Beaufort gossip he was rather taken with Mrs Farquhar. ‘Pammie-Jane was always beautifully turned out and with her long hair tucked up she looked very elegant, especially when mounted on her horse,’ recalls a hunt regular. 

‘When he was out hunting the prince and Pammie would always ride together, thigh to thigh so to speak. The talk was that he had a bit of an eye for her and if Ian and Pammie were on one of their marital ‘breaks’ he would ensure she didn’t go short of things at the house.’

Farquhar, who had taught both William and Harry how to hunt, took it all in his stride.

Like the royal princes, he had been educated at Ludgrove prep and then Eton before entering Sandhurst for officer training straight from school.

After resolving to join his father’s regiment, The Queen’s Own Hussars, he met up with Colonel Sir Douglas Scott at White’s, London’s exclusive gentlemen’s club.

Lunch was followed by a few glasses of port and the Colonel, who’d clearly become a little discombobulated, asked Farquhar why he was there.

‘You are interviewing me for the regiment, Colonel,’ he replied. ‘Very good,’ Sir Douglas responded. ‘That will be fine. Give your father my best.’

He went on to serve in the jungles of Malaya and also in Aden and played polo for the Army alongside Parker Bowles.

For two years he was equerry to the Queen Mother and he quickly became a court favourite despite at least one hiccup along the way.

After a particularly heavy night, he completely missed an engagement with his royal boss.

The following morning he received a parcel in the post – an alarm clock and a note signed from ‘Ma’am’.

He was regularly invited to stay at Royal Lodge during Ascot week and was often to be seen accompanying the royals in the carriage party from Windsor Castle to the racecourse.

Frustrated by the leisurely pace of his advancement up the ranks, however, Farquhar left the Army in 1973 and to become joint master of the Bicester Hunt. The year before he had married Pamela-Jane Chafer, a fearless horsewoman who became his ‘whipper-in’ turning the hounds when they straying off the scent.

In 1985 they moved to Gloucestershire after he was invited by the Duke of Beaufort to become his joint master and huntsman.

On the hunting field he had no equal. For the next 25 years he shrugged off multiple injuries and even periods in a neck brace to hunt with hounds four days a week, only retiring as huntsman in 2010 at the age of 65.

He remained joint master until 2019, living in a grace-and-favour cottage close to the kennels and next to Badminton church.

Asked if he had ever been frightened, he answered: ‘All the time. If you weren’t afraid you would have no brain, or at least no imagination. Overcoming fear is one of the great things in life.’

He often crossed himself at meets and muttered the Latin phrase Morituri te salutant, meaning ‘Those who are about to die salute you’.

In retirement he wrote a memoir, The Way It Was, a eulogy to country life but also to a marriage he never wanted to end. It was dedicated to his ex-wife.