EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: Why money can’t buy love for the tragic hedge fund king who has a ‘£800 million’ fortune

He has all the riches anyone could wish for, including a private island off the northwest coast of Scotland, which is currently being transformed into what promises to be a ‘global destination’, six years after he picked it up for £1.7 million. more than change to someone with a known fortune of £800 million.

Yet hedge fund king Ian Wace, co-founder of Marshall Wace, which split £723 million between its 23 partners in the past financial year alone, knows all too well that money doesn’t buy happiness.

As if to prove the point, I can reveal that the 60-year-old has just split from his third wife, slim beauty Saffron Aldridge, 55, a friend of both the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of Sussex.

“The marriage is over,” a friend tells me. “It’s very sad, but the good thing is that they stay close.”

Indeed, Wace was prominently featured when Saffron’s son, Milo — who had the former model while romantically entwined with Old Harrovian talent agent turned novelist Simon Astaire — married two weeks ago on the French Riviera. “Ian came to the wedding and gave a very moving speech,” the pal adds.

Wace suffered an almost unbearable loss in 1994 when his first wife, Joanne, and their two children, Guy, four, and Alicia, just 11 months old, were killed in a horrific accident after Joanne’s Range Rover flipped through the median on a dual carriageway in Hampshire in the path of an oncoming truck. Wace, ahead of them in his Mercedes, saw everything in his rearview mirror.

He married again two years later, his new bride being Fiona Hardy – “a wonderful girl,” says a friend – in the beautiful gardens of Rousham House, Oxfordshire. The couple had two children, but separated in 2010.

After another two-year hiatus, Wace married Aldridge, a one-time “face” of Ralph Lauren. After splitting from Astaire, she was married to Toby Constantine, cousin of TV presenter Susannah Constantine, with whom she had a second son, Finn.

She and Wace, who lived in Kensington, West London, had no children together, but shared a passion for helping children in need. Arpad ‘Arky’ Busson.

“The motivating force of my life was the accident,” he reflected. “I can’t undo it, but a positive force has arisen, in Ark.”

The smart set talks about… The new Lady Chelsea

Writer Davina Motion’s engagement to George Cadogan, eldest son of Viscount Chelsea and eldest grandson of Earl Cadogan, inspired a friend to playfully say she’d “hit the bull’s eye.”

Others were even more giddy when the Tatler journalist, 26, married George, 27, last summer at St Luke’s Church – in Chelsea, of course. The festivities then continued at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the scene of a lavish dinner and dance routine by the newlyweds that left guests awestruck and ecstatic.

There will be no such glee after Earl Cadogan’s death this week. But George, now becoming Viscount Chelsea – the courtesy title formerly held by his father, Edward, successor as 9th Earl – has experience in bleak circumstances like these.

Last September he was on duty as an officer of the Welsh Guards for ‘Operation London Bridge’ following the death of Queen Elizabeth. He took part in the vigil and in the procession on the day of her funeral. But in due course we can certainly look forward to the dawn of a new ‘Chelsea Set’ – and a reprise of that wedding dance routine.

Boogie-woogie pianist Jools Holland was one of the guests at a party to celebrate the launch of Superbears – The Story of Hesketh Racing, about Lord (Alexander) Hesketh’s foray into Formula One in the 1970s, with James Hunt at the send.

“Alexander was the first to bring into job pavilions with uniformed butlers, lobsters and champagne,” says Jools at the party held at Lady Amabel Lindsay’s home in Notting Hill, west London. Hesketh became a Tory treasurer and was known to fill the bath in his hotel suite with bottles of Pol Roger and crushed ice during his party conferences.

Sophie strips down on a hot Hirst date

Damien Hirst and his girlfriend, Sophie Cannell, publicly demonstrated the art of stripping after arriving in Mayfair for an alfresco lunch despite the sweltering temperatures.

Britain’s richest performer, 58, showed up at Scott’s restaurant wearing a woolen hat and tracksuit, while Cannell, who is 29 years his junior, donned a black top and trousers, plus a pair of furry slippers.

As the mercury rose, former ballerina Sophie stripped down to her sports bra before eating oysters and ice cream.

The couple, who have been together for five years, live in Hirst’s £36 million, 14-bedroom home in London’s Regent’s Park.

He gave her a £166,600 18-carat gold Rolex Pearlmaster studded with 713 gems in 2021.

Vera’s windfall of £7.7 million

Vera star Brenda Blethyn discovers a huge fortune. I hear the actress, 77, who plays DCI Vera Stanhope in the long-running ITV drama, will receive £7.7 million after voluntarily liquidating her acting firm Waltonmay.

Documents submitted to Companies House by Blethyn and her husband, Michael Mayhew, an art director, reveal an expected surplus of £7.7 million after the closure.

Mayhew founded the company with her in 2010 after becoming her second husband. They report the nature of the business as “performing arts, performing arts support activities and artistic creation.”

Violin sensation Madeleine Easton reveals she made King Charles cry. Invited to perform at the coronation, the Australian says the monarch snuck into orchestra rehearsal. “He stayed the whole time and at the end, tears were running down his face,” she recalls. “At the end he stood up and said, ‘Thank you, it was the greatest privilege to hear you play’.” Easton returned the compliment, describing the king himself as a “fine cellist.”

How a rejected suitor pranked Sam Cam’s sister

David Cameron’s sister-in-law Emily Sheffield has revealed that police raided her boarding school dorm after she was accused of being a drug dealer.

The 50-year-old journalist was suspended from Marlborough College (£42,930 a year) after drugs were found in her room.

“I was removed because they found half a joint in my top drawer,” says the baron’s daughter. “It was against the rules and I deserved to be kicked out.” She explains, “I always wondered why the sniffer dogs came straight to my room.

“It turned out that there was a young man who had asked me out, and I had very politely said no.

“Apparently he went to the head prefect and said I was a drug dealer, which is why the school panicked.

“They literally ripped that room apart.”

(Very) modern ways…

On Blue Peter he was a good hand with sticky plastic. These days Gethin Jones is into using Instagram as a dating app.

“I dated someone who messaged me on Instagram, and it was a lot of fun,” says the Welshman, 45.

“In some ways, Instagram is becoming like a dating app where you can say hello.”

Adieu to the forgiving Duchess of Sussex

The mention of the word “duchess” now does not always arouse thoughts of generosity of spirit and stoicism. But the Dowager Duchess of Richmond and Gordon, who died on Tuesday at the age of 90, embodied those qualities to the highest degree.

Susan Grenville-Grey was 18 when she married Charles Gordon-Lennox. After she had two children, they adopted two babies, Maria and Naomi.

“My mother, the Duchess, always taught me that I ‘belong’ only to myself,” Naomi later reflected. Susan’s capacity for forgiveness came to the fore when Charles, 10th Duke, admitted an affair, prompting him to resign as Lord Lieutenant of West Sussex – and the Duchess to say she would “continue to support her husband in every way possible” ‘.