On the surface, at least, everything is just the same. He still has his rock band, membership of the boxing gym where he likes to work out and the Twitter account on which, from his lofty perch in the upper reaches of the social tree, he posts eccentric observations on life and politics.
Doubtless the Marquess of Worcester’s unquenchable love for party-going and party-giving will continue with just as much enthusiasm as it has since 1984 when, thanks to the death of a childless cousin, he found himself one of the most eligible bachelors in the land and heir to one of its greatest feudal titles.
But sometime in the next few days there will be changes — big changes. The death on Wednesday of his 89-year-old father, the Duke of Beaufort, means that Harry Worcester, 65, known to everyone as Bunter, now succeeds to the title as the 12th duke.
Harry Worcester, 65, known to everyone as Bunter, is in the process of ending his marriage to actress-turned-environmental activist Tracy Ward (pictured) after three children and 30 years
With it comes one of England’s most historic estates, a £315 million fortune and ownership of Badminton House, a Palladian mansion with 40 bedrooms, multiple staircases and walls hung with masterpieces, including a brace of Canalettos either side of the fireplace.
There is no reason to suppose that the succession, as title and inheritance passes from father to son, should not be a smooth one. But such aristocratic transitions can be unhappy, especially if there has been more than one wife.
When Princess Diana’s father Earl Spencer died in 1992, his children bundled up his second wife Raine’s possessions into black bin bags within 48 hours of his death.
Bunter’s father, David Somerset, the late duke, was also married twice. His first wife and the mother of all four of his children, Lady Caroline Thynne, died in 1995 and the duke remarried in 2000. His bride Miranda Morley, now 70, a landscape gardener and daughter of an Army officer, is only five years older than her stepson Bunter.
As dowager duchess, provision will certainly have been made for her to move out of the big house and into a smaller property on the 52,000-acre Gloucestershire estate.
But just when and where is not yet clear. Friends hope it will not be a hasty ejection — certainly not before her husband’s funeral and possibly not for some time afterwards.
The pending divorce is complicated by the presence of girlfriend Georgia Powell (pictured) he wishes to marry and make his second wife
However, there is a complication in the takeover. Bunter is in the process of ending his marriage to actress-turned-environmental activist Tracy Ward after three children and 30 years. But they are not yet divorced.
Indeed, as Tracy told the Mail’s Shakespeare diary this week, she and her husband ‘continue to amicably negotiate our separation’.
I can reveal, however, that no matter how long this ‘negotiation’ lasts, Tracy, who has the title Marchioness of Worcester, has no plans to become chatelaine at Badminton — home of the world’s top three-day equestrian event.
‘As Harry and I are separated, I will not be moving into Badminton House,’ she tells me simply.
It is not just Bunter’s elevation to the dukedom that makes their pending divorce that much more complicated, but also the presence of the girlfriend he wishes to marry and make his second wife.
She is divorcee Georgia Powell (pronounced Pole), 48-year-old granddaughter of the novelist Anthony Powell and a newspaper obituary writer.
In recent years, while his wife has devoted her energies to opposing GM foods and intensive farming, Bunter ploughed his efforts into party-going, usually in the company of pretty women.
When I once tackled him about the presence of a young actress 25 years his junior, who was often at his side, he offered this apercu: ‘I’ve been at parties with her, but I have not been to parties with her.’
This was an elegant explanation that perhaps allowed the Worcesters’ marriage to rub along. For a time, he was close to the beautiful heiress of a French perfume house and friends toyed with the possibility of a future union between this Tory-supporting landowner and a sophisticated Europhile.
But for the past year, his most persistent companion has been Georgia, who has two children with her former husband, artist Toby Coke.
Nowhere will the developments at Badminton be watched more keenly than at Buckingham Palace. The dukes of Beaufort have been close friends and faithful servants of the Crown.
The tenth duke, who founded the horse trials in 1949, was Master of the Horse for 42 years, serving both the Queen and her father, George VI. During World War II, Queen Mary, whose niece was the Duchess of Beaufort, lived at Badminton.
With the title of Duke of Beaufort comes one of England’s most historic estates, a £315 million fortune and ownership of Badminton House (pictured), a Palladian mansion with 40 bedrooms, multiple staircases and walls hung with masterpieces, including a brace of Canalettos either side of the fireplace
George VI attended the 11th duke’s wedding in 1950, and when Bunter married in 1987, Prince Charles and Princess Diana as well as the Duke and Duchess of York were guests. Princess Anne and her daughter Zara have been regular competitors at Badminton Horse Trials.
And, of course, the Beaufort Hunt played a central role in the backdrop to the romance between the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles.
It was as members of the green-coated pack that the two picked up the threads of their relationship after Charles’s marriage to Diana began to unravel and, safe among fellow huntsmen, were able to conduct their affair.
Now the title Master of the Beaufort passes to Bunter, a man rarely seen on horseback but who promises to continue the traditions of the hunt.
He is unlikely to be a conventional duke; a habitué of Mayfair clubs such as Annabel’s and 5 Hertford Street rather than the kennels on the Badminton estate, he could have been drawn from the pages of P. G. Wodehouse.
Tall and gangling and surprisingly clumsy, he is often to be heard apologising for spilling a drink or stepping on a debutante’s toes.
What he does possess is a jolly, noisy and self-deprecating sense of humour. According to fellow party enthusiast interior designer Nicky Haslam, Bunter is ‘one of the nicest people ever, very funny and very kind’. He is also said to be very loyal to his friends.
His oldest and closest chum, web designer Tim Hanbury, has been a friend since Eton. Hanbury’s stunning daughters Rose and Marina, who are married respectively to the Marquess of Cholmondeley and the Earl of Durham, were bridesmaids at Bunter and Tracy’s wedding.
Another friend who has often accompanied Bunter on his night-time forays around London’s smarter parties, says: ‘He’s almost too nice to be a duke, not at all serious. The trouble is, when people inherit these very senior titles, they often change. One thinks of David Carnegie, who became Duke of Fife a couple of years ago and overnight became impossibly grand.
‘I hope Bunter doesn’t change.’
As he’s already of pensionable age, there is every chance he will not. He will, after all, be the first of Britain’s 20 non-royal dukes to be a rock and roll musician. He sings with seven-piece progressive rock band The Listening Device, described by Jools Holland as a ‘cross between Ray Charles and Nick Cave’.
The band has just released its latest album, Visions Of Imaginary Furniture, and while often engaged to perform at upper-class balls, it has also performed at Glastonbury and supported Eric Clapton, Roger Waters and Bryan Ferry.
Rock and roll has been a thread throughout Bunter’s life. In the Eighties, there was his band of blue-bloods, The Business Connection, with the Duke of Rutland’s daughter Lady Teresa Manners on lead vocals.
Some have wondered if the new duke might even consider starting up a rival to Glastonbury’s famed pyramid stage on the manicured lawns of Badminton.
But that is for the future. While it is unlikely he will take up hunting, he has made a point of turning up at meets, particularly in recent years when his father became less active.
It is Bunter’s son and heir Bobby, 28, who holds the courtesy title Earl of Glamorgan, who will keep those traditions alive. ‘Bobby loves riding,’ says a friend.
When Bunter left Eton, he had no clear career trajectory. Unlike his father, who took a commission with the Coldstream Guards, Army life did not appeal.
Nor did he inherit his father’s aesthetic tastes — the 11th duke was, for 40 years, chairman of Marlborough Fine Art, one of the world’s leading galleries of contemporary art and whose friends included Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.
Ian Fleming used David Somerset’s name as James Bond’s pseudonym in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and the handsome duke was one of the models for novelist Jilly Cooper’s dashing hero Rupert Campbell-Black. The duke secured his son a position at the Marlborough gallery and, for a time, Bunter was also a Mayfair estate agent.
But what he excelled at was not buying and selling properties but having a good time. Handsome and with an attractive drawl, ex-girlfriend Sara Fitzgerald noted: ‘He could charm any girl into bed.’
Though not all his ploys were gallant. There was a standing joke about visits to the conservatory at Badminton. He delighted in taking female guests there and then telling them they couldn’t leave unless they removed their knickers. It was surprisingly successful.
All that changed in 1986 when he met the strikingly attractive Tracy Ward, an upper-class actress and niece of the Earl of Dudley.
Much admired for her tiny skirts, hard partying and dating of disreputable Old Etonians, she was dubbed Tearaway Tracy by the tabloids. At 17, she posed nude for photographer Norman Parkinson.
She began modelling and then followed her sister Rachel Ward into acting. She starred in the TV series C.A.T.S. Eyes with Leslie Ash and Jill Gascoine. Then came marriage. But since she began volunteering for Friends Of The Earth in 1989, while pregnant with her first child, her focus has — quite literally — come down to earth.
Her most passionate cause has been factory-farming of pigs. She set up her campaigning group Farms Not Factories and travelled the globe to make versions in 21 languages of her film Pig Business, exposing the scandal worldwide.
Breaking into farms to film the cruelty behind factory-farming earned her the nickname the ‘militant marchioness’. Meanwhile, she and Bunter were drifting apart.
Three years ago, she spoke of their separate lives.
‘We are certainly different — he lives in the moment, while I am more cerebral,’ she said. ‘But we live in a throwaway society that simply buys new if something is not perfect.
‘If the family unit is mendable, I believe it is best if partners stay together. That way, the children have maximum access to two loving parents, undiluted by either finding another partner.
‘But Harry doesn’t agree, so we will go our own merry ways.’
The sadness over the break-up follows the disgrace of Bunter’s younger brother, former drug-addict Lord Edward Somerset, who was jailed in 2013 after admitting beating his wife Caroline over a 22-year period.
For his part, Bunter, whose unusual habits have included taking his breakfast of Marmite on toast into the bathroom where he likes to read the Racing Post, continues with his eccentricities.
Take his Twitter account — where he describes himself as ‘father, landowner, rock god, talentless golfer, people person’. Bunter likes to leaven his observations about politics with humour.
His most recent tweet declared: ‘For information purposes for the Twittosphere, I would like to make an announcement that I am a champion of extreme vulgarity.’
As he prepares to take on the dukedom, life at Badminton certainly promises to be different.