Wild thing
The progeny of a hugely famous gambler and conservationist, Damian Aspinall has always had a lot to live up to. He might be following in his father’s footsteps, he tells Annie Deakin, but he’s doing it his own way.
Above: Damian Aspinall with some of his gorillas
Damian Aspinall, the ultimate connoisseur of gambling and gorillas, is perching awkwardly on the ottoman in the drawing room of his flagship casino on Curzon St. His story reads like an English version of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘The Jungle Book’. Bought up with leopards, monkeys and elephants roaming his gardens at home, he believes the primate species are his closest allies.
Recently separated from Donna Air, his long-term girlfriend and mother to his daughter Freya, Aspinall is more reliant than ever on his furry friends. He makes a hesitant yet imposing figure, all 6ft 3in of him, but softens at the mention of the wild animals that wander freely around his zoos Howlett’s and Port Lympne in Kent. ‘I have had baby gorillas living with me in London,’ he says nonchalantly. ‘A friend of mine was recently reminding me of a story when I was driving down to the country one day with a baby gorilla in the passenger seat of my Mercedes convertible. I was driving down the Old Kent road and this lorry driver went “Cor, bloody hell – there’s a f*cking monkey there.” Everybody was crowding around.”
That his behaviour is scandalous bemuses Aspinall. ‘But it is completely normal.’ He insists somewhat patronisingly. ‘A baby gorilla comes everywhere with you – it’s like a baby human. It’s your baby, you take it everywhere, you carry it around and it never leaves you,’ insists the 47-year-old, all the time rocking his arms as though cradling a baby.
Aspinall is the son of the late John Aspinall, the multimillionaire casino owner and conservationist. Before John bought Howlett’s zoo - after a particularly profitable win at the races - the family shared their Eaton Square abode with a leopard, a Himalayan bear and a capuchin monkey. The zoos, both Howletts and Port Lympne, were initially private – Aspinall recalls waking up next to a chimp, having breakfast with the gorillas and watching tigers play on the lawn.
It all sounds rather idyllic but like Mowgli, Kipling’s orphan raised by wolves, Aspinall received little attention from his parents. Following their divorce when he was six, he was packed off to boarding school and never saw his mother again. John was a strict father. ‘I wasn’t allowed to play music as a child. My father didn’t like music,’ Aspinall recalls begrudgingly. ‘He was very tough. I was kicked out when I was 16 and had to make my own way in the world, which I did.’ Four years were spent travelling – he dabbled at painting, decorating, hauling rubbish, landscape gardening, selling helium balloons and luminous jewellery. He became Australia’s leading salesman of Colliers Encyclopedias before returning to London, aged 21, to work in property.
By the age of 25, his property deals had bought him a self-made fortune of £3million. Being cut off from his parents financially had morphed into a blessing in disguise. ‘It is quite difficult and it can put strain on a relationship but certainly for me, it was the right thing to do because I am bone idle. If I had had a big trust fund, I would have just wasted my life away’” He laughs looking around the room. ‘I don’t think my father knew he was doing the right thing but in hindsight, it was the right thing to do.’ On making his millions, his father lavished praise and love on Aspinall. From black sheep to family legend, Aspinall lapped up his father’s newfound pride. Yet his father was still hesitant about his capabilities. ‘I didn’t really have pressure with having to run Howlett’s from my father because he never thought that I was able to do it. I didn’t inherit the business. I actually bought the business from my father’s estate.’
Gambling and risk-taking is in Aspinall’s blood. While others shied from playing with tigers, he confidently sat astride the big cats at home - until Health and Safety stepped in. ‘There is nobody else in the world, bar me, who will go into an enclosure with a silverback gorilla. The only danger is an accident.’ So they aren’t vicious? ‘Not with me,’ he smirks, ‘but if a stranger went in, they would be - I’m uncle Dame to them.’
Staying safe on the sideline never appealed. ‘You have to take risks in life and you have to live outside your comfort zone.’ He asserts, ‘We have done that with our wildlife parks and our re-introduction programmes. No one else in the world would have re-introduced black rhino or clouded leopards into the wild. Every single expert in the world will say you can’t do it and that is the risk we take.’ Recent developments include creating a safari camp at Howletts. He has built a camp with African tents in a fenced-in area of 150 acres, home to giraffe and rhino. ‘People stay over, have supper, do a safari, listen to a talk and sleep out there.’ Safari out of Africa? It’s a novel idea and one proving to be an outright success.
Re-decorating his casino on Curzon St, which had not been touched for forty years, was another challenging risk. ‘Like any business you have to change and you need the courage to change. Some decisions you get right, some you don’t. For me, it was getting rid of the stuffiness that is inherent with the industry.’ Now he has a private gaming room brimming with Damien Hirsts, Gary Humes and Warhols. ‘People’s senses are constantly stimulated. There was a conscious decision not to have it all current or all 18th century.’ Opening up his new Italian restaurant Aborico’s has shaken up a few people in the industry. ‘When you are doing it, competitors are like, that will never work but now one of my competitors is actually copying us and getting a signature restaurant in.’ His is a growing empire – he has Aspinall’s in London and regional casinos Aspers in Newcastle and Swansea with plans to open in Northampton and Bournemouth.
Risks thrill Aspinall but a more constant joy stems from his relationships with his three daughters. The eldest two Tansy, 18, and Clara, 15, live with their mother, his ex-wife Louise Sebag Montefiore in London and weekend with him at Howlett’s. Determined to be a more loving father than his own, Aspinall is unashamedly dedicated and is often spotted passing sweets through the school gates at break-time. ‘I phone them at least once, usually two or three times a day. Every morning when I wake up, they get a text. Every night, we say goodnight.’ When I say it’s amazing, he snaps. ‘It’s not amazing. Why is it amazing?’ His youngest daughter Freya, four, lives with her mother Donna Air. ‘I go and see her every evening.’ Too young to receive good morning texts, she has instead nabbed his old Blackberry for a toy.
‘My children come first in my life. When your time is come in this world, I think the most important thing is to know that you have left your children well balanced and happy. That is more important than anything in my life, more important than the animals, more important than my business.’ And will they continue his legacy? ‘I don’t want to put them under any pressure. I think an 18-year-old daughter being told that she will be responsible for 1,100 animals, a million acres of Africa and to raise millions of pounds a year fundraising, I would probably never see her again. She would end up in some Bedouin camp in Saudi Arabia.’ That is one risk the entrepreneur is not going to take.