Longleat story should have gone rogue

Longleat House - Capability Brown outside, Karma Sutra inside

A new documentary series All Change at Longleat on the weird and quite mad 7th Marquis of Bath could have been a wild ride for us viewers.

It could have highlighted the owner of Longleat Safari Park in Wiltshire, England relinquishing the estate reins to his son Viscount Weymouth.

But sadly they didn't allow the mad old coot loose for a minute on the tele.

Shame. The old boy was kept carefully and quietly squirrelled away in his apartment on the top floor of the marvellous Longleat stately "hice" as it were.

We were given some fast flashes of the old boy's decadent and mostly revolting thickly painted murals along the walls of the family apartment hallways.

We glimpsed the 74 portraits of his "wifelets" displayed cheek-by-jowl along the stairways.

He had relationships with more than 70 women during his marriage, and installed many of them in estate cottages.

And it was some Karma Sutra murals decorating Longleat that saw the old boy fall out with his son after the latter ripped out the sexually explicit "art".

Even though Lord Weymouth tried to heal over the rift by returning one of the murals to a Longleat corridor, the old boy continues to ruminate and seethe over his son's actions.
Though relinquishing management of the estate he continues to live at Longleat.

As he said "Longleat is very much my home and I'm looking forward to a future where I can sit back and let Ceawlin do the work."
And son Ceawlin has said it was incredible to think what his father had done for Longleat.

Longleat was double edged sword for his father.

When asked if his had been a happy childhood he relied "Y...aaaah," rather hesitantly.

"Happy bits ... not such happy bits.

"It was what it was," he said.

He admitted when he was very young he envied his friends who lived in the village.

"It was a very different life."

His son Ceawlin was a slightly reticent, incredibly polite handsome man in a well-cut suit with just one much loved wife, Emma.

I would have preferred more of the documentary to focus on the crazed old Lord. But no, British politeness put a stop to that. Too much madness simply wouldn't do.

I enjoyed All Change at Longleat but was disappointed.

Maybe I have been subjected to too many reality tele programmes where everything is dragged out and aired.

It was well worth the watch for the polite, clipped narration and glorious footage of the estate. More on Prime next week folks.