Ferry sly as fox in campaign to save hunting

Britain's huntsmen and women were at the weekend polishing their mahogany boot-tops, pulling on their hand-tailored red coats and sinking a fortifying drink or two in picturesque town squares and low-beamed village pubs across the land.

Though legal challenges launched by the Countryside Alliance will delay the ban on hunting with dogs beyond February, this may have been the last Christmas when the ritual is observed, legally at least. The bill is expected to pass into law within the next 12 months.

If it does, the man most likely to martyr himself is the joint master of the South Shropshire Hunt, Otis Ferry, the dashing young blade who masterminded the storming of the House of Commons during debate on the Hunting Bill in September.

While fed-up country folk clad in Barbours and Liberty prints elbowed and shoved one another outside, Ferry and seven comrades infiltrated the labyrinthine corridors of Parliament, dressed as builders, emerging to harangue Rural Affairs Minister Alun Michael and Leader of the House Peter Hain live on television.

They were charged with disorderly conduct, and will be tried in the northern spring. All deny the charges and have pledged to summon, and embarrass, a number of Labour MPs to give evidence.

But 21-year-old Otis Ferry is not only the youngest and most troublesome huntmaster in Britain. He is also the son of Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry, himself the son of a coalminer from Durham, but now very much a member of the landed rock gentry.

It is, perhaps, Otis Ferry's misfortune to have inherited his father's exceptional good looks. Compared more than once to a tight-jodhpur-wearing character from a Jilly Cooper novel, he is often dismissed as posh totty, the sort of chap one might call "a jolly good bloke".

In fact, say friends, he is a serious young man who is fervently, near obsessively, committed to his cause.

With a pop icon father worth a reported £50 million ($134 million), you might expect him to favour the bars and clubs of Fulham Road or Notting Hill, like his younger brother Isaac. Yet Otis is happiest in south Shropshire, professes to despise Londoners and does not drink alcohol. The romantic's sense of having a calling is clearly strong in him.

"He's not a flippant or frivolous sort of lad at all," says Davina Fetherstonhaugh, master of the Flint and Denbigh Hunt. "He's a very serious, grown-up hunter."

Being "grown up" has not stopped him speaking with a candour and unworldliness that urbanites might easily mock. In an interview last month, Ferry declared that resentment was deepening within the hunting community and that extreme violence could not be ruled out.

"Feelings are running high. People are starting to realise that a ban might happen and people might get assassinated. But I would feel terrible if anyone assassinated someone like Alun Michael."

And this month he made the startling revelation to Country Life magazine that "the fox is probably my favourite animal ... I saw a dead fox today - roadkill - and I thought what a terrible way to die. I think for the fox to be hunted and caught by hounds is going out in style."

It is, perhaps, a measure of the hunting community's introspection that the author of such statements commands genuine respect.

Former Telegraph editor Charles Moore says he should be given a peerage, while Charles Gordon-Watson, master of the fashionable Cottesmore Hunt in Leicestershire, says: "I think he's fantastic. We have no leadership at the moment whatsoever. What we need is someone just like him to grasp the nettle and take it on. I think he certainly speaks for all of us, and I wish he'd speak out more."

Named after soul singer Otis Redding, the young Ferry grew up in Kensington, where his parents - Bryan Ferry and heiress Lucy Helmore, now separated - hung out with rock stars, supermodels and, occasionally, Princess Margaret.

When Otis was 12, the family moved to Sussex and Ferry began to discover the rural life. His best friend at the time was a gamekeeper who taught him falconry and ferreting, though it was another hunting friend, Rory Knight Bruce, who introduced him to the sport.

"He didn't do it to rebel against his father, but because it's the only place he feels truly himself," says Knight Bruce.

"It's his stage."

Ferry spent his holidays in Ireland with his grandmother, and once went to live with an Irish horse dealer, "a shy old boy", who captivated the young Otis with his tales.

"I learned all about hunting - there's so much skill involved in the chase," he has said. "After that, I couldn't go back to the boredom of school."

So far, so very Jilly Cooper.

Ferry joined the Middleton Hunt in North Yorkshire at age 17 as a whipper-in, and for the next four years got up with the sun to scrub out the kennels. Apparently his mother was sympathetic to this lifestyle choice, but not without stipulations.

"My mother told me when I was about 10 that I had to learn languages," Ferry told Country Life, "and I hated that and said: 'I don't want to speak bloody French. I like speaking English, thank you.' And she said: 'Well, I think you should, because in 10 years' time, England isn't going to be a very nice place to live."' (Not nice, we deduce, because fox hunting will be outlawed.)

An avid supporter of her son's stunt at Westminster, Lucy Helmore is familiar with controversy herself, once proclaiming artlessly that "it takes a lot of courage and skill to go hunting. It must be rather like the atmosphere in the trenches".

Bryan Ferry, once the model of urbanity and art-house sophistication, is equally supportive of Otis' activities - though many of his rock star colleagues are clearly not.

At the Q Awards this year, Ferry dedicated his Lifetime Achievement Award to his "brave" son Otis - to a chorus of muffled boos from an audience that included U2, Sir Elton John and Elvis Costello.

Otis himself, defiantly untrendy - he is a great fan of the Queen - has made it clear that he will continue to hunt foxes, whatever the law says. His love of the hunt is indeed youthfully romantic, Cooperesque, the very opposite of the dull Westminster bureaucracy that seeks to quash it.

"What better way than being permanently out in the countryside, always feeling wanted and appreciated by the hounds, horses, farmers and followers. Like my father, I am an entertainer; I want people to have a good time. This is my show. The spotlight is on me."

Asked if he is good company, friends say, "He is to us, because we talk about hunting."

Is this the new leader of a rebellious movement?

Essentially, Ferry is like a prism, illuminating the spectrum of opinion on the vexed issue of hunting with hounds. If you're in favour, he's a boyish, slightly solemn champion of the people. If you're against, he's a spoiled rich kid playing pressure-group politics.

But as the debate drags on through the courts - boring the general public and enraging New Labour's backbenches - you can be sure that if conviction counts for anything, Otis Ferry is in for the long haul.

- INDEPENDENT