Wild seducer and playboy Dai Llewellyn dies aged 62

Sir Dai Llewellyn, the London socialite, Old Etonian, gossip column staple and so-called "Seducer of the Valleys", has died aged 62. While his life had been filled with joy, his final hours were not: the fun-loving baronet ended his days wracked by cancer, cirrhosis of the liver and anaemia, in a hospital in Kent, far away from the fleshpots of Mayfair and Chelsea which he had made his home.

Llewellyn (pictured with his former fiancee Claire de Jong), the son of Sir Harry "Foxhunter" Llewellyn (so-called because he liked to ride to hounds), once said that sleep was a waste of time, unless you were doing it with a beautiful girl. Among his more famous conquests were Beatrice Welles, daughter of the film director Orson Welles, and Annegret Tree, considered in the Sixties to be one of London's great beauties.

And he kept up his legendary swordsmanship until close to the end. At a party in 2005 he slipped away with another man's date to a discreet bedroom. Things were going well, Sir Dai said, until "the corner of the bed started to go". Then, he said: "We plunged through the floorboards and a wardrobe fell on top of us".

His seducing and partying did not, unsurprisingly, lead to him making much money. His friend Taki Theodoracopulos, the multi-millionaire Greek shipping heir who writes the High Life column for the Spectator, told the London Evening Standard: "He was always short, yet he always went first class. He didn't have the kind of money other people had, but I never saw him as a hanger-on. He had his pride."

The baronetcy now passes to his younger brother, Roddy, known for his much-publicised affair with the late Princess Margaret in the 1970s. Dai and Roddy fell out when the younger man accused his brother of revealing stories about the romance to journalists.

But Dai appeared to have few, if any regrets. Once asked if he did the National lottery, he replied: "No, old boy, I have already won the lottery of life." ·