Polo playing friend of Prince Charles throws himself in front of Tube train after business is hit by recession

A property tycoon who made and lost at least two fortunes and played polo with Prince Charles has committed suicide.

Three-times married Paul Castle – who was due to wed for a fourth time –walked out of his London office and threw himself under a Tube train.

The self-made businessman, 54, included a Michelin-starred restaurant in his multi-million-pound empire which had been buffeted by the recession.

Friends say he also had long-standing heart problems, which deteriorated recently, and had been diagnosed with tumours.

As his son William, 22, and daughter Danielle, 29, struggled to come to terms with Mr Castle’s death, friend and lawyer Stephen Brook said: ‘They are absolutely devastated and bewildered. It is just so totally out of character.

‘He was the ultimate survivor and if you told anyone who knew him this would be his end they would have laughed in your face.

‘Paul had been unwell and kept having to go into hospital to have these growths removed. I don’t believe his death was anything to do with finances. It was health.’

He said Mr Castle’s finances were ‘perfectly manageable’ and the businessman had been ‘incredibly proud’ of having played against Charles. ‘He was not well educated. He left school early but he was incredibly proud of the fact that he hob-nobbed with them. He showed that polo was not just for toffs,’ Mr Brook said.

Last month the Prince of Wales mourned another polo-player, head of the Guards Polo Club Charles Stisted, 47, who died in a helicopter crash.

Mr Castle, once photographed shaking hands with the Queen after a match, became Britain’s youngest sponsor of a polo team in the 90s. He spent hundreds of thousands of pounds employing star players from Argentina and Australia to the Metropolitan team, named after his first property company.

But he achieved notoriety in 1997 when fined £5,000 and banned from playing for nine months for ‘abuse of the stick’ after hitting an opponent over the head with a wooden mallet at the Guards Polo Club.

The son of a tailor, Mr Castle was raised in Golders Green, north London, and after leaving school at 14 made his first fortune in children’s clothes.

He drove a Ferrari and a Bentley but after moving to Florida lost all his money in property. He explained in an interview after the polo scandal: ‘I went to Florida when I was 27. I played tennis; money dwindled. Came back into property. I love property: you can wake up poor and be rich by evening!’

On his return to the UK, Mr Castle built up a large property portfolio, owned an apartment at St Moritz in Switzerland and would fly there with friends in his private plane.

He also owned homes in London, France and Ascot, where he had lived for the past two years with girlfriend Natalie Theo, former fashion editor of the Daily Mail, who he had been planning to marry.

Business associates said the workaholic struck several ‘disastrous deals’ just ahead of the property collapse and also lost heavily in an oil and gas exploration company.

Brian Basham, ex-chairman of the White Star property company in which Mr Castle was a major shareholder, said the tycoon was ‘out of his depth’.

Earlier this year he closed his Oxfordshire restaurant The Goose, in Britwell Salome, and reopened it as a bistro. Mr Castle jumped under a train at Bond Street on Wednesday.

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