Sir Ranulph Fiennes wrote a secret will at Everest base camp during what a long-standing friend has described as a crisis in his marriage to Louise Millington-Cotes.
Michael Kobold, who has known the explorer for 30 years, said Sir Ranulph wrote and signed the document by hand in his tent in May 2008, before an unsuccessful attempt to reach the summit. He said the sealed will was given to him with instructions to open it if Sir Ranulph died.
Mr Kobold, a German watch entrepreneur living in Switzerland, said Sir Ranulph had decided to divorce Mrs Millington-Cotes two months earlier, shortly before leaving Britain for Nepal.
He claimed the explorer asked him to find a law firm and a public relations specialist to manage the proceedings, fearing that the separation could become acrimonious.
However, Mr Kobold said Mrs Millington-Cotes discovered the plan and confronted her husband at their farm on Exmoor, Somerset. Sir Ranulph then changed his mind, leaving him “much deflated”, Mr Kobold claimed.
“I don’t know what’s in the will and I promised Ran I wouldn’t open it until he died,” Mr Kobold said.
“I was there when he wrote it longhand. I was there when he signed it. In Ran’s mind, this was a very bleak time in his life. Probably the darkest time, up until then, because he felt trapped.”
The Everest will written in Sir Ranulph Fiennes’s tent
Mr Kobold said he joined Sir Ranulph at Everest base camp after helping him arrange a new passport. He said he had previously seen a copy of the explorer’s will and did not know why a new document was prepared shortly before the climb.
“At base camp, for whatever reason, he created a new will. Something must have come into his mind. I just remember we were sitting in his tent and he wrote it out longhand and he signed it and he gave it to me,” he said.
The legal status of the document is unclear because wills in England must be signed in the presence of two witnesses. Mr Kobold said he might have signed it, although he could not remember doing so.
Sir Ranulph, who was then 65, was unable to complete the ascent because of exhaustion. He reached the summit the following year, becoming the oldest Briton to do so.
Mr Kobold said the divorce plans had been a firm decision and that he had met a London law firm and spoken to a public relations specialist on the explorer’s behalf. He said Sir Ranulph did not want to become “the next Paul McCartney”, referring to the acrimonious split between Sir Paul and Heather Mills.
According to Mr Kobold, the pair were due to discuss the arrangements at Sir Ranulph’s office at Greenlands, his Exmoor farm, when Mrs Millington-Cotes arrived and insisted on speaking to her husband alone.
“She shows up, kicks me out, slams the door shut and spends ten minutes with Ran,” he said. “Afterwards he says, ‘Mike, I’ve got bad news. Unfortunately I’m unable to move forward with the divorce.’”
Mr Kobold also alleged that Mrs Millington-Cotes subjected Sir Ranulph to repeated humiliations during a stay in 2008, and said the explorer had told him she once took his passport and locked him out of their home in Cheshire. Sir Ranulph was said to have injured himself while trying to climb back in through a bathroom window.
The claims come amid speculation over Sir Ranulph’s whereabouts. The 82-year-old, who has Parkinson’s disease, has reportedly been moved between care homes in London, Wales and Cheshire, with his identity concealed under an alias.
Friends have called for the police and the Office of the Public Guardian to investigate. Sir Ranulph is now believed to be back at his isolated farm in Shropshire.
Mrs Millington-Cotes, who married Sir Ranulph in 2005 after the death of his first wife, Ginny, was approached for comment.
