My goodness... I think I need a Guinness....
"Seeking a Willing Heir, an Aristocrat Turns to America"
WANTED: Heir for $13 million estate, including 13th-century manor house, in bucolic Somerset. Must be able to pay $140,000 annual upkeep and meet incidental costs of, for example, repairing the driveway ($70,000) and fixing the stables ($1 million).
Sir Benjamin Slade outside Maunsel House in Somerset last week, with Jasper, right, and Britwold the Saxon, who is named after the original resident. No one is in line to take over the $13 million estate.
Also, "He can't be a drug addict," said Sir Benjamin Slade, the current owner of the estate and its manor, Maunsel House, which has been in the family since 1772. "He can't be a Communist. It's politically incorrect to say so, but he can't be gay, because he may not produce any children."
The problem, said Sir Benjamin, who is 59 and childless himself, is that none of his army of relatives is willing to take on the property when he dies. So he is searching for an heir in America, where some Slades settled in the 18th century.
"Americans have more energy and a better work ethic," he said, sipping tea in his sumptuous library.
HILARIOUS! But then gets to the weird - 21st century portions of the story - including freezing sperm, google searches to find long-lost family members and reality tv shows...
He feels it is too late to produce a suitable heir of his own, even though he has some frozen sperm on deposit in a sperm bank ("they said I had nine months' supply, whatever that means"). If he were to have a child right this minute, it would be a good 25 years before the child would be ready to take on the estate — "and then it would be too late," he explained.
He got the idea for the heir hunt when an American television company, researching a program about Britons' American relatives, got in touch.
"So I said, 'While you're in America, could you find me an heir?' " Sir Benjamin recalled. So far, he added, the company has come up with thousands of American Slades ("I don't know where they got them — Google, I suppose") prompting sacks full of letters from people who think they are his relatives.
The idea is to winnow down the field to a handful of viable prospective heirs, with methods including DNA tests...
The television company — which Sir Benjamin said has asked him not to discuss too many details — is now hoping to turn the search into an "Apprentice"-style reality program, in which potential heirs would live at Maunsel House and undergo a series of challenges, with Sir Benjamin eliminating them one by one.
Sir Benjamin is looking forward to ejecting the losers with his own aristocratic catchphrase: "You're disinherited."
Find the full story at : http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/international/europe/07heir.html?_r=1&8hpib&oref=slogin
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