ON Sunday the chocolate heir and former television chief Peter Cadbury, 76, was burgled. It was the most recent in a series of burglaries in his village near Basingstoke. He stormed that the Tories had lost his support. He demanded a crackdown on law and order, thundering that the Tories wouldn’t otherwise regain his backing.

He clamoured about young tearaways being sent on safari at the taxpayers’ expense. He got on his soapbox to the Press. That the raiders had only stolen two motorbikes (belonging to his sons) and some garden tools didn’t deter him. Nor did the thought that he’s only contributed £500 to the Conservatives this year, and only £1,000 from time to time in the last 45 years. The Cad, as he’s affectionately known, is not averse to creating a stink.

In 1986, for example, he was set to take legal action against Rear-Admiral Sir Morgan Morgan-Giles for using automatic guns to frighten the pigeons from his farmland. Peter wanted him to silence the guns. In 1993 Peter started roaring that another neighbour was using manure on his land. It stank so much he reckoned it was human sewage. ‘It was,’ says Peter, smugly. ‘The man from the Thames Water Board came round to apologise.’ We’re talking in his elegant Georgian home with squash court-sized hall, indoor pool, antique bronzes and rolling garden. His third wife, Janie, is accompanied by a great dane apparently crossed with a pony, and two lesser hounds. Janie, who sells Cabouchon jewellery at aristocratic Tupperware-style parties, married The Cad after he split with Jennifer d’Abo, boss of florists Moyses Stevens and former head of £20 million stationery chain Rymans.

The heinous crime of which Peter was victim was the ‘final straw’. The Tories should have been warned. A year ago Peter wrote complaining to his local Conservative chairman, then met up with his local MP. ‘I was fed up with the way the country was being run,’ says Peter, pucker voiced. ‘The Government’s appalling policy on law and order, wrecking of the economy by Maastricht and terrible Prime Ministerial vascillations.’

Peter was a great Maggie supporter. ‘She was also a personal friend of mine.’ And what does he think of Major? ‘An absolute disaster.’ Does he think that by withdrawing his support, ministers will take notice? ‘I’d love Major to read your article and think, ‘My God, this is serious, I must resign and take the Home Secretary with me,” he laughs. Otherwise Blair will get Peter’s vote. ‘The Labour Party is no longer trying to squeeze the rich until the pips squeak.’

Peter, fit and bronzed, wears a pale blue jumper and Gucci loafers. He looks cantankerous. But the former swashbuckling entrepreneur known for his mercurial temperament seems uncomfortable with himself and addresses most of his comments to the floor.

He has not been a lifelong Conservative. In 1945, he stood as Liberal candidate for Stroud, netting a third of the votes. ‘When asked whether I’d like to stand, I replied, ‘Yes, which party? It doesn’t matter to me,” he says. ‘I thought it would be a good mental exercise to stand. ‘I went to the adoption meeting and someone enquired whether I was in favour of the disestablishment of the Church of England. I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. At the end of the meeting I said, ‘Those are my views. If you don’t like them, they can easily be changed.’ I was very unpopular in the area for a bit because I did my canvassing in a Bentley. It was the only car I had.’

The son of the late Sir Egbert Cadbury, Peter was “brought up to play cricket’. (‘Father was a wonderful man who single-handedly shot down two Zeppelins in the 14-18 war.”) He was taught by his father to fly ‘as a boy’, and gained his licence when he was just 17. He went to Leighton Park school, a Quaker establishment founded by his grandfather, then to Trinity, Cambridge.

He was ‘very close’ to his parents and brother. But when Peter was 23 years old, his brother was killed in an accident on his 21st birthday. ‘He walked in his sleep and fell out of a window at home,’ he says, wringing his fingers. ‘My mother was by herself with him in the house in Somerset. It was terrible.’ (Years later, his father died a week before his 50th wedding anniversary. ‘It was awful. My mother felt life wasn’t worth living without him and died a year later.’) WHEN his brother died, Peter was serving as an experimental test pilot. ‘We flew the first Meteor. I had a lot of crashes. We were trying to break the sound barrier.’ His six colleagues were killed over a period of time during the war. It must have taken a lot of courage to continue when his friends were dying. ‘It was very worrying.’ He coughs defensively.

‘One day I handed the Meteor to John, a colleague, to take over. I went home. Half an hour later the police called and said a Meteor had sprayed itself over the golf course.’ He coughs more. ‘All they found of him was one shoe, no body, nothing. It’s extraordinary how bodies disintegrate at 500 miles an hour.’

After the war, Peter returned to finish his finals and was called to the Bar in 1946. ‘Not being unduly modest, I think I was very successful. But there was no real possibility of making any real money.’ In 1954 he bought the Keith Prowse group for £75,000. ‘I borrowed the money from my father. I didn’t have any.’ It went public in 1959, valued at £1million. Then he set up Tyne Tees Television. ‘I learned how much money there was in television so decided I’d rather like my own television company. I went down to the West Country with a copy of Who’s Who and a map, collected 200 shareholders, applied for a licence and started Westward Television in 1959.’ He was deposed from the now defunct Westward Television in a boardroom debacle in 1980 and then purged himself of boardroom demons by writing a 200,000-word autobiography too libellous to print. In between all this, he married three times and begat five children. Is he a difficult person to live with? He looks heavenwards. ‘I don’t think I readily accept other people’s opinions if they differ from mine.’ Why did his marriage to Jennifer d’Abo break up? ‘Because we were both entrepreneurs and she was better than I was. It hurt my pride.’

Peter made me laugh. But he’s never hidden his spleen under a bushel. Although he supports many charities, they’re mostly animal ones. Recently he adopted a gorilla in Rwanda. ‘Animals are more deserving and more pathetic than humans, quite honestly.’