Yorkshire businessman looking to sell Princess Diana’s wedding cake for £4,000

Gerry Layton, from Leeds, bought the large piece of cake, which is covered in marzipan and features a royal coat-of-arms coloured in gold, red, blue and silver, at an auction in August last year, for £1,850.

It is from one of the 23 official wedding cakes that were made for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer at St Paul’s Cathedral on Wednesday, July 29 in 1981.

After the wedding, it was given to Moya Smith, a member of the Queen Mother’s household at Clarence House, and she preserved the topping with cling film before her family sold it to a collector in 2008.

Mr Layton, 62, donated it to a fundraising auction for Martin House Children’s Hospice in May, but decided to buy it back at the last minute, with a £2,100 bid.

It will go under the hammer once again, at Hansons Auctioneers’ London Fine Art, Antiques and Collectors Auction on August 27, and is expected to fetch between £3,000 and £4,000.

Mr Layton, a former member of the 1960s band The Outer Limits who now charters a boat providing luxury tours of the River Thames in London, said he has already spent around £4,000 on the cake but it is “worth every penny”.

He has promised to donate half the proceeds from the upcoming sale to homeless charity Centrepoint and Great Ormond Street Hospital, as Princess Diana was patrons of both.

He added: “I hadn’t planned to sell the cake again but Charles Hanson approached me after the charity auction and offered to sell it at Hansons Auctioneers. Before I knew it, he’d talked me into it! I just hope I’m not gripped by the curse of the cake and start bidding for it again - because I still haven’t had a nibble.

“I’d planned to be very careful not to disturb the icing and just try and take a crumb out of the corner but I never got the chance. It’s in safe-keeping at Hansons. It’s an ultra-rare thing and I think it’s value will increase over time.”