It’s always rather uncomfortable being asked to bare your soul in public. But trying to explain to people who are keen on cars why you mangled a priceless collection of Ferraris is a damn sight harder.

But I’ve already had to leave Brocket Hall, my ancestral home in Hertfordshire, and I’ve lost 2½ years of freedom in seven prisons so I suppose I’ve not much more to lose by revealing the full story. So here goes.

What prompted an act of such madness and vandalism? The press at the time reported that my conference business had run into trouble and that I had dreamt up an insurance scam to stave off financial ruin. Some papers said the cars were in mud at the bottom of the lake in front of Brocket Hall. Others said the greens on my championship golf course were uneven because there were rare Ferraris underneath. All great fun but untrue.

Things started to go wrong on January 17, 1991, the day the bombing raids on Baghdad signalled the start of Desert Storm — the first war against Iraq. At the time Brocket Hall was the top conference venue in Europe. World leaders and government ministers were among the delegates. Money was rolling in at the rate of £25,000 a day.

Two years earlier the bank had noticed that a few old Ferraris that featured in the accounts — a sideline to the conference business — had tripled in value. It suggested cranking things up and loaned us £5m to buy more. How could we lose? We went shopping and the result was a showroom of 42 rare Ferraris, including almost the first road Ferrari made, Nikki Lauda’s F1 and the famous Fangio-Moss Maseratis.

The cars were accumulating a paper profit just by sitting there, but the war and the resulting global financial shock halted the gravy train. The car market froze. It wasn’t a matter of prices plummeting. People simply stopped trading. Nobody was buying, at any price.

Not only that but interest rates had shot up to 17.5%. My debts were mounting and I had no way to pay them off. I agonised at the thought of all the offers I’d ignored when the market was still strong. I’d turned down £750,000 just for a piece of paper — an order form that would have entitled its owner to an F40 awaiting construction. It wasn’t worth anything now.

Worst of all was the thought of the shame that would accompany failure. I was the custodian of the family seat. I had turned Brocket Hall into a commercial venture against the wishes of some of my family. Its success had won everyone round. If I failed now I would be in disgrace and go down in history as the one who lost everything.

One morning, after yet another sleepless night, I went down to the showroom and talked to Steve Gwyther about the bind we were in. Steve was a thoroughly nice guy, a gentle, good-hearted Welshman and a superb mechanic. Brocket Hall and its cars were his life.

“Of course, silly thing is the cars are insured for far more than they are now worth,” he said, raising a subject that would take on enormous significance. Gwyther, Mark Caswell, the other estate mechanic, Isa (my then wife) and I later convened what police would refer to as “the kitchen meeting”. As we sat around our kitchen table there was an atmosphere of fear. Gwyther and Caswell were shocked by the suddenness and size of our financial problems. “Why not just close the company and let the bank take the stock?” asked Caswell, referring to the classic car collection.

“Because,” Isa interjected, “Charles unwittingly gave them a personal guarantee. That means that they can sell Brocket Hall. So all our homes and livelihoods go down the pan.”

“How much would get us out of the mire?” asked Caswell. “I reckon £4.5m would do it,” I said. “That would reduce the debt and the interest payments for long enough for the market to recover.”

“That’s four cars at about a million quid each,” said Gwyther thoughtfully. Ever the practical one, Caswell said: “Seems simple to me. I know this bloke who has a crusher. Just drop some of the cars into that. They’ll never be found again and there’ll be no evidence. Then claim for them. The insurance company will never find them.”