SIR MARK THATCHER was yesterday denied the chance of starting a new life in Monaco because the newly enthroned Prince Albert has decreed his criminal record makes him unsuitable for residency.

While Sir Mark’s twin sister, Carol, revels in her new popularity after winning the television show I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, he has fallen foul of Monte Carlo’s desire to clean up its image.

Sir Mark, who yesterday was staying at the £2,500-a-month Fairmont Hotel in the Mediterranean tax haven, has had his application refused for a renewal of his temporary residency.

An official at the Grimaldi palace said the decision reflected the wish of Prince Albert, 47, to restore the reputation of Monaco, famously described by Somerset Maugham “as a sunny place for shady people”.

The official said: “This decision is part of the Prince’s desire to place ethics at the heart of life in Monaco.”

In a further humiliation Sir Mark, 52, may be ejected sooner than he anticipated. The official added that Sir Mark’s current residency permit had not been renewed and it was not even sure that he would see through its term. Sir Mark had hoped to set up permanent home amid the principality’s 33,000 population.

The latest setback to Sir Mark will be a source of further hurt and embarrassment to his mother, Baroness Thatcher.There was a clear warning from Prince Albert, the only son of the late Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, in his inaugural speech in July. He declared: “I intend that ethics always be the basis of the behaviour of the Monegasque authorities.

“Ethics cannot be chopped and changed. Money and virtue must go together permanently. The importance of the financial situation of Monaco requires an extreme vigilance to avoid the development of financial activities which are not welcome in our State.”

In January Sir Mark was convicted in a South African court of helping to finance a failed coup in Equatorial Guinea. He was fined £250,000 and given a four-year suspended prison sentence. Lady Thatcher, 80, had to pay her son’s £265,000 bail after he was locked up in prison by the South African authorities investigating the allegations. He had introduced his mother at a previous Christmas in Cape Town to Simon Mann, the mercenary, who was the alleged head of the coup.

Sir Mark, whose sister has been deluged with commercial offers after she romped to victory in the television show last month, is now facing up to the reality that he is fast becoming an international pariah.

He will not set foot in South Africa again and in April he was refused a visa to live in the United States with his wife, Diane, and their two children. The couple are to divorce after 18 years of marriage.

When he is in Britain he lives with his mother in Belgravia but her friends fear that the travails of her son have had an increasingly detrimental impact on her health. Last week she was admitted to hospital overnight.

While mother and son remain close, Miss Thatcher freely admits she loathes her brother and does not speak to him from one year to the next. Miss Thatcher , the 33-1 outsider in the television show, won over millions of viewers with her eccentric behaviour, enthusiasm and the steely determination that she inherited from her mother.

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