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How aristocrat from Shropshire kept 'rock god' Eric Clapton company during his darkest days

He was a rock god. She was a teenage member of Shropshire aristocracy.

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The relationship of Eric Clapton and Alice Ormsby-Gore, the daughter of Lord Harlech, made headlines. There was speculation that they were to marry.

Alice was with Clapton through his darkest days, when for three years he sunk into a pit of heroin addiction, cut off from the world. He survived and today is a music legend. Alice was a casualty. She died of a heroin overdose while living under an assumed name in a Bournemouth flat in 1995.

Alice Ormsby Gore and Eric Clapton. Picture is dated March 8, 1970.

Theirs was not a romance ever likely to have a fairytale ending, as was revealed in the BBC documentary “Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars.”

“I had begun on and off to see this girl Alice. She was a great woman but she didn’t know that I was obsessed with Pattie,” Clapton told the programme.

Pattie was Pattie Boyd, the wife of George Harrison, the ex-Beatle guitarist and Clapton’s great mate.

Clapton wrote songs inspired by his love for her, most famously 'Layla' with his band Derek and the Dominos. But his musical wooing didn’t work.

Eric Clapton
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