Arun Nayar: Mr Liz Hurley

The bride will wear Versace, of course. But when Elizabeth Hurley strides up the aisle this afternoon, her famous cleavage will be tastefully concealed, and you can bet your bottom dollar there won't be a safety pin in sight.

Britain's most famous model-cum-actress is getting married. It's going to be posh, and it's going to be huge. A marquee the size of Wembley has been erected at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire; Elton, David and Kate are on the guest list; Hello! magazine has paid £2m for today's picture rights. Yet Elizabeth Hurley is responsible for just half of what's being billed as the biggest celebrity wedding of 2007. The other 50 per cent is (like any wedding) down to a man. His name is Arun Nayar, and he's going to be La Hurley's groom.

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In another life, Nayar is the sort of chap his future wife might dub a "civilian". For all his kind eyes, floppy hair, and boyish smiles, his only pre-Hurley claim to fame was being a minor Mumbai socialite who stands to inherit half of a successful textiles company. Arun Nayar has never given a newspaper interview, and appears in public only as a supporting crutch to his future wife. In the press, he's pegged as a sort of Indian Prince Andrew who inherited a family fortune and has devoted his life to spending it in a pointless fashion. But like any media stereotype, this is only partly true.

To the public Nayar might dress like a Eurotrash version of Swiss Toni from The Fast Show, and spend time in the fleshpots of St Moritz or St Tropez. He might even have endured a messy divorce from an Italian beauty queen. However, the real Arun Nayar is quite at odds with the public version. Speak to proper friends and you'll discover a successful businessman with a far more complex and interesting background and life story than his image suggests.

For starters, Nayar was not born into the Mumbai aristocracy. He's half-German, and his first home was a Leeds council flat. After his family became wealthy, his upbringing was heavily Anglicised, leaving him with a British passport and a cut-glass English accent.

Then there's the playboy "thing". Nayar has not (yet) inherited a vast fortune. Instead, his money comes from a computer firm he founded during the 1990s. Nor is he stupid: despite a troubled adolescence, he later scored a physics degree from Oxford, and an MA from Imperial College. "If Arun is any sort of playboy, he's a reformed one," says a wedding guest. "He used to be a big drinker, but that was back in the 1980s. He's a teetotaller now. If he's hosting a dinner party, he'll still buy the best wines in the world, but just give them a sniff, before pouring for guests.

"He's a Mr Nice Guy, rather than some spoiled heir, and he's clever, too. He may look laid back, but he's as sharp as any successful entrepreneur."

As for Nayar's love life, he's usually portrayed as a wealthy boulevardier with a sharp eye for a trophy girlfriend. Yet at the age of 42, he's had only two long-term relationships, and friends describe him as the very antithesis of the blazer-wearing super-cad. "Sure, Arun wears flashy clothes," says one of Hurley's longest-standing acquaintances. "He loves looking smart. He loves his watches and guns - shooting is another big passion of his, which he's introduced Liz to - and jewellery. And he always travels with five different sets of cufflinks. That's really just an image, though. He's actually a relationship guy, who is keen to settle down. He's charm personified, and loves making people happy. I think that's what drew Liz to him. In another life, he ought to have been a sort of Indian ambassador."

The real Arun Nayar was born in Leeds in December 1964. His mother, Gunnar, was German; his father, Vinod, was a Punjabi studying at the local university. They lived at Foxhill Court, a council development in the Burmantofts area. Shortly after the birth of his younger brother Nikhil, Arun's parents moved to India. They later separated and the boys were brought up by their mother.

Gunnar Nayar had also founded a textile firm in Mumbai, called Tijarat Impex. It boomed during the 1970s, creating a fortune that allowed her to send the boys to the plush Cathedral and John Connon School, which boasts Salman Rushdie as a past pupil. By all accounts, Arun was a difficult teenager. Aged 16, he was disciplined for pouring acid into the swimming pool at the local Gymkhana Private Members' Club and was "a lazy and disruptive student", according to former teacher Meena Bhatt. "He was a young hooligan," she once recalled. "He was always getting into trouble. Once, he went around writing terrible things about the principal on buildings near the school. In the end, we had to ask him to leave."

As a result, Nayar was sent to Millfield School, the Somerset public school with a famous reputation for sports, at which he excelled. More importantly, the stiff boarding school regime managed to knock him into enough shape to win a place at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1984. There, he studied physics and enjoyed the usual excesses of student life. Friends have compared him to the Brideshead hellraiser Sebastian Flyte; he was also friends with Tory minister Paul Channon's daughter Olivia, who died from a heroin overdose.

After completing his education in the late 1980s, Nayar returned to Mumbai and worked for the family firm. He enjoyed the benefits of a business empire that allowed the family to live at Marine Drive, one of Mumbai's poshest addresses, and keep homes in France, Germany and London.

In 1991, he met an Italian model called Valentina Pedroni in St Moritz. "Arun was handsome and enchanting," she later recalled. "He knows how to speak to a woman, and how to be sweet. He was irresistible, and I fell in love straight away." They married in 1997. The pair became a firm fixture on Mumbai's vibrant social circuit. To all the world, they were living the dream, although some conservative Indian gossip columns made occasional unflattering remarks about Pedroni's hair extensions and "excessive" jewellery. Yet behind the scenes, it was going wrong. Nayar was devoting increasing amounts of time to his firm, Direction Software Solutions, which he'd set up during the dotcom boom. The couple separated in 2002.

In subsequent court papers, Nayar accused Pedroni of "reduced him to despair" during the failed marriage, saying she was "a compulsive shopper who only wanted branded jewellery and Omega watches" and had refused to get pregnant in order to protect her figure.

Soon after their split, Nayar suddenly became a global celebrity. He met and fell in love with Elizabeth Hurley, who was recovering from an ill-fated fling with US billionaire Steve Bing, which had produced a son, Damian. Like most of their relationship, which has become a tabloid soap opera, the couple's first meeting has been the subject of many a misleading headline. According to most previous reports, Arun 'n' Liz were introduced in St Moritz by Pedroni herself. In fact, the couple met through a mutual friend: a London-based financier called Alessandro Tome. "Arun is an old friend," he says. "I introduced him to Elizabeth in London. We had several dinners with my wife, Katy." The fling became public in January 2003 when Hurley brought her new boyfriend to the Christian Dior show in Paris, and decided to hold hands and canoodle for the cameras.

Predictably, all hell broke loose. Pedroni gave unflattering interviews to British red-tops. Old "friends" of Nayar came out of the woodwork to describe him, in the words of Mumbai novelist Shobha De, as "an obnoxious and arrogant brat". Newspaper show-business correspondents said, wrongly, that a wedding was imminent, and hinted that Hurley was making a big mistake. Nayar's parents decided to speak out in his defence.

Meanwhile, his paternal grandmother, Kailesh, reflected the views of many conservative Indians when showed pictures of the couple snogging on a ski holiday. "In India, people who come from good families do not behave like this," she said. "It might be all right for an actress, but Arun is a nice Indian boy." Still, Liz stuck by her man. In November 2004, she threw a three-day birthday party for him at an 18th-century hilltop fortress in Rajasthan. Her family, including mother Angela, was introduced to his.

In April 2005, Nayar filed for a divorce that would leave him free to remarry. It became final in November 2005, in a settlement that cost him an estimated £700,000. Today's wedding has been in the planning ever since, and will be followed by a similar shindig for Indian friends and relatives at a palace called Umaid Bhavan in Rajasthan.

Mr and Mrs Nayar-Hurley will have one home in London and another in the Cotswolds, where they have a 400-acre farm at Barnsley. Guests have been invited to donate farm animals in lieu of wedding gifts: a Gloucester Old Spot goes for £189, a Herdwick sheep for £100.

After the nuptials, Hurley will concentrate on her range of baby foods and swimwear, and her son Damian. Her husband will remain in the background, raising the occasional ironic eyebrow at the international celebrity circus that endures into Hurley's 42nd year. "Arun finds the press bizarre," says a chum. "Most of what you read about him is made up, but he actually doesn't mind at all. He finds it funny, and secretly rather likes being portrayed as some sort of international man of mystery."

As to whether today's marriage will endure, friends are cautiously optimistic. "Arun has done many things for Liz," says another. "And despite what you might think, he's really opened doors for her too. Take a place like St Moritz. He doesn't do the Cresta Run any more, because of a bad accident, but he's a member of the club. He moves in those sorts of circles, and that's where Liz wants to move these days. You know, she's done the Hollywood thing, and she's done the modelling thing. Now she just wants to be happy."

A Life in Brief

BORN Leeds, December 1964 to Vinod Nayar, a Punjabi, and his German wife Gunnar.

FAMILY Married Valentina Pedroni in 1997. They divorced in 2005.

EDUCATION Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai, 1978-1982. Millfield School, Somerset 1982-4. Christ Church, Oxford, 1984-7 (BA in physics). 1987-8 Imperial College, London (Masters in physics).

CAREER After university worked in the family textiles company Tijarat Impex, 1988-1992. Founded mail-order division 1992-8. In 1998, founded Direction Software Solutions. Is currently chief executive officer and chairman of the board. The firm has 250 employees.