HEARTBROKEN parents are demanding an inquiry into the freak accident which killed their son in a holiday complex owned by one of Europe's regal playboys.

Nick Robinson died when he was electrocuted as he tried to fix a water pump in a well on the paradise island of Lamu, off the eastern coast of Kenya.

Only two weeks before his death, the 31-year-old had been put on a retainer to do handyman jobs at luxury holiday apartments part-owned by Prince Ernst August of Hanover, husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco.

Now his grieving parents, Chris and Elspeth, of Bolton-on-Swale, near Richmond, North Yorkshire, are calling for answers over why the electricity was switched on while their son was carrying out his repairs.

Nick, a photographer whose work has been published in national newspapers and magazines, was asked to help fix the water pump at Palm House, a £4,000-a-week apartment sleeping eight people, on August 10.

As he lowered himself down the well in the apartment kitchen the manageress who had called him left to get some new batteries for a torch.

Nick's father, a company director, said: "When the manageress came back she found the electricity was on and he was dead at the bottom of the well.

"I think the electricity was off when he went down that well and somebody came along and turned it back on - somebody who didn't know Nick was there."

A post-mortem examination showed Nick had been electrocuted. His father said their attempts to find out how the electricity came to be switched on had so far proved fruitless.

Shela House Management, which runs the three apartments at the site, had failed to give them any more information on how their son died, he said.

He added: "We want to know exactly what happened. We need to get the facts from Lamu, but it is difficult when we're 4,500 miles away."

Nick, a former pupil at St Francis Xavier School in Richmond, married his wife Sue in Kenya two years ago and the couple had a son, Joseph, who is two.

Elspeth, a physiotherapist at the St John of God Hospital, in Scorton, said of her son's death: "If there is negligence in any way we would like Sue and Joseph looked after."

Nick, who was buried last week after a funeral service at the St John of God Hospital Church, left home for Zambia at 19 after an art course.

He later sailed a 27ft boat from Hartlepool to Kenya and learned to dive in the Red Sea.

His adventures also saw him stoned in Egypt, accused of spying in Zambia and shot at in Uganda.

No one from Shela House Management, based in Nairobi, was available for comment last night.