Wednesday 14^th July 2010

I’ve been gardening. I feel a gardening issue coming on. Poor Little Rich Gays love to garden (if they don’t have it done). Plants are like pets. They need looking after.

We love to have someone or something to look after.

But I must tell you about Ralph Kitto’s 50^th Birthday at Cap Ferrat. It was nearly three weeks ago. I’d covered the pre-party half way down a cliff on the Friday night, you may remember. Then the Multis disappeared and I was derailed. And the Blond Multi turned up in Australia – we still don’t know why, do we?

Those of you unaccustomed to banking circles would have been surprised at the simplicity and freshness of the 50th Birthday arrangements. You’ve got the million-euro-a-square-inch Cap Ferrat background of course, but beyond that it could not have been less pretentious – a long, long table in the garden of a borrowed villa set for eighty, an excellent dinner provided by a local restaurant, no elaborate glassware or napery. For some reason, I was reminded of a Monet painting. It was magical in the enclosed garden in the gloaming.

Ralph has his outstanding collection of contemporary art, which was visited by the Friends of the Tate Gallery, but otherwise it’s a Mini, one bathroom, no Prada and no restaurants. I once said to him: ‘Let’s go to a restaurant.’ ‘Not on your life,’ he said.

He was in a jewelled Indian coat especially made, dispensing champagne. He has a kind face and sees everything. All his friends are ferociously loyal. He was introducing them to each other with lavish compliments. He adores those who prance and leap and are nonsensical but he’s an eye for the vulnerable as well. Like other Poor Little Rich Gays, he loves to have people to look after.

I sat with some ladies who said the toilets on the Great Wall of China were unspeakable. One of them revealed the contents of her hangbag – slippers and a room spray. Always carried. We were very friendly and cheerful considering we didn’t know each other – this was all Ralph’s doing somehow. Further up the table was the hospital building partner of the flower arranger  – we were at the same modest 3 star down the road. He was saying  that he’d studied the fire escape plan in his room at the hotel and they’d definitely got the biggest bathroom.

Sol Weideinwar, the media multi, known to me also through Laura Malcolm, brushed by with his younger partner, Carlos de Costos Sanchez, as we all became unseated at the end of the dinner. Sol had been turned by the sun into almost a new racial type. He and Carlos dripped sex appeal and gym as always, in equal proportion, despite the age difference. But they had not had sex that day, Sol informed me. Too busy.  No word of how Carlos’ quest for work progresses. Things are so difficult for young people at the moment. But at least he will not starve with Sol to care for him. .

Then  there were the rare Norse mini-gods. Do you remember them? Gathered by Ralph from a beach on the Côte in a previous year, now fresh from Oslo. Both about 25, blond, whippy and lovely, one, the Oslo buyer for Ralph Lauren, in the slimmest of frockage, white shirt and slender pale trousers. ‘Very good highlights,’ I heard someone murmur. He also appeared to be wearing make-up and looked ravishingly fresh and young and artificial all at once, even when, after much knocking back, he toppled from his chair to the ground.

What it is to be young!

The rest of us drifted away contentedly at an agreeable hour for the older gay.

Ralph Kitto's Jewelled Indian Coat for his 50th Birthday at Cap Ferrat

Ralph Kitto's Present Hoard. I Gave Two Plants but He has No Garden

A Jewel Worn by a Guest at Ralph Kitto's 50th Birthday Party