Saturday 20th July 2013

Wednesday morning I was at Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver’s chateau fragment in Normandy, with Esmé Manning who was in Heidi Hi. Wednesday evening I was at the London Bowl for Harry Rollo’s great performance and afterwards in a Notting Hill mansion for the after-party.

That Norman chateau fragment – well, now there are three bathrooms and five bedrooms: the more I think about it Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver have revealed a brilliantly new Poor Little Rich Gay mode, one where there is lavishment, Farrow and Ball, aching detail, yet the life is flung wide open. Three times the chateau fragment has been renovated, extended and restored. Perfect judgement, no hint of the hotel, still a feeling of age and charm; just the right door handles, at least a week in the sourcing, also the floor tiles, more like six weeks. But once the work is completed, the home is launched to fend for itself. No manic vac-ing, no polishing and placing. The home is free. It wheels delightfully. Who cares if the odd spider is caught in its wings? Smell is so important in a home and this one does not smell. Bed linen is fresh, toilets wholesome. In my own home, there’s a crisis if one fragment of a leaf blows in. Lower middle class, some might say.

Matt Driver is now a consultant. He works from home and puts up curtain poles in between phone calls. Very precise with the drill. Placing of poles perfect. Also perfect his planting of a lavender hedge in the garden. I’ve never seen such a sight. Usually there are holes in lavender hedges where some of the plants have died. Not this one. Matt has got the distance between plants exactly right. In between drilling, he makes phone calls. ‘I want to see more people crossing the Channel without cars,’ he says. Or, ‘Washing up brushes are finished.’ His line of business is branding.

In the evenings we watched Upstairs, Downstairs. At last, at last Laura has acquired a full boxed set. Esmé knew all the script writers of course. I should mention that she appears in the most famous TV comedy moment of all time, when a man standing at a bar falls over as if he were a statue, rigid from head to toe. Now Esmé has got a lift-and-separate bra and a terrible reaction to mosquito bites. She was up all night bathing her swellings which were six inches across. But she can put across any song in the right style, exuding talent and is absolutely gimlet re: food. As far as I’m concerned she’s crushed cold salmon forever: ‘Too dense. Must always be hot.’ Also she said, brand not important re: coffee but must be Arabica. I never knew that. Don’t know what Arabica means.

So, Up/Down in the evenings. How we roared! Such a worry when Mr Bellamy got too far from a wall because, Esmé informed, the actor could never remember his lines and had to have them pinned within sight. Terrifying moment, when he was standing right in the middle of the hall, miles from any wall, while Hudson swore eternal loyalty to the Bellamy family for the thousandth time before bringing on the sherry. Look of panic in Mr B’s eyes.  ‘She seems to be wearing four frocks,’ said Esmé of Aunt Prue, who came round to tea after her sister, Lady Bellamy, had gone down in the Titanic. ‘Since Arthur died and Connie got married, my days have been awfully empty,’ she said pointedly, giving the impression that she would come to tea every day until Mr Bellamy proposed. Her hat was an extraordinary lacquered affair, more of a giant shoe placed on the head.

I said to Ivy Driver, the daughter of Matt and Laura, ‘We’ve been having Up/Down after dinner in Normandy every summer since you were about eight. Now you’ve eighteen. And we’ve barely scratched the surface.’

Acres and acres of epis to come!

Look, I’ve left no space for the other great height of that day; the London bowl and Harry Rollo’s perf before thousands, praised to the skies by all the papers the next day. And the after-party in a mansion.

It’ll have to wait until tomorrow.

The Norman Chateau Fragment with New Precision Lavender Hedge by Matt Driver

Miraculous Lavender Hedge by Matt Driver to Enhance Norman Desmesne

Chocolate Cake Run Up by Laura and Esmé from Back of Packet of Poudre de Sucre for Matt Driver’s Birthday on Monday