Tuesday 17th December 2013

The functions! Saturday was the Multis’ pub lunch for 30 in the country – a chance for Poor Little Rich Gays to mingle with those less wracked and living in calmer waters – apparently. I drove the 120 miles with Prince Dmitri Hersov who’s criked by overwork at the Accountancy House. He was supposed to mastermind a take-over of one multi-national company by another during lunch but just didn’t make the call.

It’s all too much.

I was back in time for Psychopath Evening on Channel 4. I don’t think I’m one but I’m not sure. One imagines one has empathy but on the whole I empathise in order to be seen to be empathising. Psychopaths are out for themselves and will never be criticised.

Last Thursday was Ed Jasper, the bed linen expert and Roland Mainflower’s ‘Swan Lake’ by Matthew Bourne followed by buffet at their home. A lovely blood-red and wood feeling to their Christmas decor for their dining room. Ed was cross with Ottolenghi because they said, ‘You’ve bought all the salads. Now there’s nothing left for anyone else. Why didn’t you order in advance?’ ‘Bitch!’ Ed said, ‘when I was spending £160.’ Earlier in the theatre, there was drama over the interval drinks. A nice man from a horse museum at Newmarket  (one of the party) bought champagne and thereby killed off Ed’s own bottles of red and white. ‘That was £70 on wine and it’s going to waste,’ said Ed, pouring vigorously into his guests’ plastic cups. Back at the house we were gloriously compact, no lingering this year as last. As I clucked forth Ed and Roland were well underway with the washing up.

But my second dinner was the Friday before. It was high, high but such marvellous warmth. Harry Rollo, who really is a world-figure for all time – you might as well have Boudica to dinner or Monteverdi – dined, accompanied by Mercury, Mr Kitten, his consort. Mercury, Mr Kitten said, ‘Did I mention the time I met Diane Keaton?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘you danced with her.’ ‘No, that was Jane Fonda.’ I only got some chopped up bits of the story about Cate Blanchett because of interruptions.

‘I don’t mean to name-drop,’ said Mr Kitten sweetly and I believed him. There was such warmth as well as such height. It was amazing and rare and warmth did not become gloop, which we can’t bear. There was rigour. Simeon Bond dined also and knew all the same people as young Joshua Baring who gave and gave . The star turn was his bravura account of his brother, Bovver’s, stag weekend in Amsterdam. ‘Do Gays not drink beer?’ one of Bovver’s ‘mates’ asked, meaning to be nice and understanding. Another said, ‘Do Gays not like grey socks?’  The hotel had scratchy carpet tiles and room spray. There was a whole wall like a lava lamp. Poor Joshua was in a triple room with Bovver and Lord Banger Castermaster. Really it was a martyrdom. They had a bike ride which Joshua escaped, then a normal dinner, then a vodka-tasting medley or a shot-bar or something like that. So they were hammered and lowed and bellowed in the street like cattle. The Saturday morning was therefore very white and glaring and speechless. Perhaps they had the bike ride on the Saturday rather than the Friday in which case it would have been very quiet and quivering. By dinner they were somewhat restored and asked the waitress about the Rave. She said she was too old to go. ‘How old are you?’ the mates and Bovver inquired. ’23.’ ‘But we’re 35!’ Still they were hell-bent for the Rave which was miles away in a shed. Quite what happened when they got there is not at all clear. I think sadly something is pushing them to the side of their own lives, as old dear Largs put it. Joshua had to be carried back to London.

Harry and Mercury, Mr Kitten’s important Hollywood insight: Tom Daley’s possible boyfriend, a script-writer, is thought madly ambitious and very marketing-minded – in Hollywood, in Los Angeles, that is.

Frankie-Doreen May got on famously with Harry Rollo and Mercury, Mr Kitten. ‘Her Ivana stories,’ they said afterwards. ‘But I didn’t tell my Ivana stories,’ Frankie-Doreen protested the next day. Ivana – Trump, of course.

They must have seeped out somehow, without speech.