Friday 11th July 2014

Last Thursday Rufus Pitman launched a new work of tremendous ambition in Chelsea where the premises are compact if valuable so much of the party spilled out onto the pavement and into the road. Had a taxi ploughed by too fast many world-class Poor Little Rich Gays would have been wiped out not to mention other leading taste-shapers and cultural icons. Susan Goodyear arrived by taxi. ‘I’ve had taxi trouble,’ she announced stepping down onto Dhiren Dutta, the two-time novelist who once gave a cake-party. He offered himself as a footstool for her descent. I took sides against him after he was beastly to Robert Nevil, so there were lashings of leccie flashing across the throng between us and him. Joshua Baring, the youngest-known Poor Little Rich Gay, also lashed leccie at Dutta before leaving early for a meeting of a secret society.  Friends of Sid Id were present: ‘I’ve not played Poker with you,’ I said to one who was also discussing with Crumply Flower, Rufus’s producer and a deeply sensitive heterosexual, where they would watch the next World Cup match.

These Intellectuals: their level of conversation would surprise many ordinary members of the Public. Robert Nevil, by the way, was wearing a purple striped shirt with bees embroidered at the neck. I, on the other hand, was picking over Glyndebourniana picnic options with Finn Magnus, the hot boy-doc, who is going up in the world in the manner of really good lift ascending a Manhattan skyscraper. Otherwise he is seen at incredibly central dinners at Our Nation’s burning core in white tie and tails as the guest of Lord Arrowby. Of course, it would be too dangerous to take me, Adrian Edge, to such a function. I rather blew up Crumply Flower for not commissioning more feists for the Queen. He doesn’t take the world of Dainty Lady TV seriously at all, despite its lavish profitability.

We passed to a restaurant. Passers-by were extraordinarily good-looking that evening. I mentioned this to Harry Rollo, the world-renowned impressario and performance artist, who was on the verge of doing a song-cycle and gardening evening in Tuscany. He said, ‘Yes, but they’re awful people.’ At dinner was the gorgeous Ed Radz, who is a completely new type of person – chronically heterosexual and chronically ambiguous. He tried to persuade Reggie Cresswell to make an analytical ceramic of one of John Donne’s poems, but Reggie wouldn’t, perhaps because he was so busy trying to work in ‘La Pietra’, as a word, at every opp. ‘La Pietra’, Harold Acton’s Tuscan villa, was his destination for the crack of dawn the following Saturday where Harry Rollo was to garden and render a song-cycle. On the Friday night was Lord Arrowby’s party which this year, for the first time ever, I was unable to attend. Anyway it turns out that Ed Radz lives near an establishment called ‘The Hoist’, which hosts Gay ‘nuits de cuir’ and so on. I’m not sure whether it is just the proximity but Ed likes to attend. His girlfriend is only miffed when he insists on taking ‘Lube Night’. Maybe this is research. Ed was also photographed on a train, discussing modern Britain with Nick Clegg. Later Harry Rollo slid over and said that Bruno-France Bruno had recently lost his bag on the Underground but it was all right because he’s got a direct line to the Head of Lost Property.

The evening broke up in glory and Raj Zoroaster paid the entire bill. Hurry up, Rufus Pitman, and launch another work.