Wednesday 25th February 2015

You remember when all I wanted was to get into the Ivy Club. That was after getting into the Ivy itself became too easy.

Well, for the second time I gained entré last week. Heaven! Arnie Gateshead kindly invited me to his 50th birthday, which took place the very day after Rufus Pitman’s magnificent extravaganza. I haven’t seen Arnie for 20 years easily and wondered if I’d know anybody. But strangely, as Death draws nearer and after great losses one minds less being amongst strangers. One learns to make the best of  things. Also, I feared an onslaught of Earls Court Gays, for Arnie, a gigantic corporate figure on the communications side in pharmaceuticals, was rather that world, as I recalled.

One figure, vaguely known to me as a classic Earls Court body fascist, didn’t bode well.  ‘Can I get that, with my membership?’ he announced when bar staff told him a gin and tonic would be on a paying basis. But then I was talking to Martin from Pangbourne about  his schooldays. He actually mentioned that he couldn’t afford something.  But what a sensation! No Earls Court Gay would ever not be able to afford something, whatever it was. A Poor Little Rich Gay might claim incapacity to afford but would either be lying or would already have bought it. Or would be below the bread-line anyway. So what has Arnie been up all these years?  Including normal people evidently. There were nice people at the party. Snaps of him were flashed in succession on a screen, from babyhood to the present day. He’s made quite a thing of being really rather sultry and quite suggestive from the earliest years. This has been intriguingly combined with a serious corporate profile. Recently he had a procedure in Harley Street resulting in emergency admission to an NHS establishment and morphine ever since. He thought he looked dreadful for the party so hired a lady to administer a temporary face-lift and other treatments with sensational results. Only about £220. He said that once he went to Brixton through Grinder. He was supposed to meet one black man but there were three and it wasn’t nice. One of the Gays nevertheless refused to listen, ‘Sounds fun,’ he said.  ‘It wasn’t,’ Arnie said firmly. I had to leave early through derangement after being at functions two nights in a row but sailed home a few feet off the ground, not wounded by the party, as can so easily happen, but uplifted.

Arnie Gateshead’s 50th Birthday Party at the Ivy Club

Arnie Gateshead’s 50th Birthday Party at the Ivy Club