I Return to London and At Once Assume the Red Carpet «

I Return to London and At Once Assume the Red Carpet

Tuesday 15th November 2016

Robert Nevil gave a dinner to mark my return to the Capital after my Cornish absence. ‘I’ve invited others because you complained that it was so boring with just me.’ I’m never bored, Robert Nevil,’ I said, ‘just hurt.’ One hurt is being banned from Robert Nevil’s dinners. The guests are always fearfully blue-stocking and I’m not considered suitable. Too noisy and silly. That was what I complained about but as often with Robert Nevil his version is different. Anyway, at least I was admitted.

The menu was from a book of Persian cooking condemned by Joshua Baring as ‘rather poor.’ The beetroot starter was excellent. In fact I was ‘I must have that recipe’ like the Stepford Wives. The chicken main was also excellent and there were even seconds. I can’t remember the pudding but there must have been one. Miss Mina gave a vernissage at her house round the corner just before Robert Nevil’s dinner. She’d found out the menu. Robert Nevil said she always does. But some mean possessive people in her square don’t want to share their menus with Miss Mina. I have say I’ve no patience with those who don’t give and give.

The other guests turned out to be predominantly Indian, including our own special treasured mini doc, Arjan Bose, although it was not certain he would appear until he did. We learned a lot more about goings-on in Calcutta: for instance the other Indian guest, as a schoolboy, took a bus to his mother’s office where he was to be shown off. But on arrival he was found to be semen-stained. ‘He’s covered in semen,’ the secretary shrieked. In the mad crush of the bus an older man had been trying to grope him. But that the crone had gone to the full extent did not emerge until it was too late. This sort of thing is normal in Cal, apparently. Robert Nevil and I agreed afterwards that Indian society is the most bizarre mixture of don’t-give-a-damn and a preoccupation with what the neighbours might think bordering on insanity.

On the following Tuesday I was on the red carpet: the world premiere at Leicester Square Odeon of The Crown. I wore my Topman frock coat in tartan, bought for the Scottish visit in May. Utter heaven, The Crown. It’s all about her, and incredibly good. The agony and greatness of Royalty. Embalmers were in the King’s bedroom the minute he was dead. Princess Margaret had to fight through their tubes for her last farewell. This may not have actually happened but revealed a truth all the same – how Royalty have nothing really. Even your own father’s body is not yours but at once taken over by procedures in the national interest.

We were bused round to the after-party in an hotel in Holborn. We met Princess Margaret and the Queen and the King and two Private Secretaries: Princess Margaret kissed us. Then it turned out her agent is a friend of Sebastian Archer’s – so, as always, connected. Genevieve Suzy visibly heightened into the Anna Wintour de nos jours. Later she danced with Jared Harris, who played the King. ‘Marvellous coughing,’ I said to him. He was dying, you see. Dreadful coughing. He said he made himself ill with it, which was a bit backwards, although believable. Normally you’re coughing because you’re ill. The man standing next to him looked familiar. ‘Were you in it?’ I asked. It turned out he was the Head of Netflix and had made a speech from the stage before the premiere. That’s why he looked familiar. He actually seemed a bit apologetic he hadn’t been in it.

Matt Smith played the Duke of Edinburgh. He went round the party bent into a permanent pre-hug shape so he could dock readily when necessary which was the entire time. He appeared to have lost the power of speech. Whenever a star came near – I couldn’t make it out at first – it was as if the air was suddenly whirring with knives but really it was the jabbing elbows and handbags of those who must get near.

Everyone in the film world is incredibly good-looking, whatever their task. But it’s a dangerous world somehow. I found out later that Jared Harris is the son of Richard Harris, the film star, with whom Beamish O’Halloran of the Mail used to sit in that low-down pub next to the Savoy (R.Harris had a perm suite in the Savoy) stirring up trouble.