Sunday 17th November 2019

My highest yet! A Marchioness. But there was something on my shoe. I entered the Holland Park mansion then had to back straight out again. What must the servants have thought? One of the Freud daughters was coming in at the same time. In fact in her opinion the door wasn’t opened quickly enough. It was only a clump of leaves – I hope. I hadn’t been walking with care owing to the Daily Mail.  Only quick edits, they said. Well, it wasn’t quick edits, it was a whole new piece. Frantic. I don’t even remember my outfit, except for the Prada tart’s mac in turquoise oilskin. Some days before I’d mentioned without a second thought while live on Dainty Lady TV that dinners should end at 10.30 on a weekday. As they should. I got back into the people carrier at the live location, and returned to headquarters. Genevieve Suzy was occupied in lopping the sleeves off an Anya Hindmarch dress. Who’d have thought that within 24 hours, the world would be rocking on its foundations? Massive pick-up. And a Twitter storm. The Mail Online, the Times, the Graph and the Express (Vanesse de la Feltz elle-meme): all were raving.  Thus it was the Daily Mail (Femail branch) wanted 2000 emergency words on ‘The Perfect Dinner Party’. So I did that at no notice and handed in at 1o a.m. as requested. It wasn’t until 8 hours later, just as I was arriving at Kernow Hellizon’s launch party, that they came back: ‘More personal anecdotes. Hand in by 10pm.’

Phoning the Mail from the street to arrange to phone them again from the party, I wasn’t watching where my clucks were going. Finally in the mansion, I only knew Cecil Beaton’s friend, Patrick O’Connor, the actor. ‘I’ve got to phone the Mail,’ I said. ‘Do you think it’ll be all right? This house might be violently anti-Mail.’ ‘I wouldn’t worry,’ he said, ‘Lady Rothermere is here.’ ‘You look familiar,’ I said to the person with him, who appeared to experience trauma. ‘Long ago, long ago,’ he said, fleeing, Patrick O’Connor having already got away.

Still I had somehow to write a whole new piece for the Daily Mail while standing up at the champagne reception in the Holland Park mansion. I cornered an extraordinarily well-finished young man of obvious important birth and got some copy. They can do anything these people. He thought he was probably a cousin of the Guinnesses. At least, I could say to the nice woman on the Mail, ‘Lady Rothermere’s here, you know.’ From the upstairs landing, I dictated rubbish down the phone, ruining my lovely piece. Coming down the stairs, I met Kernow. He was radiant. Then I grilled the waiter: he was brought in for the evening, not permanent. Only one housekeeper, his friend, live in, attending to just the one Marchioness over 4 double-fronted storeys. Then I was worried I’m get into trouble for fraternising below stairs and asking nosey questions. The Freud daughter was saying, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t RSVP but I never know who’s going to be ill. They’re all at home, you know.’ Suddenly it was my turn to sit on a banquette with the Marchioness: she had a vaguely Sixties look, with coiffure and sleeveless slender frock. She wasn’t like anybody else. Squeezed up close on the banquette, she called out to another,’ This is Adrian Edge: he’s from Dainty Lady TV and he’s fabulous.’ She turned back to me abruptly: ‘Are you married?…. Well, you must come to my Singles night on Monday week. When you write to thank me you can tell me how to get in touch..’ After that I was somehow launched at the party although quite alone there and knowing nobody, except for a few and not being Aristocracy, only Landed Gentry. A literary editor I’d previously thought horrid was nice: she said she’d had the same thing as me with the dinner parties except it was the grocer’s apostrophe. You never know what’s going to happen. An incredible luminous figure was sitting on a sofa. If you’d landed from Mars you’d have known she was different. ‘It’s Kristin Scott Thomas,’ the literary editor said, not being at all, Do-you-really-not-know?

Magic really – the great drawing room, the creatures within, the names, the stars. It really was.

I did write to the Marchioness but was not bidden to the singles party. The dinner party piece never ran in the Mail.