Saturday 5^th March 2011

Poor Little Rich Gay landmark birthdays must be ludicrous, haunted by beauty and rich with meaning. Harry Rollo is the world-class performance artist and impresario, who arcs with ease from moisturiser to performance art. Do you know the performance art? For example, women in Issey Miyake accordion pleating fail to boil eggs in glass saucepans above while below construction workers underwater drill and bubble. Are they beauty or Hell? Their blue water through tubes is in the saucepans. Blue steam arises. The accordion pleating also fails.  It is art as well as music and poetry and sculpture: hard and rare, but huge. The newspapers are agog every time it is given.

For his 40^th Birthday, on Tuesday, Harry Rollo switched the Thames to champagne (‘Sweet Thames run softly until I end my song’). On a vast barque in the big Spring dark a compact gathering of superbs floated downstream, some reputable, some not. Oh the range! Not all household names, you know, but none not exceptional. Had we been rammed by a slag-ship what a loss of talent! – Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist of world repute, Rufus Pitman, the novelist and critic (new work forthcoming: brilliant), Miss Lamore Cellina, in rubber corset (she’s done her share of TV competition judging, make no mistake, as well as more delicate arts), Ned Boule, the percussionist, with new young pierced partner from Berlin via Bratislava, Harry’s Aunt Birda, who at once declared war on the music. And on the banquette, which ran down the side of the state room, a huge Name, accompanied by younger perfectly-formed blond friend, in some isolation. ‘What do we do about the Name?’ Miss Lamore enquired. ‘Fifteen years ago I’d have imposed. Now I’m not so sure.’ The Name did not move. I discovered later from his Twittering that he was on pills and had only gained this country from afar that day. Groups of concentrated greatness were brought to the Name. They seemed to come in waves. Next time you looked, they’d been replaced. The Name brought out a phone and was showing it.

Elsewhere on board, the talk was high in between what was really a whole supper delivered in sections in small bowls: a little spag with salmon, a cottage pie, a quiche and one with a poached egg that proved elusive: ‘I want the one with the egg,’ guests cried before resuming their topics: competitions to be judged. One had three competitions to judge for a national newspaper. I covered Monet and some poets, brainy for me.

I think we were all in our prime. I’ve only recently taken to having topics at a party. For years I relied on hysteria. I’m rather nifty with my topics – I adjust them to suit the person I’m speaking to or even whisk them up on the spur of the moment. Poor Little Rich Gays are strange: raving egomaniacs of course but not bores – they actually ask questions and take an interest in others. Can you imagine? I never used to bother nor remember anything about anybody; such a grind, so unrewarding. Much better to do a set-piece about Grace Monaco. But now I’m probing away all the time. I love it.

So we docked and our floating time was over. We removed to Harry’s apartment which is practically on the stage of a substantial place of entertainment. There Harry offered cake, opened his presents (La Prairie items and five tubes of Full Strength Line-Reducing Concentrate by Kielh – not needed by recipient, yet) and demonstrated his unique-edition Nikes (see graph below) while his father explained to me the important pictures on the walls. Later I learned something new about Botox: the effect doesn’t wear off as commonly supposed. You revert to the condition you were in when injected and remain there for good.

Isn’t that marvellous? There was quite a lot of worry about Zsa Zsa Gabor’s other leg, though.

Poor Little Rich Gays were poised and lived up to the greatness of the occasion – Harry Rollo’s 40th Birthday

Harry Rollo's Unique-Edition Celebration Nikes - Worn on his 40th Birthday

Harry Rollo's Presents - Here a Chanel Fume

More Presents! Products! Products!

Thursday 3rd March 2011

We had Harry Rollo’s party. It was fab and there was a huge name present. But it must wait…

What about John Galliano? Let it be a lesson to us. Yes, Poor Little Rich Gays can go badly bad. Like King Lear, I mutter to myself many times a day: ‘I will not be mad, I will not be mad….’ when a stain won’t come out or just now, I’m back from an International Gathering of Poor Little Rich Gays and I put my name sticker (don’t ask) on my suede jacket and it’s left a mark plus a bit of glue that won’t come off and that’s the jacket (half price from £700 at The Library) that had to be sent back to Japan to from whence it came after hours of me raving down the phone to the Library kitchens (that’s the sales team) because I dropped an oily lettuce leaf on it and nothing but nothing would get the mark out and Jeeves of Belgravia raised objections in volumes to the suggestion of cleaning it- so it was air-freighted to Japan.

And came back clean!

Oh yes, all that could have turned me racist. It’s the strain, the grappling to conjure from the air, with or without money, the detail, no detail left unturned or not re-done. How can you forget that grey trouser suit by Galliano worn by Prin Diana for that lunch at the Connaught with Raine, Countess Spencer? What a  breathless bloom of perfection! It was a man’s cloth, with an edging on the lapel – not a frill, not a fringe, but something indescribable and completely new. A tiny thing really, not to last, but thrilling.

Where does it come from – the poison? For that’s what it is. Grab at whatever’s to hand. Smash, punch, say the worst you can think of, no limits, unconfined. Is it engendered, an  unfortunate by-product of the fragile creativity, or is it there anyway?

Tuesday 1st March 2011

Today is the 40th Birthday of Harry Rollo, the world-renouned impressario and performance artist.

We go on the River Thames this evening  – in furs, in  a boat.

Curious fact: more Poor Little Rich Gays than statistics have laid down for our guidance were born on the 1st of the month: Sebastian Archer, the elusive world-taste shaper, the Photo Multi, and me, Adrian Edge, to name but a few.

Harry Rollo is a greatness. He said, of hotels, ‘Four Stars – Hell. Five Stars – Heaven’. Bracingly brutal yet endlessly forgiving, he has given and given for his Art and suffered too, he is on the world stage yet off it, dragged still human into the spotlight, working, working, weaving, making, with words also in company as well as performance art, yet watching trash TV and up in all the latest hotel news.

Poor Little Rich Gays have two choices: either to add to the gaiety of nations or to achieve lasting  greatness.

Harry Rollo has done both.

Monday 28th February 2011

How could it be? How could the Multis be aiding and abetting revolution?

But that’s the rumour flying. They’re not in Kenya at all. Those pictures are the Libyan desert. The Multis are encamped on the rebel side, like Byron in Greece. At night they show their photos and exhort: here’s our Penthouse, here’s our Aga, here’s our Global knife block, here’s our collection of Snow scenes in a bottle. You, too, could have all this…

These Arab countries have a power vacuum. Out go the ghastly old dictators with their appalling decor but who is to replace them?

Well, stroke of genius, why did no-one think of it before? Poor Little Rich Gays! If the Multis have got Libya sewn up, that just leaves Egypt and Tunisia, with Jordan possibly in the future.

Jordan’s a darling little country. I’ve been there.

Let me know which one you’d like.

Saturday 26th February 2011

They’re camping. In the bush. It is thought the Photo Multi will be in a temper.

It’s called a Walking Safari. Three days of it. The same price as the ordinary kind. They’ll be in suits, you can bet on it.

Look at their setting in Kenya!

Look at the Multis - on a Camping Holiday in Africa

The Simplicity of the Multis on a Camping Holiday in Kenya

Friday 25^th February 2011

Harry Rollo, the impresario and performance artist, attended, after his own multiple triumphs in New York and London, Anna Nicole (it’s an opera, should you not have heard, about Anna Nicole Smith of the USA, who had breast implants and a TV chat show, married an oil billionaire considerably older -but  it was nice –  then died).

He met Boy George in the interval. It was only his second opera. He was enjoying. Afterwards two LA gays: ‘I designed the dress she died in,’ one said. ‘I also dressed the oil billionaire’s funeral. I did a little tuxedo for the urn.’

The other had done nothing, apparently.

Harry always meets the right people. He has the knack.

Tuesday 22^nd February 2011

As I was saying – Angus Willis’s Tudor House at Hastings is at last open. I slept there for the first time last weekend.

This flagship Poor Little Rich Gay building project has throbbed at the core of our lives for five years now, not least with contradiction, for nooky, beamy, cotty (i.e.Tudor) is everything Poor Little Rich Gays are against. But Angus would have it and his jaw only hardened and lengthened in the face of cruel mockery as he set about ruthlessly and brutally re-Tudorising the Tudor House. You see, it had been modernised nasty and naff: an acquamarine bathroom suite, Tudor fitted kitchen, Aga, carpets and other horrors.

On Friday he over-heard some passers-by peering in at the window: ‘Such a pity there was no money to do it up.’

No money! £200,000 so far, thank you very much!  And more to come! The builders are still in for part of most days, as is correct in Poor Little Rich Gay life. On Saturday they installed a York Stone ledge along the street front with no mortar in the cracks. Angus is hoping stinging nettles will take root to give a neglected look.

The latest thrilling novelty is furniture. When I was there in November there was no furniture. I thought, ‘He’s gone too far with the groyne wood.’ Groynes are those wooden dividers you see on certain beaches. Angus has used the utterly rough, sea-weathered wood reclaimed from them for shutters, floor boards, cupboards, shelves, the box beds (yes, I was in a box bed, boxed up for bed, eyeing with small envy the considerable expanse of the unboxed remainder of the room).

But furniture has put it right again, added just the tiniest lift of colour, different shapes and textures although the overall impact is superbly dessicated, challengingly murky, primitive, and, something I’ve never seen before, utterly convincing fake old.

Furnishing was always going to be a challenge. Real Tudor would have been too expensive and (this is where Angus is so brilliant) ineffective.  The stroke of genius was to realise that nothing is more ancient to us than Formica, those white enamel sick-basins with a blue rim, especially if with a hole, a teacher’s chair from a 50s classroom (on which I snagged my champagne cardy by Fabrizio del Carlo), an electric kettle about 30 years old or improving post-War pocket guide books about birds or insects with brown-orange covers. Angus has also included some excellent 18^th century wing armchairs and a lot of Rumanian and Hungarian peasant furniture so wobbly, bashed, pecked by chickens that someone must have thought: ‘Do we burn or sell for a fortune?’

My God! The shopping! And the eye! An ordinary member of the public would see no merit in an Orkney chair with grubby hemp backing or a great round slab of wood on three legs.

But Angus knows. He sees at once.

The Tudor House is astonishing. There’s simply not a thing out of place. I’ve never known the like.

No wonder Interiors is to be graced and the Graph.

Actually living there is another matter. The front door gives clearance for someone under 5 foot. The last turn of the stairs veers so near the ceiling you have to crawl as for pot-holing. The famous lead-lined Sir Wilfred Self barrel bath must be approached with caution. An over-excited entry might result in water spilling over the edge and cascading through two floors.  ‘We’re sitting on spikes,’ Fergus Strachan, Angus’s recently Derma-rolla-ed partner complained. We could have sat in the wing chairs, but we didn’t. It was less warm in that parlour. In fact on Sunday night we withdrew to another property of Angus’ for a rest. Fergus hurled himself onto the profoundly floral and flounced three-piece suite and lolled with vodka and tonic.

But Poor Little Rich Gays were not born to be comfortable.

The Tudor House is right.

Rumanian Cupboard and Orkney Chair

The Tudor House: Old Book

Orkney Chair and Rumanian Dresser Give Full Tudor Effect

Rumanian Shelf

18th Century Wing Armchair

The Sir Wilfred Self Bath But Now with Soap, Scrubbing Brush and Bath Rack

The Lowest Light Ever

Murky Metal Kitchen Table - Hospital Kitchen?

York Stone Ledge Installed Saturday. Angus Willis Hopes Nettles will Grow

Monday 21^st February 2011

Yes, it’s open. After five years of intensive Tudorisation, the Tudor House at Hastings, by Angus Willis, international food writer, stylist and grapher, is finally open.

I’m just back from the weekend there, in fact Tudorised to an amazed standstill. Also smoked. I sat in the inglenook for authenticity, although not yet in one of the ruffs that Val is threatening to create for compulsory wear within the wattle and daub confines, equivalent to the skull caps required in gogues.

So you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for a full account.

Today I maided my wardrobe, a risky undertaking when feeling frail. I’ve mentioned before that my frockage is wheeling beyond my grasp. Remember those chestnut slacks, bought in the January sales at Prada, left in the shop for alternation, then forgotten about? That’s merely the iceberg’s tip. For some weeks I’ve had a nasty, dreamy, creamy lurking slime that certain garments need cleaning. This afternoon I thought I’d drench through and bundle up a therapeutic consignment for Jeeves of Belgravia (the only possible dry cleaner unless you are eager for court action).

But miracle of miracles! I checked with glasses on, all the suits, all the coats and outdoor jackets. No grime on the collars, no stains, not smelly, just a little crumpled. I can always home press.

So, no need to spend £200 at Jeeves of Belgravia. And dry cleaning is ruinous of a frock. You should hear Val on the subject. Much better to brush and sponge and air.

So that’s what I’ll do. I couldn’t believe it. The wardrobe nailed back into place in twenty minutes.

Example of a Ruff as Might Become Compulsory Wear for Entrants to Angus Willis's Hastings Tudor House

Thursday 17th February 2011

Banter with Norma Lamont in the front foyer at Covent Garden. Paparazzi were behind a barrier. ‘Lamont!’ one shouted ‘Get in shot’. ‘I’m feeling tired,’ Norma cried. ‘Too late,’ the Pap went, flashing. ‘What’s going on?’ Norma turned to me, not as an ordinary member of the public, of course, but as the clear equal of a clapped-out former Chancellor of the Exchequer. ‘Perhaps they think you’re Anna Nicole,’ I said. A gruff figure loomed: ‘Hello, Norma. Great article on AV in the…’

Val arrived, luscious with anecdote: ‘The outrage in the off-licence! The flat let to a madam. A life crowded with incident.’

Awash with handsomeness, finery and grooming, oh ! it was a première. European ladies had winged hair, English ladies were in what I call cocktail dresses and huge spikes. Lord Linley looked a little tiny and ridic seated in the Crush Bar with huge pier glass and gilt swirls behind.

‘So near the throne!’ I said. ‘And yet so far,’ Val said.

The opera: we did and we didn’t. A little slight. Something wrong with it. Couldn’t quite put finger on. Not boring though. (is that a review?)  But hardly bearing compare to any full work by our own dear performance artist, Harry Rollo, who gives tomorrow at a massive venue, as it happens.

Thursday 17th February 2011

Today is the première of Anna Nicole. Val and I shall be present.

Yesterday the Multis boarded for Nairobi. They are to undertake, amazingly, a walking safari.

Prince Dmitri Hersov has gained Paris and the same Hôtel St Sulpice where we stayed a few weeks ago. Top secret work – forensic accountancy, you know. Possibly he is helping Bruno-France Bruno trace some missing Picassos.  The Prince notes that whereas once Poor Little Rich Gays, even rich ones,would mark the passage from ordinary to hotel life by self-unpacking, hanging  up, arranging  in rank order their bathroom products, now they fling down their bags and get at once On Line.

This is rather ghastly. I wish Poor Little Rich Gays would take the path less travelled by. Maybe they will. I fear this getting On Line besmirches the sanctity of hotel life so central to the Poor Little Rich Gay experience.

Hotels are at the core of our lives.

Meanwhile Laura Malcolm and her husband, Matt Driver, despite earnings exceeding Robin Smallmeal’s, are involved in yet another controversial foreign holiday. They’ve taken Tenerife. Jaws dropped in London when the news was broken. ‘Common,’ Laura said with pride. But she’s disappointed. They’re mainly at the five-star Arab-themed Abama where hedge fund bastards drive their mini chariots.

Tomorrow Lord Arrowby boards for India where he will buy art.  He merges fully with Indian life in India but I suspect there are interludes in the better hotels.

The Multis Board for Nairobi: Nice Old-Fashioned Sign