Monday 12th July 2010

Last night I was sent to put the rubbish out. Even on the Côte d’Azur this has to be done. It meant going outside the villa. Devastating. Virgil has unique beaten steel gates that open automatically. Beyond it’s all wrong. There are other houses in sludge apricot, clashing with the plumbago. They’ve got brand new white shutters in Rivieraflon or whatever. There’s a B and Q feel and random vegetation, no pure species in restrained silver, grey or green. I dashed back in to the Virgil demesne, begging and begging the automatic gate to close, longing to be enfolded once again a honed, detailed environment created by a world-class architect. I told Virgil all about it. He said: ‘I know. And they’re rich too.’

Sunday 11th July 2010

The Multis are at Glyndebourne. Yes! the Blond Multi regained from Australia! In one piece. Not taken into specialist sexual slavery. Earlier in the week, Harry Rollo, the impressario and performance artist, was at the Serpentine Summer Party, in conversation with Grace Jones. There were rose petals in the drinks.

I am on the Côte d’Azur.

What could be more perfect!

The Multis' Installation at Glyndebourniana

Illuminated Railing in the Garden at Virgil Grayson's House in the South of France

Illuminated Railing at Virgil Grayson's House in the South of France

Sunday 11^th July 2010

I’m lying on a chaise longue (from Argos in fact, superbly bought by Virgil Grayson, one of the world’s leading architects). My view, created by Virgil Grayson, is nine blue agapanthus, then a cork oak, trunk and branch forming an elbow, a bush of some rare kind placed below, to provide an exactly view-finder-shaped shot of the Mediterranean which I can hear effortlessly swishing below.

The luxury and paradise of it – I can’t begin to describe. This is the reward that Poor Little Rich Gays yearn for, the whole point of all the shopping, tycoonery, entrepreneuriation, shrife, struggle and contrivance.

We’re an old-fashioned house party at Virgil’s, rather different from Ralph Kitto’s birthday gathering at the other end of the Riviera two weeks ago. Here are people who don’t know each other, in separate suites with own bathroom. Except that we find, of course, we’ve acquaintance galore in common. It’s a small world when you’re at the top. I was explaining that Peter Finch, the film star, was the half-brother of my aunt by marriage. ‘Oh, I met him on a train to Rome when I was seventeen,’ a fellow-guest said.

They’re all very brainy and distinguished. I’m rather out of my depth. But you can slip away and Google to find out who they are. You can also slip away from the table for a rest whenever you feel like it – not that I do very often. But if only they’d introduce that for London dinner parties…

There’s a novelist who dined with Doris Saatchi and didn’t recognise George Osborne, Great Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, if you’re in US or foreign. ‘You seem to know a lot about politics,’ she said. She is writing a novel exploring a person’s life through objects. ‘Is it like the Antiques Roadshow?’ I said.

Actually that’s one of Robert Nevil’s fav TV programmes –  and he’s the mega scholarly (actually checks facts, can you imagine?) historian of the Pony Club.

The others are either academics or from the museum world. Cedric Partridge, Virgil’s partner, who is not here because he doesn’t take the July heat on the Côte, is from the Museum world. He is a frequent flyer, usually with a small Rembrandt on the neighbour seat – taking it to an exhibish somewhere, you see. An Australian Greatness motored up  from Rome University and has had stern words with Virgil about the stairs here being done with Satin Finish not Matt.  The stairs in a new building at Rome by a very great lady architect – I should say ‘woman architect’ but I won’t – are also unsatisfactory. There’s dust and rubbish visible underneath them.

Virgil also likes to have young people. Over the years, some of them have been perfectly outrageous. Virgil looks on, benign and unfussed. Now he has a hot het with an outdoor streak and Calvin Klein red tops who is in charge of one of the building projects on another continent and goes to functions with the patrons who wear especially-made paper frocks which are afterwards put in a museum.

I’ve really got to go. A kitchen scene is brewing. The novelist has started the risotto but the Australian Greatness was going to do it!  It’s the risotto war fought entre Bruce MacBain and Rufus Pitman at Anthony Mottram’s Tuscan villa circa 1994 all over again.

That was with knives!

Well, not really.

And I still haven’t fitted in the Ralph Kitto birthday party!

Tomato Styling at Virgil Grayson's

Table-Styling at Virgil Grayson's - Ikea Very Skilfully Bought

Carla Bruni's Parents' Villa is Here - near Virgil Grayson's

Table-Styling at Virgil Grayson's - Ikea Cleverly Bought. You, too Could Do This

Organic Outdoor Shower at Virgil Grayson's Made of Tree Stump

Saturday 10^th July 2010

Yes!  I’m back on the Côte. And I still haven’t finished telling you about the last time, two weeks ago, when I was at Cap Ferrat for Ralph Kitto’s birthday. But I’m going to work it in somehow.

Now, I’m at Virgil Grayson’s house, west of St Tropez. He’s got the Mediterranean laid out at the bottom of his steep garden. Right there.  I can hear it lapping. Utter seclusion. The public are not on view, nor any other dwellings. There’s a private beach.

The house itself was an unremarkable 30s villa a few years ago, until Virgil wrenched and knocked and flung and now it’s an airy magical space, white walls, soft grey paintwork, red tiled floors, commanding balcony – simple, restrained and natural. He’s an architect, you know.  Whenever you look out to sea through a window or door, somehow it’s a picture.

Yesterday morning Virgil called me from the garden where everything is species, no hybrids, echiums, succulents, arbutus, agapanthus, exceptional conifers, all rare, rare, rare, shades of green and silver. He does it all himself. He was trying to trim 6 inches off the top of a cork oak. I had to pull a branch over so he could reach. ‘It’s all about editing,’ he said. He was editing the tree so it would grow in one direction to form a screen, at the same time framing the vista of the sea.

That’s why, whenever you look out of a window or door in this house somehow it’s a picture. It’s all been edited by Virgil Grayson.

What a triumph! But not achieved without struggle, of course.

Poor Little Rich Gays do love to be architects. I have my own architect, Bruce MacBain, who was, as it happens, nurtured by Virgil. I keep him with me at all times. Architects seize big slabs of the earth and mould and shape them as they please. Which is perfect for Poor Little Rich Gays. What’s more, you can spend hours and hours poring over tap catalogues, insist that the tiling is re-done for the sixth time and send for unlimited flooring samples, none of which will be right.

In the evening, Virgil made a potato salad. New potatoes, you understand, not terrible old winter ones. All the same, he boiled, then peeled them. Even I was astonished.

And humbled.

Attention to detail on this scale has taken Virgil a long way, I can tell you.

A Vista of the Mediterranean Created by Virgil Grayson in the South of France

Salad Made by Virgil Grayson with New Potatoes but Peeled

Wednesday 7th July 2010

Tomorrow I board for Toulon and thence by bus (taxis slashed out in the crunch) to Virgil Grayson’s villa near Le Lavandou. He is the architect of numerous museum extensions, known here and throughout the world,  first known to me thirty years ago when he was younger than I am now. Bruce MacBain, my own architect, and architect supreme to the Poor Little Rich Gays (Reggie Cresswell, Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver, Frankie-Doreen Gunn, Rufus Pitman, Anthony Mottram, Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer – we’ve all had him, but only I keep him at my side all the time. Just this morning he was advising me re: razors in hand luggage – read on) was nurtured in Virgil’s office originally.

Jetting from villa to villa might sound a life of creamy luxury, but there’s a price to pay. Here is the Poor Little Rich Gay burden at this time of year:

Intense pressure at the London end: so many summer parties to be packed in before departing the capital. Robert Nevil had six invitations on Tuesday night. Next week, when I regain from France’s South, is Lord Arrowby’s party. That means outfits. Lord Arrowby has talked of nothing else, if he talks at all which to me is rarely (he is my intermittent love-object, when I remember, which explains…..) but what he is going to wear at his function. This is unusual in one who stalks the very highest corridors of power in some mysterious capacity or other, I would have thought.Last night the Photographer Multi was at a dinner for 200 at Trenton’s gallery (see graph below), alone since the Blond Multi is incarcerated in Australia (I haven’t mentioned that the BM is awfully dashing and Brideshead so could very well be taken into specialist sex slavery while far from home, should he fall in with a bad lot – let’s hope and pray for his safe return). Peter Doig and Grayson Perry were there. The PM encouraged me to crash. He said it was an informal barbie. I think I had a narrow escape, don’t you?

Which leads to the next point – you’ve got your final raid on the sales to fit in, Poor Little Rich Gays. You should now be on your sixth or seventh visit, ready to claw up the items you’ve been  backing for further massive reductions. I pounded to The Library this morning to get my final piece – a grey silk/cotton gauze shirt for Lord Arrowby’s party at £70. Had I waited until my return next week, it would have been too late.

Pre-boarding tension, exacerbated by multiple boardings. Robert Nevil regained from Menton last week, boards on Monday for Bulgaria to visit the orphans (you remember them from last year? I’m being kept in Abu Graiub by Anthony Mottram so not going), then boards again for Italy with me in the second week of August. But what if moth sets in while you’re away. Have you proofed? Have you trimmed and tidied for your return – nothing more ghastly than coming back to a wrong home?

Now I have a further problem. You have to pay £40 to check in a case on Ryan now. I’m not having that. So hand-luggage only. But no liquids above 100 ml. What is 100ml? What about moisturiser, bronzer, face-wash?  I went barely able to breathe to Space NK this morning and bought a travelling set by Skeen for £62 plus, from Harrods, a lovely 30ml comfort bottle of Jo Malone Black Pomegranate cologne (£32) to cradle on the journey and spray on and have some vaporous link with a better place. Bruce MacBain tells me no razors allowed but he visited Virgil in the South of France last weekend and left behind some disposable ones.

Ghastly but what can you do?

All the same, thank God for one’s architect.

Now I must dash to pack a skeleton wardrobe into one carry-on bag measuring no more than 55 centimetres across.

Dinner for 200 at Trenton's Art Gallery Attended by the Photographer Multi

Tuesday 6th July 2010

On Saturday the Blond Multi was in a sudden emergency boarding for Australia. Just like that. One minute lunching with his mother, Lady Carmichael, near Godalming, the next mounting the air for Sydney.

But why? What sinister tug has dragged him there? With these high-level business persons anything is possible. I suspect someone owes him money. They’ve  lured him to Australia with promises of slap-up dinners – ham in Coca Cola, Surf ‘n Turf, pineapple, pea and sweet corn salad with sardine garnish.

But it’s a trap. They’re going to kidnap him.

Here is the view from the Blond Multi’s hotel room in Sydney. It came through this morning.  I do wonder. Isn’t there something a little creepy about it? Could it be the vista from a place of confinement?

I do hope we will not soon be making tearful appeals on TV: ‘Bring back the Blond Multi! Bring back this gorgeous Poor Little Rich Gay! It will be worth your while.’

View from the Blond Multi's Supposed Hotel Room In Sydney Australia

Monday 5th July 2010

Today I telephoned Anthony Mottram.

So what! you’re thinking.

Well, I had to screw and screw to dial. Courage up, I mean. Terrible ordeal.

And he is my oldest and closest friend, first met by me  in September 1970 at a tea for new boys,  now an entrepreneur, ‘consultant’, Poor Little Rich Gay, occupier of a museum-sized apartment in Prague, where his boyfriend, Vladmir Alexov of the Ukraine, newly graduated in Business Studies and about to move to London to start his first job, also resides.

Who would have thought? It is exactly a year since Anthony fell ill at The Vases, where he was staying with Leon de Veer and Miles Kent. It was Swine. I thought to be forlorn at the graveside. My very first post, when the Poor Little Rich Gays began, was all about it. So who would have thought that from January we would not be on speakers?

To tell you the truth, I’ve not been sleeping well. The less said about the row the better. As you know, with Poor Little Rich Gays, relationships are unusually configured. The younger lover is a feature, often. I met Mottram in April where he announced sensational developments. I’ll tell you all about them soon.  After that encounter it was back into Abu Graiub for both of us.

Then today I telephoned.

We are both impossible people but tinged with greatness. We veered from the true path, we forgot to emblazon our damage and carry it before us, we forgot to be silly and tragic,we became huffy and puffy, whirling the rule-book, slamming and screaming.

He is touring the Ukraine with Vladimir Alexov. Their car is a Mega Maisie Divine. Vladimir’s uncle is in charge of car names in the Ukraine. I think he must be homosexual. Apparently the road is barely made, you have to make it up as you go along.

Well, we’re used to that.

Mottram could hardly speak. The expense, you see, of mobile calls in those parts. But I think a long torment will be soon at an end.

Within I felt like Spring, come back to life. I know, without, it is the middle of summer. To celebrate , I had broad bean risotto made with guinea fowl stock and Parmesan – normally I cut it out for economy and slimming.

And I’ve so much to tell you!  I haven’t finished the Cap Ferrat Ralph Kitto birthday celebrations. I’ve been shopping. I’ve bought a car. I’ve been involved with the garage world. Lord Arrowby, my part-time love object, has been frightfully lordly and paradoxical and marvellous and exciting and impossible. The Blond Multi is still unexplicably in Australia.  Then, would you believe it, on Thursday I board for Virgil Grayson’s house at Le Lavandou – yes!  The French Riviera again. Pres de St Tropez.

What it is to be a Poor Little Rich Gay

Sunday 4th July 2010

And only Business Class!

Stopped at Bangkok this morning.

The Blond Multi, company and property-owning Poor Little Rich Gay supreme, made a sudden dash for Australia late yesterday, departing from London’s Heathrow airport.

No reasons for this boarding have been given. The Blond Multi has no known connection with the country and has never loomed there before.

Let’s hope he has not been kidnapped. And that he does not fall into the hands of malcontents.

Anthony Mottram, my oldest friend with whom I am not currently on speakers (but about to put through a call), once went to Australia. He said it was just like Reading.

But I think he only saw the Business district.

Friday 2nd July 2010

The Multis, property and company-owning moguls and civil partners,  are just leaving La Pont de la Tour, as we speak.

Thank the merciful…They are back, where they belong.

Their sudden crise of last weekend, the strange abandonment of footwear on an unknown beach, the failure to show at La Voile d’Or, Cap Ferrat, and commit to the true serviced life of a Poor Little Rich Gay, the possible lighting out to sea or for the Glastonbury Pop Music Festival – all quite behind them.

We understand. For Poor Little Rich Gays there is not a moment’s rest. Never, never let go. That is our motto. Otherwise you might be stained, or frayed, or ill-matched or out of date or serving plain food lacking an unexpected touch.

Just occasionally it is all too much.

But this is the furrow we’ve been given to plough and plough it we will.

The Photographer Multi: 'We are back and at our table.'

Quail Service at La Pont, taken by the Multis this Evening

Friday 2^nd July 2010

You remember Ralph Kitto:  important art collector, his Damien Hirst mistaken for a Plasma screen TV by some half-witted glamour boy, once received the Friends of the Tate, visiting his pictures, with biked-in pizza, always available for gossip if you phone him at the bank. Kind face, sees what’s going on, not a massive shopper except for Damien Hirst, Gilbert and George etc.

Ralph weekends all through the year at Cap Ferrat, has a house there, as do a large number of other Poor Little Rich Gays. It’s quite a set. Can we join it? There are floods of invitations and, for the daytime, beach work on serviced private beach. But costly. A modest bung is 7 million euros.  Sol Weidenwar, the staggeringly entrepreneurial friend of Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver, is said to go down Business Class: £30,000 a year

I was bidden to the Cap for the double celebration of Ralph’s 50^th birthday. Astonishingly two other guests, slight acquaintances, were on the Easy horror from Luton, one an Indian price who annexed my aisle seat and, even on arrival, did not wake up. The other, Ludovico, (an Italian banker: early 30s, black curly hair to the collar like an opera singer, doesn’t use moisturiser: I was thrilled with him) said to the attendant: ‘Look, you’ll have to get a doctor. He’s used to servants.’

Minus the Prince, who seemed to assume a car would appear, we gained Cap Ferrat by two buses. Taxis from Nice airport are 100 euros and you have to get up an investment syndicate to afford one.  Ludovico was outraged at the 4 euro bus ticket. He told me he goes to work on a moped. Later in the summer he will be at Mykonos where he foresees 50 euro a head dinners: ‘For Greek food! With their debt problem they should be paying me.’ You have to supply the operatic Italian declamation mixed with grand London homosexual. The bus was far from ideal.  He has recently been seriously ill, spent months in the Cromwell (that’s a private hosp) and, on top of everything, had been over-trained by his personal trainer. ‘It takes me twenty minutes to get up the stairs,’ he said. His legs were done in.

We arrived at the Cap. Very agreeable quiet hum of money, manicured hedgerows, trees and plants,  exclusive models of luxury cars, joggers, cyclists, roads lined with baronial gates behind which might be a modest 7 million euro hutch with another next door. But many looming mansions as well. Ludovico went off to the Ralph Kitto place while I engaged with the little 3 star Hotel Panoramic and began agitating about how to get to the prelim Ralph Kitto birthday party that night in Villefranche sûr mêr, to be given by some people somehow connected to the Conran empire.

Fortunately a delightful flower-arranging and hospital-building couple, also in the hotel,  were willing to let me buy into their taxi stake-holding and we purred up the hill in a Mercedes truck with the millionaire driver speaking implausibly perfect English – perhaps a machine. 40 euros for ten minute ride.

So, there we were, in an extraordinary almost invisible house half way down a cliff, just some minimal glass and cement cubes pinned to the rock, with lawns and a tiny railing holding death at bay 100 feet below. But glamour and romance, there’s no denying it, with the moonlight trailing on the Mediterranean and all the exclusive umbrella-pines of Cap Ferrat in view. I wore some very difficult black nylon Prada slacks, bought last year in despair because there was nothing else, but which have got more easy at the waist I’m glad to say (although there’s no question of sitting down).

The guests: Kazudant, who frocked Diana, in figure-hugging net with pecs, which were a feature generally.

Various fabulous Internationals.  One said, ‘I came British Airways,’ indignantly – when asked if his flight had been delayed.  He had a bleach theme going: teeth bleaching had been a disaster. He’d had to smoke 40 a day to get them natural-looking again. Later he wondered whether  the flower-arranger’s hair-bleach had penetrated his brain – the remark not forgotten by its victim the next day or the day after.

Two Norse mini-Gods, young, blond, whippy and gorgeous;  their luggage was trapped at Amsterdam, had had to emergency re-frock. Ralph explained: ‘I met them at the beach. They asked if I’d mind giving them a lift. MIND! What could be more perfect? An open-top car with them in it.’

Simeon Bond, said to be seriously multi (as in millionaire), unexpected, only known to me from the Harry Rollo world, performed psychic exercises. Yes, I did feel the force on my hand and I don’t believe in that kind of thing at all.

An Australian greatness in real estate at Monaco pointed out the Safra villa, visible below. Do you remember Safra? Massive banker burned to a crisp in a fire at Monaco. The villa belongs to his widow. She sold it to Russians for 500 million euros but the deal fell through in the credit crunch. She kept the 50 million deposit though and gave it all to charity. Quite a nice villa, with views of flats’ blocks.

This person also told me about a man in London, known to Rufus Pitman and the brainy Poor Little Rich Gays, I’m sure, who lives in a tiny flat, but with butler. Butler greets guests at the door; the grandeur sits three feet away in the sitting room. When they’re shown in he does a brilliant impression of it being the first he’s heard of it.

To be con’t

Poor Little Rich Gay Accommodation on Easy Jet

View from the Prelim Party. Safra Villa Garden on Left

100 Million Euro Villa on Cap Ferrat - in Restauro

Pillared Driveway on Cap Ferrat