Sunday 13^th June 2010

I’m on the Eurostar returning from Brussels. In Leisure Class, knocked out by leisure of on-board meal service but still basking.

I’ve been with my old friend, Conor Cadoux, from the rare and exceptional South African branch of the Poor Little Rich Gays. He was once in the gutter, although always very grandly qualified, in Earls Courtsy, living on benefits. But now he’s huge in the EU, advising the Commissioners, the whole future of Europe in his hands. Hence in Brussels.

Conor’s Poor Little Rich Gay tendencies could only be glimpsed years ago. Once I encountered him in Harrods on the first day of the sale demanding that all the non-sale goods be fetched from the backroom. Otherwise he scarcely shopped, was unpropertied,un-carred and uninvolved with decor or bathroom products .. . But now he’s risen to good dinner service, grand parquet floors, antique drinks cupboard in the salon acquired in a sell-off from the Bank of England, art, wines, champagne, decanters and muttering to himself about the cleaner’s lack of dusting.

I met Conor at St Pancras on Friday (he was over, seeing the Government) and yes, dear Nicholas Taudevin (see Comments: ‘I watch Valentino Doc on TV’)  we penetrated the Business Premier Lounge. There were rock stars in there, but we didn’t know who they were. So they might not have been Rock Stars, just yobs. Lovely hush, staff every three feet and running buffet. Awful shock having to leave it and briefly traverse the common parts of the station before gaining the Leisure Class carriage.

On Saturday we shopped minutely and in agony at the one outstanding butchers. Brussels has been the making of Conor. It is a grey, anonymous city and dog-eared, to be ignored. The only hope is to gild it with fine shopping. A charming young man dined. He and Conor then went out, Conor returning at 9 this morning with a different man who insisted he was English but neither spoke it nor looked it. I managed to catch Conor alone in the bedroom corridor. ’Get rid of him,’ I said, ‘he’s a serial killer.’ Conor said, ‘Who is this madman? Listen to him. He’s talking to himself.’ It was true. He was. He didn’t leave but stayed to lunch. They drank whisky and kept talking their shirts off and putting them back on again while churning round some interminable political discussion: ‘You Belgians should be grateful.’ ‘The EU is the making of you.’ ‘You’re a Bolshevik!’ Nothing the other man said made any sense at all. Conor got grander and grander. He said his grandmother had lured him into the kitchen when he was 10 and confided that she was on an insufferable white wine diet. She liked homosexuals who did things with their nick-knacks. His grandfather had a Jaguar with a chauffeur but insisted on sitting democratically in the front. Conor said to him, ‘What’s the point? Why don’t you sit in the back where you belong?’

Last night’s young man reappeared for lunch, then both the visitors evap. Once Conor had got comfortable with a whisky on the sofa, we picked over some extreme Poor Little Rich Gays he knows in London who bought a newly-refurb house in S Kensington for £4.5m, flung all the fittings out onto the street, wouldn’t let any of their friends have so much as a lav seat, and started again. A year later it was finished – but they didn’t like it. Had to be sold.

So they’re still in rented accommodation.

I think it was costly commitment phobia – which is quite big with Poor Little Rich Gays generally.  Val, my friend who is passionate for the bottle, lived for ten years in West Norwood with bare floorboards and newspaper on the table. He was always saying it was going to be double doors and plaster-work and gilding and glass panels. Such a vision as could never be known on this earth, I suppose. Better to leave it as such.

Premier Business Eurostar Lounge at St Panc

Premier Business Eurostar Lounge at St Panc

Demanding Eurostar Leisure Class Meal Service

Belgian Summer Modes - Maybe Stick to Black and Grey After All

Conor Cadoux's Ex-Bank of England Drinks Cupboard

Conor Cadoux's Wine and Champagne Cupboard - also Ex-Bank of England

Thursday 10^th June 2010

I’m suffering from pre-boarding tension. Tomorrow I board for Brussels to weekend with my old friend, Conor Cadoux, who’s huge in the EU. At least I’m going Leisure Class on Eurostar.

And my staff have let me down. This morning I thought to unscrew the window catch in the downstairs bathroom which Miroslav’s ‘boys’ (Miroslav is my Polish builder on the verge of nervous collapse) put back upside down. Before I knew it I was to and fro from the hardware store, rotten patches uncovered, battling with filler, battling with screws, shower screen purchased at vast cost found to be loose on its hinges.

Dynamite the home and start again!  Why not?

I’m sure Valentino doesn’t have to put up with all this. Yesterday I was going to tell you about the stunning doc I watched about him on TV on Monday.

Actually his suffering was acute. Sequins on the dress – yes or no? Agony over the desert setting. Not really right for the collection. Why, oh why were the dresses mounted so high on the wall at the retrospective exhibition? So hurt, so crushed. Please leave me alone.

The filmmakers had a brilliant eye. It was one bizarre episode after another. Too hot in the marquee? Just hack open the sides with scissors. Joan Collins asked for the difference between beauty and trash: ‘I’ve no idea’. Valentino himself quizzed: ‘What do women really want: ‘They want beauty.’ Waiter at a function apropos of nothing: ‘The Countess of Ribes has brought her own vodka.’ Valentino to Karl Lagerfeld: ‘Just us. The rest are making rags.’

Various other high-handed pronouncements: ‘You’d think you were at Macy’s’ (Not good). ‘A woman in a long dress showing her ankles: disgusting.’

But it was all rather probing and unexpectedly deep. At the heart of the film was the relationship between Valentino and his business partner and lover of 50 years (although it was implied they were separate bedrooms) Giancarlo Giammetti. How they bickered: Valentino: ‘How was I at the party?’ Giancarlo: ‘Do you want the truth? You are just a little too tan.’ Val: ‘Too tan?  No, no, no, never.’ Another time there was a row about a frock. V: ‘You’re getting fat. Look at you with your three layers.’

Perfect Poor Little Rich Gay – awfully dysfunctional and ghastly yet marvellous and enduring. Really they were right for each other, Val with talent and tyrannical ways yet fragile, Giancarlo with head screwed on, knowing what to do. When Valentino was given the Legion d’honneur he struggled for control when paying tribute to his friend.

And how he emblazoned his damage!  The final collection was a miracle of stunning frockage. There was an astonishing kind of boa in pink made by putting millions and millions of deep pleats into a tube of fabric. ‘All I can do is create dresses. Everything else is a disaster,’ Valentino said. Not entirely true but you knew what he meant. Such a lot of nonsense but a complete triumph. His life, I mean.

Wednesday 9^th June 2010

Do you know him? Minute, highly burnished dress designer?  Nearly a new race as far as skin colour concerned. Harry Rollo, the impresario and performance artist, gave a perf on Sunday night (Prince Dmitri and I dashed back from Lady Newell’s in the Porsche) to a world-famous audience in the Shoreditch neighbourhood. He stretched wires over water and rang bells, among other things. On Monday night, he texted, from La Residencia, Majorca as it happens: Watch this doc about Valentino on BBC4 at 9pm or die. The timing was perfect: I had been rather wondering: ‘What next for a Poor Little Rich Gay?’

Still no word from Anthony Mottram. I’m to be kept in Abu Ghraib for a while more.

Harry says the audience at La Residencia (I mean, other guests) is ex-footballers’ wives and their ex-footballers, min twenty years since the last match. Great mercy as means no Poor Little Rich Gays in sight.

So no competition – or trouble.

Of course the villa and hotel season is getting under way. Absolutely central to PLRG life. Robert Nevil boards tomorrow with Blanche Spain and Joshua Baring for three weeks in a fully-staffed luxe villa at Menton. The first of his three holidays this summer. He is absolute genius at getting into villa-life at the highest level. He and Sebastian Archer (still in New York for cosmetic treatment) once rose as high as Conde Nast although there was sadly a death.  I am detained in the punishment cell for the Mottram-backed re-visit to the orphans in Bulgaria. Then he will be with me for an Umbrian villa experience in August (I haven’t told you about that yet, have I?). RN will be suffering from appalling pre-boarding tension and anxiety about where the next meal is coming from while away from home – it all goes back to childhood.

The Multis are at the Voile d’Or, Cap Ferrat the last weekend of this month, by chance la meme moment que I will be at the Panoramic, Cap Ferrat for Ralph Kitto’s 50^th Birthday. In July I’m at St Tropez in Virgil Grayson’s house right on the sea, possibly to be joined by a very important historian of the Virgin, then I’m with Laura Malcolm and Matt Driver en Normandie for a het interlude.

By the way there was a terrific huff and puff re: CGT (that’s Capital Gains Tax) at Lady Newell and Elsa Hodgeman’s glorious lunch on Sunday (exquisite Elizabethan manoir outside Oxford, parade of ducklings through the grounds). The new Gov are going to put it up. You’ve probably heard. Matt Driver, husband of Laura Malcolm, the novelist, completely in favour. Why should those who produce pay more tax than those who merely own? He earns more than Smallmeal, head of landfill in this country, but is terribly strict on taxation. The Multis up in arms of course.  High CGT will damage economy as a whole. I’m sure they’re right. I’ve had to pay Cap Gains once or twice. I do think low taxes is nice.

Now, look, I’ve veered off into hotels and taxation. No time to tell you about utterly brilliant doc on Valentino. Come back tomorrow.

Sunday 6^th June 2010

I’m dashing for Lady Newell’s at Oxford. We’re having a Tuscan-reunion lunch.

Here are three Gay dinners; I hope you can learn from them.

Royston Buster’s pre-Chelsea Flower Show gathering was two weeks ago. I’ve mentioned it before. Table decor, glassware, napiery, location (actually London NW10) were not the point. No, the guests were poised, like show horses, trained but reserving the right to revert to the wild without notice, pawing the ground, trotting on the spot, manoeuvring. All on committees, the Corporation of London, the National Lottery Fund, the  this, the that. Exact purpose not entirely clear. Functions with speeches seemed to come into it. The opening of Leighton House. ‘Mistake to leave so-and-so off the guest list.’ ‘Good move to put so-and-so on.’ Heads of Oxbridge colleges picked over. Then someone called Ed Vaizey, an MP. What sort of terms on with the PM socially? Round for a pizza at the kitchen table – no. Summer party for 50 – yes.

Royston, by the way, is remarkable. Absolutely barking and you can tell him so. Used to be on the TV a lot, now does Chelsea Flower Show only. Somehow in charge of millions of lottery money. Chair of the committee except that he had reduced the other members to little heaps of ash. Demented with names and connections.

We must hear more of him.

This Thursday last was my own dinner. Decor. Food. Garden. I was appalled by the state of my silver. Lord Arrowby, who came in the end, charmed everybody and provided content. Peter Acharya, who lives down the road, fumed about the new set of yobs who’ve moved in. Bruce MacBain, my architect, was teased by Cedric Partridge ( museum world. Art history. Knew Margot Fonteyn. Flies often with famous painting as fellow passenger) for wearing a loose garment. What was he trying to conceal?

Then last night Peter Acharya and Ned Czernowski had a last minute dinner for the hot weather. The thing was – and here you must learn – it wasn’t in their own apartment but another, on the floor above, twice the size, double-terrace on both sides, and finished, finished, finished. Oh the finish. Great wall of lacquered cupboards in the kitchen, perfectly aligned, streaming stone floors.

So, why not relocate your dinners to improved premises?

Speaking of kitchens (see glossary), the other great feature was a lithe young man from the South Seas, big studded belt, red-top pants showing, jeans, tattoos, jewellery,  tremendous hiss-and-spit with older partner. ‘You’ve been working today?’ I said. Yes, I’m manager of the environment…. ‘He’s a cleaner,’ the husband boomed. Later they were more cuddly apparently. ‘He wants a car,’ Peter muttered. After dinner we toured the apartment and this young man became even more lithe and charming.

Saturday 5^th June 2010

I’ve been absent. I’ve been remiss. Glyndebourniana was on Wednesday. It’s opera at a country house, if you’re in US or foreign. Or rather tres snob, usually self-brought picnic and frock opportunity with shortest possible opera endured in the intervals. Very, very high.  Tickets £185 each, but Aunt Lavinia paid, me to do the picnic and drive her the sixty miles to Sussex.

So Tuesday was Pre-Glyndebourniana-picnic-and-boarding tension.

I feared retribution, having ditched poor Robert Nevil’s birthday for this elevation. Would my official car blow up on the way? Would the ice-box fail and the picnic fester?

We gained Glyndebourne demesne in one piece at least. Aunt Lavinia was in an excellent frock from Annabel’s of Oxford, still going strong from the 80s. But oh the other audience! Perhaps this was my punishment. Val, as you know owing to a fondness not always steady on his feet, would have had his guillotine out. Huff-puff well-heeled middle-aged men, with lady-wives, glaring at my suit by Nicolo Ceschi Berrini – not a dinner jacket, you see, which is what you’re supposed to wear. ‘It was reduced,’ I wanted to scream, ‘reduced by 40 per cent to £770. So bog off!’

This is the Poor Little Rich Gay way – we loathe and aspire at once.

The frockage of many ladies was alarming. E.g. hugging dress of prawn-cocktail-pink lav paper on a big-boned woman with bulky knee-high boots for the glorious summer evening. Classic June.

Aunt Lavinia looked in the programme and saw sponsorship by Sainsbury’s mentioned. ‘You see, there’s Sainsbury’s,’ she boomed with her centuries-old voice built to span at least three fields and a wood. ‘Now what have Tesco’s ever done for anybody?’

Tesco’s was certainly excluded from my picnic. I brought proper china and silver, but no candle-sticks. You remember last year Aunt Lavinia withered wretched Robin Smallmeal, my arch enemy, who was situated nearby with candlesticks. Common, she said. No sign of him this year, thank goodness, although I did dread. We had smoked trout with salsa verde, cold sirloin, potato salad with thyme, rocket, tomatoes, passion fruit meringue cakes from Ottolenghi (yes! Ottolenghi!).

When we were packing up in the dark afterwards, I wondered if a napkin that had drifted into the  ha-ha was mine. I decided no but Aunt Lavinia said, ‘It’s a perfect good napkin. I should have it if I were you.’ So I clambered down into the field in Nicolo Ceschi Berrini and almost couldn’t get back up again.

How many Greatnesses have had to be hauled out of the ha-ha at Glyndebourniana over the years?

But we did love the opera. That’s the thing – at Glyndebourniana you are rarely let down. It was Billy Budd. Very strange, just a little too long, but it won’t be so superbly done for a very long time.

The Impact of Humans at Glyndebourne

Monday 31st May 2010

A week ago last Thursday (sorry, so behind) the Multis were in the front row at the auction but it was in a primary school, so low kiddie benches. Chantal Joffe, the artist,whose daughter goes to the school, invited us. All in aid of a poor teacher who had a catastrophic stroke. Women staff swirling and swooping (they’d be offended by ‘ladies’), massive organisation, hand-made banners, running buffet, 75p, all-you-can-eat, samosas etc.  Surprising results. The auctioneer, donating his services, was from Savills, Berkeley Square. Bids were not at first forthcoming, especially for the signed Chelsea shirt or the week in the flat in Athens, but this man conjured money from nothing. £19,000, ultimately. In Hackney, as well. Crashingly snobbish-sounding, I know, but astonishing number of handsome track-suited East End men willing to stump large sums for art works.

Is this the New Britain?

The Blond Multi’s first bid for the Chantal Joffe drawing sliced in a slither before the hammer went down.  What technique! He got it. She was sitting right next to him, in fact. Usually sells at Trenton’s gallery for £40,000. The Multis also bid strategically for the paintings by Jasper Joffe (her bad brother) and Dan Coombs (her partner, hewn from rock) to boost the price. They couldn’t be bothered with the Chapman brothers print which went to a Hackney man in trackies for £3500. They forked about £1000 overall.

After we went down the Lahore Kebab House, London’s cheapest restaurant, with Elsa Hodgeman, the Gertrude Stein de nos jours, and Chantal Joffe  herself who was taken by the way the Blond Multi routed out the only bottle of Bollinger lurking behind some Jacob’s Creek in the frightful Off-licence next door, which is not quite smelling of Alsatian. The Lahore is bring your own, you see.

Subsequently the Photographer Multi has received a tear-making farewell e-mail from a grateful tenant agonising about how to get her presents through his letter-box and hailing him as a wonderful father-figure. Both Multis have had some curious dining experiences. See graph below. At first I thought that tin of golden syrup was actually on the pavement. Last night they were at La Pont de la Tour, their local. Al fresco, but freezing until wrapped in blankets by grateful waiters. The Photographer Multi draws a parallel with our monarch’s tendency to travelling rugs.

I do notice that the very rich like to be wrapped. Barbara Cartland, loathed Robin Smallmeal, arch-enemy number one, head of landfill in this country or whatever, they all love a rug. So if ever you’re stuck for a present for your multi friends…..

Kiddie Chairs at Primary School Auction

Matthew Williamson Dress for Sale at the Auction

The Auction Venue - Sorry it's Sideways

Odd Multi Pavement Dining

The Multis at La Pont Last Night

The Multis' Chilly Dinner Last Night - also Sideways

Saturday 29th May 2010

This morning I put a black-mailing call through to Lord Arrowby. ‘Lord Arrowby,’ I messaged, ‘you’ve been blanking me.’ I’ve twice invited him but pas de response although he has thrillingly summoned me to his summer party.

Would you believe it, he messaged back, in person, his own voice? Not a bit cross, couldn’t have been more soothing and benign. Pressure of work.  Demands of running the country. Not sure if he can escape to come to my dinner on Thursday. Just about to board for Leeds on top-level government business. As a matter of fact, he’s there now at the Marriot if you happen to be passing and want to catch a glimpse…He says the Malmaison’s noisy and badly lit.

He might also nip out to H Nicks in Leeds. You remember he bought that hot padded jacket in brown and blue by Dolce e Gabbana there before Christmas and got the price down even though it wasn’t sale time.

So we had a little flurry of texting and e-mailing. Oh this is rare! Lord A claims to have no banter and nonsense. Such a mystery. Enticing. He sent the graph in the previous entry from his new iPhone.  Announced he had self upgraded to First Class. Then a quieter murmur: Would my dinner be ‘performative’? If so, would be hard for him as a shy one.

Poor Lord Arrowby!  So like Mr Darcy. Always driving for goodness and the truth. Mistrustful of carry-on. I said, Bruce MacBain is coming, the last word in straight-acting. But shy! Lord Arrowby in his high-print shirts and tight trousers whirling champagne about, glowing, glorious host at either his Christmas or his summer party! And what about all those lectures delivered to seething hordes of government officials.

But I know what he means. Glamour and public speaking often the other side of the coin of private and retiring. I’m shy too. My pre- during- and post-dinner-giving nerves have to be seen to be believed. And getting worse.

On the whole I think Lord Arrowby and I are getting more used to each other. Maybe within the next five years we’ll take a mini-break together. Separate rooms, of course, or twin. In the meantime, think of him by himself in the hotel room in Leeds. Giving and giving for our nation.

Saturday 29th May 2010

Yes, Lord Arrowby was at Chelsea yesterday! Highlight for him was the notice-board at the meeting point. ‘Where is my father? He is wearing a panama hat’ etc. And this:

Notice-Board at Chelsea Flower Show Graphed by Lord Arrowby

Thursday 27th May 2010

I shall get to last week’s auction blessed by the Multis and Royston Buster’s dinner soon, but Chelsea’s the hot news. I know you’re gasping.

I’ve attended this premier, prestige flower show for the last thirty years, tickets provided for private members’ day by the Gay Mother. As far as I can remember, it’s always been exactly the same. I’ve never risen to Press Day on the Monday, but Robert Nevil has. Indeed this year, he cut the President’s lunch (pressure of work: remember Poor Little Rich Gays are driven) where Royston Buster was also to be seen. But a friend of Robert Nevil’s sat next to Alan Titchmarsh (is that how you spell it?  Really couldn’t care. It’s obviously a made-up name to give a gardening feel).

I think next year I must aim for Press Day. These private members’ days are anything but. All you have to do is fork £36.75 for RHS membership.

Remember, non Poor Little Rich Gays if you’re reading, entry is never barred. It’s all a matter of willpower.

My party: Frankie-Doreen Gunn, the business dynamo, who got lost by the hyacinth stand, but powered back into the group to focus Aunt Lavinia on shade-loving plants for her garden (she liked a rare silene) , and Pavel Marincek, Anthony Mottram’s ex, now a Poor Little Rich Gay checking stock prices on his iPhone.

If you’ve never seen the main tent at Chelsea, where the nurseries have their stands, it is an amazing sight, just flowers stretching as far as the eye can see. Unique in the world, I should think.

Gardening, as we know, is a challenge for the Poor Little Rich Gay – should you actually do it yourself, fork and chop and heave and get dirty? Whatever you choose, you must certainly self-order your plants, never from a garden centre. At Chelsea have your notebook ready. Robert Nevil is always intensely note-book at Chelsea. Inspect tulips with the head pecking and the voice also a pecking equivalent as you plan hair-splittingly for next year. Ideally order ones given as ‘only available at Chelsea’. Last year Aunt Lavinia had ‘White Touche’ from Bloms.

This year, she kept trying to get out of the tent, rather as if she were one of the beagles she once regularly followed on a hare hunt. She was especially repelled by a horrid brassy gold temple-thing which was the Thailand Botantical Society stand. Frankie-Doreen was hard put to rein her in on the shade-loving plants path.

Outside the tent, you see, are the show gardens, where the garden designers parade their art. Years ago they were a joke. Common, common, common. But now more serious. I’ve little time for garden designers. Except for Tom Stuart Smith, whose own garden I visit on June 20^th.

Prove to me that they are Poor Little Rich Gay. Garden Designers, that is.

The Show Gardens this year were not uninspiring – lovely flowers and trees, restrained, it’s true, no bold bad taste. But why is the ‘hard-landscaping’ always so unspeakable? Even the Stuart Smith contribution, which appeared to have no medal at all, had a frightful ‘bronze pavilion’ louring at one end. As for the so-called ‘best in show’ effort, it was unspeakable. Let the graphs below show all.

Horrid Hard Landscaping in Best in Show Garden

Horrid 'Best in Show' Garden

More Awful 'Best in Show' Garden

Excellent Frockage at Chelsea with Essential Comfortable Shoes

More Frockage at Chelsea

Wednesday 26^th May 2010

I’ve such a backlog. I haven’t covered the Multis in the front row at the  auction last week nor my high, high dinner on Sunday with Royston Buster, as seen on TV, major feature of Chelsea Flower Show coverage, and also massive wheeler-dealer, millions passing through his hands, in another connection altogether.

But all that will have to wait.

The markets are plunging. I can’t bear it. It’s Tobago October 2008 all over again, where I was stationed for the banking crisis, unable to breathe, strangled in fact. Now my official car requires £1500 spent on it. Such sensitive timing. Repairs purely cosmetic. Air con gone and rear bumper broken.

Talk about a deficit. And there’s the Umbrian villa to be paid for – I haven’t told you about that, have I?  I’ve spent the morning re-structuring but how much longer before the IMF or the taxpayer have to bail me out? And the Summer Sales! They will be upon us any minute (make a note, Poor Little Rich Gays all over the world), snapping and snarling at our lovely heels. I’m thinking seriously of slashing my budget to zero.

Underlying, of course, is the Anthony Mottram situation. Not being on speakers is so draining. Pavel Marincek, former young boyfriend of Mottram, has arrived from Prague for the Chelsea Flower Show this afternoon. Well, there’s so much to say re: Poor Little Rich Gays and their relationships, so much you could copy, but let’s not go into it now.

This morning I woke up and remembered: 2^nd June is Robert Nevil’s birthday. Coronation Day, although not the actual one sadly, was when this tiny book-writer was introduced. He was even smaller then, if you can imagine, being only a baby. The thing is on Monday Aunt Lavinia rang up – she’s the one whose voice was honed centuries ago for riding to hounds. Sudden wen for Glyndebourniana. It’s been a sore point. She inherited my uncle Maristow’s membership, you see, but this year, she’s been Glyndebourne-inert. Not going, not at all, hence no invitation! Anyway, we diary away. How about 2^nd June?  Yes, there are tickets to be had. And poor Robert Nevil’s birthday clean forgot. Out of the window. Glyndebourniana scythes all before.

Until this morning, that is, when I remember.