Sunday 21^st February 2010

I haven’t been keeping up. Dramas and misfortunes abound, more than statistics suggest is usual for the third week of February. In fact something has happened which tells me that a particular estrangement should be brought to a prompt end.

You may have noticed that a certain person has been absent from these pages for some months  now.

But, to reverse in time, on Wednesday, as I fore-warned, I went to Ralph Kitto’s, where, owing to a certain bitterness on my part, I have not been known for many years. Now Ralph lives in South Kensington but in the lower stub of his street the fearful red-brick mansion blocks of Earls’ Court begin.

You know what that means, don’t you? Earls’ Court gays might be mistaken for Poor Little Rich Gays, but are actually an entirely different species.

Ralph is a banker. As far as I know he shouts and stamps on the trading floor, but grand lunches with clients in restaurants are spoken of, where presumably he does not shout and stamp. He lives in a one-bedroom ground floor flat –  but the double reception is about sixty feet from back to front and easily twenty across; on the walls, Gilbert and George and Damien Hirst.

Well, what a scene! ‘Help yourself,’ said Ralph, gesturing to a side-board. ‘It’s coq au vin, I believe.’ The food is always BI (that’s bought in or even biked in) from Marks and Spencer. Once he entertained The Friends of the Tate with biked in pizza from the night before.

Rather glorious and bold, don’t you think?  We must all try it.

And the other guests – we were eight – were like a pack of wild horses Ralph was trying to tame for social life. Every ten minutes he would bellow: ‘I will finish this story.’ Then wait for quiet. ‘Now, I haven’t forgotten. You thought my new Damien Hirst was a plasma screen TV. You did, you know.’ I sit next to two young Latin gentlemen who lob what appear to be insults at each other throughout. ‘You’ve called me Alessandro twice!’ ‘I don’t want to go anywhere with you! It’s always Scott’s. And if it’s tea, it’s got to be Harrods. But I can’t be bothered to go to Scott’s.’ At the other end of the table – Sol Weideinwar, multi-millionaire and, as it happens, an old friend of Matt Driver and Laura Malcolm: ‘I’ve lost my voice. I haven’t had sex for eight days.’ ‘That’s strange,’ someone murmurs. ‘Carlos has been in Brazil for two weeks.’ Carlos is the younger partner, swelling magnificently in the gym apparently. He doesn’t work. Later, after a careering detour through the sex lives of various people not present, some old and fat, others young and whippy, it emerges that Sol and Carlos had somehow coincided in New York  – eight days ago, where intimacy took place.

Carlos is very unhappy not working. But what is the point if your partner’s a multi? And will he ever be able to catch up and iron out the unhappiness if that is its source?

We shall see. We will follow this relationship with interest. As you know, where the gays are rich, and some Poor Little Rich Gays are rich, alliances of this nature often feature.

The extraordinary thing was at 10.30, as if a bell had rung, they all got up from the table and bolted out the door. I suppose they have to be fresh for their banks and self-owned businesses the next day.

There is much we can learn from this excellent style of entertaining.

Wednesday 17^th February 2010

That mouse! You know, the one that nearly brought down my dinner on Saturday and threatened to chew up my entire home – well, there have been developments.

Yesterday, at lunch, Val wasn’t best pleased. ‘I’m eating here!’ he boomed when informed of the mouse. Val is very grand, and almost exactly forty-eight times more so when in heroic engagement with the bottle.

There was nothing for it. I telephoned Bruce MacBain, my architect.  What else could I do? What would you have done? It turned out a wise move. Yes, indeed, there have been advances in trap design. ‘A humane trap,’ (imagine the wholesome Scottish accent), ‘you must have a humane trap.’

I thought about a humane trap, I really did. It would mean more shopping and this week I’ve already spent £215 on a new tax disc for my machina, £100 for its new battery and £95 on my Greenflag subscription.

Hell, and so dreary. That’s called going backwards financially. Next week I retrench totally to the Gay Mother’s. Except she wants a camera for her 86th birthday.

In the meantime I manoeuvred my inhumane trap, with its enticing morsel of best Mesan, into a new position in the cupboard under the stairs. With little hope of results, I must say. It’s been weeks of fruitless trapping, as I mentioned before. Yesterday I carried out a few half-hearted inspections. Nothing. But this morning, I regret to inform you, the trap was on its side and the small brown fur ball within, quite crushed.

In fact, it is still there. I haven’t had the nerve to untangle it and pitch it into the dustbin.

To such tasks are even great gays called.

Speaking of which, I am often asked: ‘What do your world-famous friends talk about in private?’ (There is a connection. Do be patient). They mean Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian ceramicist, Harry Rollo, the performance artist and impresario, Ariel, the water sculptor, the authors, Robert Nevil and Rufus Pitman, not to mention….

At dinner the other day with Reggie Cresswell we picked over the immense difficulties of changing the bulbs in some of the more expensive light-fittings that Bruce MacBain (he is architect to us all) has made us have.

Does that give you an idea?

If you haven’t got famous friends, do get some soon.

Now, I’m just off to a reunion dinner with Ralph Kitto. I’ve been rather bitter towards him for about 12 years. Then I decided not to be. He’s invited me to the Cap for his birthday in June.

Do you know it?  Do you know the Cap?

His Damien Hirst fell off the wall and nearly killed his mother. It’s an extraordinary thing. Looks like one of those plain white cupboards in a pharmacist’s back premises.

But it isn’t. It’s a Damien Hirst.

My Mouse - When Alive

Wednesday 16^th February 2010

On Saturday I had an all-male dinner to introduce Trenton, known to you as the seller of art to the Multis and employer of four personal trainers to produce massive, heaving pecs. He arrived by taxi of course in a Prada coat (it is host’s privilege to monitor labels of deposited outerwear).

In my quest for the Platonic ideal of Poor Rich Little Gay food, I went back to Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Do you know it? There was that film, Julia and Julia, all about it. Minutely detailed, almost technical manual by Julia Childs of exactly how to create classic French dishes. Great highlight was when Val, years ago, made Soufflé de sole au sauce mousseline Sabayon, the recipe at least 16 pages long, every stage a cliffhanger – would it curdle, fail to rise, fall apart, its components not all be ready at the same time? The result was a heroic presentation of as many different ways with eggs and butter as possible, enveloping tiny parcels of sole. Outrageously voluptuous and delicious.

Mastering the Art of French Cooking is right up Val’s street. As it happens, he’s just been round, to give my chair a couture fitting for its silk panels – see graph below.

His reincarnation phase continues. No a whiff, magnificently abstemious. Told me he’d been up a step-ladder to change a light-bulb. The first time in years.

But I rather think my guests on Saturday were a little puzzled by the pale correctness and lack of health of my Potage Creme de Cresson with its liaison of eggs and cream.

Trenton said that, sadly, yes, he did know Alexander MacQueen, as well as James Franco, of Spiderman. MacQueen was some time ago. He dined or lunched at the gallery and horrified the other guests by pulling up his shirt to display a blood-stained corset under which lay newly-achieved liposuction. At the other end of the table, Rufus Pitman was mainly talking dirty, it would appear. Someone has paid £2000 to feature as a character in his latest novel. They are to be ‘fisted to death on the dining table’.

Trenton and Ned Czernowski were giggling and conspiratorial. ‘What is it?’ I said. They didn’t like to say. Later I understood. I saw it myself. My mouse scampering across the floor. Really, the nerve! Right in the middle of a state dinner. I’ve been after this creature for weeks. I keep meeting it on the stairs. I’ve had a trap down with best Parmesan, but mouse no like, no show. Trenton said, ‘You’d better watch out. You could be infested.’

Yes, all my couture, my accoutrements, my frockage, bedspreadage, carpetry, not to mention wiring, gnawed to shreds.

Trenton said that sadly he had to go on. He’d come on from in the first place so evidently a very full gay diary. Birthday party of an older gentleman,  penthouse apartment in Drury Lane. ‘I’ve been there,’ I said. And I have too. ‘Six grey cats.’ And so has the noble and divine Lord Arrowby, only the other day, and sat on a sofa where, it was claimed, the day before cum-shots had been filmed.

It’s a small world when you’re at the top.

My Chair Having its Couture Fitting by Val

My Chair Having its Couture Fitting by Val

Monday 15^th February 2010

Last Thursday Ariel launched his new water sculpture. Indescribable. Miraculous. You must go to Sicilian Avenue to see. It will cost you nothing. It was good enough for The Pet Shop Boys, one of the Thompson Twins, Jimmy Cauty, who burnt a million pounds, and Reggie Cresswell.

So it’s good enough for you.

It moves and makes colours and crosses over itself and forms patterns and just when you think you’ve ‘seen’ it, it presents some new aspect. Only installed that afternoon, and passers-by were immediately bound to the spot, amazed.

Then on, in a celebrity removal van or people-carrier, to Belgravia’s heart, territory little-known to me, for the after-party given by a lady-greatness who has sponsored Ariel’s work. In the van, somebody said, ‘There’s a Picasso.’  I begin to thrill. Unprepossessing entrance; in fact it’s a flat, you know, not the whole house, so common parts. Can you imagine? Even mega multi zillionaires must endure. But within, a hidden world, terribly discreet, a kind of gilded vestibule, a bust on a plinth, and private staff, also ladies, not a bit servile. Huge main reception sweep, from back to front of the house, with different areas carved out, contemporary and traditional melded and the overall hue buff. Oh the finish and the immaculation! Such shutters!  Harry Rollo and I inspect the skirting board and wonder how the polished look of the walls is achieved. I spot the Picasso and much else besides. Every item is presumably of museum standard. The hostess is whirling a topic in the middle of it all, in the traditional manner. It is hand-writing, the superiority of over typing. ‘When you send your thank-you letter, you must hand-write. I don’t have a computer.’ I lean against the wall. ‘Mind out for Jean-Paul Sartre,’ she says. There is an important-looking photograph of grim-looking man in mac striding across what appears to be the desert. I can only think of those Monty Python sketches where they are in drag shrieking ‘Jean-Paul Sartre!’ for no good reason. ‘You see that shadow behind him. I wonder who it is,’ the lady says. Suddenly, I’m terribly clever. ‘Simone de Beauvoir,’ I say, hoping to be top of the class. ‘Is it?’ she replies. Later she makes a kind speech in praise of Ariel and his powers of transformation but he, being modest, finds it shy-making. ‘If you go back any further,’ she says, ‘you’ll crush my Matisse.’

Thursday 11th February 2010

Val rang up this morning to tell me that his birthday is the anniversary of the Relief of Makefing. ‘Is this only recently so?’ I said, meaning,  Has one or other date suddenly been moved? I was going to tell you about his marvellous resurrection phase at the moment. I’ve been storing it up for weeks.

But then everything was thrown into confusion. First of all a text from the Photographer Multi, then an e-mail from my friend at Nicole Farhi, then another text from Harry Rollo. Alexander McQueen dead.

Hanged himself. Must have meant it. My immediate neighbour worked with him, was with him from the beginning.

You don’t know what to think or feel, especially with a suicide.

I never wore the clothes – too expensive. But I looked at them in awe. Just hanging on the rail, they were objects of beauty.

He had a house in the neighbour street, which he sold about 15 years ago. There was some scandal about that. You may remember. The Photographer Multi graphed him once and was alarmed by his diffidence. Almost pathological. Could hardly bear to look at the camera. But he had an angry, difficult side.

London Fashion Week next week – that must have been the trigger.

Tuesday 9^th February 2010

Actually it’s The Habit of Art by Alan Bennett, at the National Theatre, London, England. Anything less Poor Little Rich Gay would be hard to imagine, full of middle-classes, in sensible clothes, smugly eating sensible all-in-one baguettes , all the better to hurtle sensibly back to the suburbs directly after, from whence they came.

No Ivy for them.

On the other hand, I encountered by slight acquaintance a well-known actor, who said, ‘I must meet my friend.’ Friend turned out to be Anna Massey. Also present were Esther Rantzen  and Richard Briers.

Esme, herself of the stage and screen, as you may recall, with Laura Malcolm and myself in Normandy last summer, was not best pleased that I had omitted to blog what she insists on calling her 50^th Birthday party which took place about a month ago. I can’t think what came over me. I sat with a man from the Daily Mail,who told me all the dripping gore of Andrew Marr’s activities in the High Court (veiled, I know, but it has to be). Charis Cameron, also in Normandy last year, thank goodness, has got out of that awful flat with the bed bugs and evil cash-only landlady.

Then there were Esme’s presents. She got a whole fur coat …and an astonishing pendant, among other things – see graph below. All unwrapped before the assembled, with superb aplomb, as an entertainment, by Esme.

Now the play.  The main attraction for me was that tickets were hard to come by. ‘Fuck off, Alan Bennett,’ was Lord Arrowby’s verdict. Laura Malcolm was incensed, Esme also. Flabby, rambling effort. Astonishing that it’s sold out for months and raved over by critics. Just can’t be good. About Auden and Britten. ‘Be yourself!’ Auden says to Britten, or something like that.  Which seemed to mean that Britten should display his passion for 14-year-old boys, giving not a damn for the opinion of Aldeburgh neighbours. No particular exploration of that nor of Auden’s unconventional sexual activities. Many other avenues confusingly opened up but not gone down – the virtue of biography but the work of the subjects more important, then music better than words, but what about the minor characters such as rent boys left out of great lives and finally Frances de la Tour offering hymn of praise to the National Theatre itself.

The real purpose was to titillate the quiz-minded and easily shocked culture-vulture middle-class audience. ‘Tristan,’ a woman behind whispered when that music was heard on stage. Earlier: ‘Who’s that actor? He’s awfully well-known.’ Then shrieks of delighted embarrassed laughter if someone said ‘Suck off’ or ‘Dick’. Even so, if they hadn’t been so flattered that it was about two frightfully famous figures with whose work they might have some acquaintance, they’d have been bored to death.

Lord Arrowby and I had great fun sneering but later in the restaurant I made a silly, naughty remark about what he might do with £7.75. Lord A absolutely incandescent. It wasn’t Mr Darcy, it was Mr Knightley. Box Hill all over again. I begin to wonder what it would be like, were we ever to be an item.  I think  I would be always sobbing in a carriage in one of those horrible sprigged muslin frocks with the waist hitched up under the bosom and a basket-work bonnet crammed on the head.

Esme Manning's Exceptional Pendant

Tuesday 8th February 2010

Last Thursday, after Eddie Sedgewick’s art opening in Spitalfields, Robert Nevil fell into a pothole outside Jeanette Winterbum’s house (sorry, we don’t like her). He was hauled out by Joshua Baring and is suffering grazed knees and elbows. Quite how much compensation Winterbum will pay is yet to be decided but it will be substantial surely. I, meanwhile, having endured a small piece of casing tape lodged in my throat all day (shades of Queen Mother fishbone, I thought), on returning home switched from ravenous hunger to nausea in seconds and have been laid up ever since.

I don’t think the two were connected – the fragment of tape and the nausea. In the morning I was parcelling up some fabric for Val who’s doing a chair for me and in biting off a piece by mouth inhaled a shard.

On Friday I lolled semi-conscious in bed. Loved it. And all the time thinking, thinking of the weight loss. Not eating, off my food. Just what I need. Mercifully the condition continued Saturday and Sunday, appetite only back, worst luck, today. End also of massive savings on food bills. But …put on my Miu Miu black suitlette and the trousers fell straight down. I don’t know what Lord Arrowby will think when I meet him at the theatre tonight.

He can be awfully stern,as you know, and leaves for India on Saturday.

Eddie’s show was wonderful. What a mix of people – painters and decorators, art ladies as usual wearing the art,names, the artist’s schoolmaster, and young artists. Projected on the wall was Eddie’s new website, which is a panoply of his life, with spooly-whooly old movies like Warhol (can’t remember the name of the type of film).  Otherwise, all around, was  an ebullient retrospective of dynamic, intricate, elusive art works from the last twenty years. How’s he’s kept it up! Especially outstanding was a print from the 90s of the urban landscape at night, thrilling but terrifying and two new pieces, dated 2010, in which the fiery intriguing image emerges  from thick black impasto. Unusually for a Private View, guests were actually looking at the pictures – and buying them. Red dots abounding.

Eddie Sedgewick's Psychedelic Look for His Retrospective in Spitalfields

Thursday 4^th February 2010

Poor Little Rich Gays are ablaze, even though it’s still early February. On Tuesday, as I told you, Dhiren Dutta launched his book, next week Ariel, the Sculptor of Water, has an Opening, Harry Rollo, as always, is everywhere – Hollywood Bowl, Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden; now it’s giant powder puffs and musical instruments made of stone –  and tonight Eddie Sedgewick launches.

I’ve had to lie down.

Let’s start with Tuesday. I was almost too weak to frock, but, once in Cork Street, in the Nicolo Ceschi Berrini black suitlette (which is bedding down well; doesn’t feel too small provided I remain standing: 30 per cent reduction at The Library) and gorgeous luxury white shirt by Balenciaga (unbelievable: spelt it right first time.50 per cent off at Harrods) AND the Prada Red Early Spring coat (good buy: half price), I was reborn.

First of all, Gillian Ayres with Reggie Cresswell, the Ghanaian Ceramicist, and Prince Dmitri Hersov. Do you know her? Painter. 80. Bright and bold. Lot of vigour in the brushwork. Not everybody’s tea’s cup. Seems to have whirled out about a million paintings since Christmas. Invigorating all round. The Prince wants to buy, but too late. Red dots appearing from nowhere by the second. £65,000 a throw. The audience mostly elderly. Don’t get out of the way.

Then on, with Reggie, to the book party. There is the thrill of arriving, privately as it were, with a world figure. People were looking. Dhiren has written a novel about a girl who, rising from the slums of Calcutta, sets out to tidy up India (as we know, it needs it. I’ve never been) but comes to rest an Anglican nun at Simla with her own TV show. I’ve started it. It’s fab. You must have it.

Oh the fabrics. At the party, I mean. Indians, you see. Dhiren himself was balancing on his shoulders with superb skill 10 metres of finest pashmina said to have cost a billion rupees. Some princes (not our Prince, though) were in floor-length Hyderabad coats. That’s what I call them. Dear little Arjun Bose, our favourite pocket Indian (does this sound racist?), was in a dear, little Indian print shirt of grey and blue. And, in the corner, Reeta Chakrabarti, of TV!

Then, the White European Ladies – Susan Goodyear, the Booker Winner, with her private bottle of champagne, speaking from deep within the rules of the Sunday Times Short Story competition of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s intervention therein and encompassing in the process a number of early Archbishops. Blanche Spain, possessed of the most esoteric vocabulary of any woman in England, was regnant in Issey Mikaye. ‘Think of the tiny-ness of the iron that could travel this goffering,’ she was saying. Do you know, ‘goffering’? I do. Her brilliant wing brushed the company with diamonds. She asked me about my shampoo.

Great glory. I work through to Robert Nevil!  Back from a month at Calcutta. Not shadow of former, wrecked, hacking, shrunk, as I had feared….Really looked quite well.  Sebastian Archer, partner of RN, also, after two months’ unexplained absence in New York, glowing – liposuction? Deep-peel treatment? He had someone awfully famous to sing at his 50th birthday party in New York, you know. Sister of a Rufus, I think.

Joshua Baring, so young but so full of inside information, was in an outstanding Burberry jacket acquired at an exclusive ‘family’ sale for £60, down from £900. Here is another kind of sale we didn’t know about. You remember a few weeks ago the ‘trunk sale’ burst into our lives, as a notion at least.

Over all presided the publisher, Helmut Mutti, beaming expectantly as if an after-lights-out dorm feast were about to get out of hand.

Tuesday 2^nd February 2010

My architect, Bruce MacBain, finally managed to lure Lloyd Bunster, the personal trainer, to dinner on Saturday. He is so rare and elusive that, even once he has arrived, it is still touch and go whether he is actually there, if you get my drift. Caution is advised. Lloyd spends 40 hours a week in the gym. You can imagine the temptation. But advances are not welcome from all but the select few and certainly not from slackers who’ve cut corners on the bench press. But as it happened he was rather sleepy from having been in bed with a man all night and most of the day. He said to Bruce with strange certainty: ‘This is my fifth time at your place,’ which showed a different side. Why was he counting? How many more times does he hope for before death?

I was thinking the other day: considering Poor Little Rich Gay diarising challenges, there are some even close friends I might only see another twenty or thirty times, depending of course on how many more years….

Speaking of gyms, you must all be dying to know how my new body is getting along. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before. Well, I don’t think the Multis’ Stilton rind did me any good. I had to finish it up, of course, for reasons of economy. Last week I managed to go to the gym three times in one week for the first time in nine months of membership (clubs: The Garrick, Fitness First), if going the third time exactly one week after the first counts. That was last night.

Today, I am wrecked beyond belief. Not being on speakers with a certain person (have you guessed? Our steady bickering of 40 years suddenly has become unsteady) doesn’t help. Such a strain to keep it up. I think I had aimed to be re-thought and re-made in body for Italy last summer. For some bathing opportunity at any rate. Now it’ll have to wait for Italy next summer.

I must tell you about my visit to Val. It is a miracle. I think he might resurrect, sipping  merely at a glass of wine.  But now I am required to struggle into frockage. Private View for Gillian Ayres with Reggie Cresswell (was he at Chris Ofili last week?  Must have been) and Prince Dmitri Hersov, then on to book launch of Dhiren Dutta, friend of dear, precious Robert Nevil, who has finally been returned half-dead from Calcutta but may not be well enough to attend.

I feel like the first Lady Curzon, who was an invalid. When Vicerene of India she would be heaved from her bed, frocked up, inserted into a carriage, driven to the banquet, carried to her place where she managed a teaspoon of brandy, then dragged home again.

So brave. She did not live long.

Saturday 30^th January 2010

I gain Tate Britain at 8.25 on Thursday morning. No reply to e-mails of the day before to the Tate’s heart from me and from the Photographer Multi. Will I be admitted? I forge up the steps. A small figure is standing at the entrance: ‘Are you here for the Ofili breakfast? This way, please.’ Half-way down the massive and thrillingly, privately empty, corridor that runs the length of the museum I encounter a young man with a clipboard. ‘Oh, yes, Adrian Edge is expected. Your friends are waiting for you.’

The Multis have paved the way with gold.

I had envisaged a crowd or at least a gang, but they are the only people there, with a plate of sliced-up out-of-season fruit and an attendant in charge of a coffee thermos. In the end we are only about ten in the party, terribly exclusive, one of them, so the Blond Multi says, Lord Hollick who is a Multi Multi but nothing much to look at.

Why bother? So dreary.

Curator does her best as well as several times thanking us for our support – rather blush-making to the free-loader. It is a well-paced tour and, glory of glories, not too long. The main point of coming was to get a better grasp of the art.

It was! I know you won’t believe it.

We did see more. We saw the dignified representation of grief in ‘No Woman, No Cry’ and that each of the black woman’s tears contained a tiny picture of Stephen Lawrence, who, as you know, was murdered in a racist attack in London in 1993. We saw the black ‘Holy Virgin Mary’ disturbingly surrounded by beautifully-placed pornographic images cut out of magazines. It won’t do to call these paintings merely decorative. But I’m not convinced.  The crude, cartoonish shapes are the drawback. The figures now and again manage to be expressive despite rather than because of this. In the whole exhibition there was only one human form represented with the kind of fluidity of line that might be powerful and that was the man hanged, in one of the all-blue pictures. The more we found out about Ofili the more incidental and unurgent the work seemed.  In the 1990s he happened to have a studio in King’s Cross. He was surrounded by prostitutes and their debris. Hence the idea bringing gruesome sexual images into the Black Madonna painting. Now he has moved to Trinidad. The murder rate is high there. His work has become more menacing.

These more recent paintings we could not be reconciled to at all. Brian Sewell is right: Walt Disney.