Tuesday 1^st December 2009

A delightful but astonishingly simple cott near Battle in Sussex formed the backdrop last weekend  for an onslaught of queenage and queenaria as never seen before.

I was with Angus Willis and Fergus Strachan. You remember them: Angus is the internationally-known food writer, food stylist and photographer who waged the tiramisu war with Donatella in Tuscany in the summer (but Angus has put Donatella’s recipe for Penne con carne alla salvia in Australian Vogue, out now), Fergus the brilliant lawyer, loves the Lib Dems, botox, political philosophy, work-outs and hair products.

On the way down there was a block on the motorway. How dare people have accidents! Angus and Fergus were stopped ten metres after a slip-road so they boldly reversed the Mercedes, gesturing other traffic out of the way, and surged forth, triumphantly circumventing the jam.

We were in the cott, but there is no shortage of other properties in the neighbourhood being restored by Angus Willis – the Tudor house in Hastings, for instance, where builders have been working, with nail files and tweezers as it were, for the last three years at least.

On the first evening, Fergus styled the telly. I mean he adjusted the contrast and colour. He wanted a very slightly bleached-out look. We watched ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ (Angus’s favourite prog) and then ‘The Duchess’, with Kiera Knightley, which I liked more than the last time I saw it. Her peculiar marital arrangements had Poor Little Rich Gay overtones. While viewing, Angus was cooking and styling onto huge white soup plates a German beef goulash with celeriac and thyme mash – delicious.

One of the rooms in the cott is impenetrable because of Angus’s stock. He’s going to open a shop in Hastings. It will sell complete sets of china – Beryl ware amongst others –  also huge pieces of furniture.

The next day, Angus and I hurl out in the Mercedes: so much to do and see. We visit another vast collection of stock at a secret location: huge chests out of the offices of yesteryear, hospital cupboards from the Hattie Jacques era and so on. You do rather think, What on earth….? but Angus is genius. He can make the debris of a previous age blossom and flourish again.

Then on into Hastings. When I first knew this sea-side town twenty years ago it was a hell-hole and dump. But now, grandeur is setting in. Still, at a charity shop, Angus buys a glass ashtray for 10p, surely the only item left in the country at this price. His other purchase is a moulded glass school water jug, in some way exceptional. I seize a more elaborate glass dish and Angus points out that there are others I might have. I get three:total, £2.25. I suffer a lunge of guilt at the poverty of my serving dishes generally. I’ve let this whole area slip. Maybe with the sales coming up…

In a real old-fashioned junk shop, we come across photograph albums – oh the sadness! Majorie and Wilf on Dartmoor in 1957, barely distinguishable in the tiny Kodak snaps, so carefully pasted in and labelled. But Angus buys; Majorie and Wilf and Mr and Mrs Barnes can be turned onto cards for some purpose or other. To tell the truth I haven’t quite grasped. But they’ll have their time again.

My Charity Shop Glass Dish Selected by Angus Willis

Thursday 26th November 2009

Last Saturday: Anthony Mottram gains Gatwick from Prague. He was at Prep with Marcus. Where there were all kinds of goings-on. We continue by train to Brighton.

Marcus, as you know, is England’s leading clock mender.

Brighton, if you are in US or foreign, is a seaside town 50 miles from London: population, 50% retired actresses, 50% gay men and lesbians.

Also, if you are in US or foreign, you won’t have a clue what a Prep is.

Strolling in lashing seaside wind and rain, before Marcus’s party, who should we run into but Eddie Sedgewick, the artist and Brighton resident, looking radiant – fresh, blond, blue-eyed, tanned, modern front slick of hair, 55, 6’2” – just been to H& M to change a black hooded top from size SmallXX to size SmallX. Said the only other customers were teenagers. We retreat to the Mock Turtle, a repro old-fashioned tea shop for a really good cup. Mottram announces, patting large stomach, that his Prague doctors have declared him under weight. How much? I say, meaning Did you bribe? Anyway he is under medical orders to have a cream tea and so apparently are we. We share a table and by great good fortune our conversation is classic Poor Little Rich Gay insider-information and name-dropping, therefore perfect to be overheard. Eddie is very intimate with an MP. ‘He’s flying back this evening,’ he says. We pick over MPs expenses, all absolutely from the horse’s mouth, the strangers at the table riveted. We move on to Tobago, where we have all been more than once, although it is not really a PLRG destination. But Eddie had drinks there with Jenny Agutter.

Now, we were overnight in Brighton for convenience so that meant a hotel. Hotel, hotel, Hotel du Vin in fact. Full of obstacles and jutting-out edges.  Coming in from the street, you are bang, slap against a pillar and then you’ve got to duck under the stairs. I barked my shin on the protruding bed-frame and my thigh on the slab of glass supporting the basin in the bathroom. It’s funny because I once really whacked my shin badly on a garden seat at the Villa Igiea in Palermo (beautiful hotel, by the way, but now part of a chain, I hear). Maybe this is how I will meet my end, done in by a hotel.

But Marcus Cargill’s party! We battle through the weather in a taxi to a very smart part of Brighton. Champagne, canapés, staff, Prince Dmitri Hersov, friends of the Smallmeal/Limpneys, Bruce MacBain. Talking to Marcus’s childhood friend, we fall into chronic envy of the Cargill res. Everything of the very best, the antiques, the paintings, the rugs. Being England’s leading clock mender, of course, the clocks, but also precision engineering applied to the hanging of pictures, the finish, the placing. Marcus is pure Poor Little Rich Gay when it comes to the home. In the last twenty years he has renovated six. He’s there, with his engineering degree, his instruments, grooming the builders in the Poor Little Rich Gay direction. And the results are superb, always. I can hardly bear the thought of my own crumby home.

Up and down the stairs was crawling a small boy of seven in a dress. Apparently he had been insistent. All day he had been saying, ‘I must wear a dress for Marcus’s party’.  Do you know, otherwise, it was almost normal, not Poor Little Rich Gay at all – friendly Brighton gays, one the world expert on where to get the cheapest leccy, family, children, neighbours, Marcus’s welcoming, totally non-snob partner, simple home-made canapés (but served on antique Delft plates, it is true), extraordinary lack of arse and warp. ‘Are you going to make a speech?’ Mottram asked. ‘Oh, no, I’m not grand, like you,’ Marcus replied.

Tuesday 24^th November 2009

The Multis waited in that queue to the bitter end. They really did.  They even suffered a blonde queue-barging bitch. Do gaze at the graphs below.  But in, they at once re-grouped, commanded the services of an assistant for an hour and exited in triumph before a queue which had multiplied ten-fold in the meantime – probably because they had choked up the shop.

This was either before or after they went to a party given by a billionaire who collects conceptual art and had one maid, two boy staff, 4000 square metres newly done and a spectacularly consistent display of banker guests.

Before queuing, they had inspected a possible restaurant for Saturday night dinner. But it was too cosy and intimate. They found another and selected a table. Whether it had to be moved, re-configured or the entire restaurant re-built, I’m not sure. One time at La Pont de la Tour we were half an hour trying all the tables, having them re-laid, re-positioned etc. Ran through La  Pont’s entire stock of linen, glass and cutlery, I should think – just the three of us.

On Sunday morning, the Multis went to an Edward Hopper exhibition. They could have gone the day before but there was a queue – queues everywhere! The Photographer Multi comments that it might seem odd to queue for a shop but not a museum – couldn’t buy the Hoppers, though.

I do agree – why on earth don’t they put the value on the labels in museums? That would be a start, wouldn’t it?

Blonde queue-barging Bitch

The Blond Multi Straining at the Leash in Queue for Moncler, Milan - Note the Classic Weekend Wear

The Blond Multi's Hoard from Moncler, Milan

Bedtime at the Grand et Milan

The Multis' Breakfast Bill, Milan

The Multis Board for London

Saturday 21st November 2009

The Multis are in a queue! The Blond Multi wants a shiny puffer jacket – by Moncler. Have you heard of it?  How much, I wonder?

Queue outside jacket shop joined by the Multis

Puffer desired by the Blond Multi

Friday 20th November 2009

A text this morning: ‘We are now in Grand Hotel di Milano. Got “last minute rate” for junior suite of 490 euro from 850’.

Oh no! Oh no! What had happened to the Hotel Principe di Savoia?  Not the Gritti Palace all over again! You know, when the Multis went some years ago to Venice for Chantal Joffe’s show. Awful little room for 700 euros a night. Couldn’t even enter it. They launched manoeuvres and got a suite knocked down from 1400 euros to 1200 for their weekend stay.

Was the Principe di Savoia  now a blackened, silent ruin, torched by the Multis as they retreated ? Why, oh why had they moved?

It was some while before the answer came through. I was waiting with baited. At last an e-mail: room tiny even for 300 euros and hot. Loud bar music, engine sound from road, might as well be right on a runway, awful walk there like walking along the M4, bathroom door directly off room , no corridor and no double sink.

Only trouble with new hotel is that breakfast is not included, despite the Blond Multi applying advanced techniques.

It is important that the Poor Little Rich Gay holiday of whatever kind has this deal-brokering, entrepreneurial aspect. We are not as others. We do not accept the prices as given. We do not accept anything as given.

More Angus Willis-style styling in Milan

Restaurant loved by Tyler Brule

Exceptional Shoes Seen in Milan

Comfy at Last - the Multis' Replacement Milan Hotel

Friday 20th November 2009

I can’t be blogging night and day. Tomorrow I go to Brighton for Marcus Cargill’s 50th. Mottram is coming over. They were at prep together, you know.

That Royal College of Art Opening was high. Huge surprise. Canapes surging in waves – again; champagne. Priscilla Carluccio (friend of Angus Willis, known to me) seen in distance in heavy quilted red and white striped coat to the floor. Older art women on the whole in impossible, tormented frockage. Laura Malcolm, herself in pink satin 6 inch heels (couldn’t get down stairs), much taken with kilt, violently clashing loud check jacket, black tights, silk flowers, scarves and GLASSES ensemble – the glasses very radical throughout. We spoke to Jasper Joffe, Chantal’s sister. You remember he was all over the papers some months ago, selling all his possessions because his girlfriend had left him.  He is plainly thoroughly bad and hugely alluring. Had a good painting on show – do buy him. The Multis’ piece by Chantal was prominently displayed and labelled. In their apartment there is a gap where it should be but no label with photograph of the work and sign saying ‘ON LOAN’.  A man approached and said, ‘I’m the Rector of the College. Who are you?’ I was terrified. Was it a challenge? We’ve been found out, I was thinking, We’re not the Multis. We’ll be escorted from the premises. But actually he said, ‘I was at school with you. You look just the same.’

Rather thrilling! Not true of course. I have gipsy blood; the look is strong but fading, I can tell you. Last week in that Chinese restaurant the photographer Multi’s graphs show me with a huge hole in my hair – thinning on top. Who’d have thought it.

Still, each stage is interesting in its way – and new, of course.

Kelm, Laura’s son, on his phone throughout, brewing up to go to Soho.

We roared back to Laura’s Bruce MacBain-designed living space for a simple three-course supper. Matt Driver had been working at home in a burglar outfit – track-suit bottoms and intermittent woolly hat. He showed me his new Media Room with what he called ‘mega, top, top TV’ and surround-sound. Not very classy. Not at all gay. He said the vital thing is to be a ‘C Suite Executive’. I thought I’d grasped it at the time, but now I’m not so sure.  I think it’s that you’ve got to have something beginning with ‘C’ in your job title, such ‘Chief’ or ‘Chairman’. I wonder about ‘Classroom Teacher’. Mottram is self-appointed ‘Chairman’ of Mottram Corp. I think ‘Trustee’ is quite good. I am a Trustee – but not of the Tate Gallery, unfort.

Thursday 19th November 2009

There’s nothing for it. I’ve been gardening. It’s been a completely non Poor Little Rich Gay afternoon. I do it myself. Unlike Simon Limpney who got top designer, Sean Swallow, in to do Massivebury and, oh the scenes!  Swallow winning hands down of course, from what I heard.

Now I’m behind and there’s mud in the house and my nerves are a little bit frayed. I’m meeting Laura Malcolm and her son, Kelm, at the Royal College of Art at 6.30 and it’s already nearly 5. We’re representing the Multis. Yes, we are! At a retrospective featuring Chantal Joffe among others. The Multis, you see, boarded this morning for Milan where  Chantal has a solo show, although the Ms have already bought up all the work, as far as I can see. They were pleased with the top-notch range of wine,ski and CEO guides on offer at City Airport (but I’ve looked at the photograph more carefully, there’s Delia lurking in the corner!) but less satisfied on board: business class crammed, while cattle nearly empty. They are staying at the Hotel Principe di Savoia. No doubt we will hear more.  They immediately encountered some Angus Willis-type styling at luncheon in Milan though.

So things look promising.

I went to Milan once – no like.The Gay Mother always pronounces it ‘Mill -an’ – stress on the first syllable.

But I’m not a Multi.

Poor Mottram (by the way, I forgot to mention that I have agreed to go to Prague for New Year: under strict orders from Mottram not to be beastly to Vladimir from the Ukraine), in the meantime, has pitched up in Moscow on ‘business’ where he is reduced to dining at KFC. Do you know it? Apparently only affordable outlet without queues.

I worry about Mottram.  ‘Consultancy’ is not flourishing at the moment, in the central of Europe. And he’s got two to pay for.  I was thinking, also because I had dinner last night at Joe Allen’s with Mrs Solomon Bung who is ‘over’ from California and we were having a rather delicious little talk about legacies (new money’s all right, but it mustn’t be brassy): so I was thinking: what would happen to a Poor Little Rich Gay if he lost all his money? But it’s never been known. Then I recalled. What about Val?  Valiantly hurling his last few pounds into the off-licence till.  But still a Poor Little Rich Gay. On cue, a text comes through from him. He’s in Liverpool, running up cossies for a panto, and so re-born or back in the money at least.

So – there we are!  The latest on the Poor Little Rich Gays

Books liked by the Multis on Sale at City Airport - sorry about angle

Angus Willis-type styling enjoyed by the Multis in Milan this morning

Tuesday 17^th November 2009

‘Pick up the phone!’ Simon Limpney, of Massivebury, huge in the cat world, shrieked in about Phase Two of terminating me. Perhaps I was being just a little bit tiresome, complaining of lack of engagements – but a sacking offence?  How would he have put up with Her Late Majesty Princess Diana maundering on?  Do you remember the Squidgygate Tapes? Now, a kind reader has taken a similar line re: my last entry on my blank Saturday: don’t be so passive. Invite, be a mover and a shaker.

As it happens I bore my blank Saturday with calm and fortitude.  And, believe me, I can diarise with the best of them. What’s more I have another blank Saturday forthcoming, on December 5^th.  Will I fill it? Or will I weakly succumb? We’ll have to wait and see.

Yes, I am a mover and a shaker. But, just as Delia (yes, I do mean, Smith. You remember: huge feud with Angus Willis. We have plans afoot to wreck her Christmas book) as she trails through her dreary Norfolk existence can have little sense of being the legendary food writer she is proclaimed to be on a poster in John Lewis announcing a forthcoming book-signing, so I might periodically lose touch with the knowledge borne by others that I am a kingpin, style icon and altogether astonishing personality.

But moments of weakness, you know, are a virtue. They must be prized and woven into the life of any Poor Little Rich Gay. Without them, we would be hard and glazed like the Earls’ Court gays who visit the dentist often for teeth bleaching which produces an unfailing, penetrating radiant smile. The Earls’ Court gays are rich, their apartments are done, they are often Australian or otherwise foreign, but that’s all in the past; they have gorgeous boyfriends who may or may not be kept, flats on the French Riviera; they have a good time in the same determined focused way that they progress up the career ladder in marketing, PR or ‘finance’. They don’t want too much information getting in their way. They know what they like and what they don’t. They want to belong,  they would hate to be thought camp or silly although a certain amount of controlled wildness is permitted.  Confidence as a characteristic rather than a mood they prize greatly.  They are capable of describing themselves as confident.  They have clear ideas as to what is an acceptable level of income. Their steely gaze blanks a great deal out including nature.

Perhaps that was the trouble with the Smallmeal/Limpneys. In the end they were not true Poor Little Rich Gays. Although there was that  time at E&O (it’s a restaurant: pacific rim?) when the waitress poured the tea in an arch, fancified way from a great height but the result was the sound of pissing and Limpney and I were  unable to speak for ten minutes. It was beyond laughter: it was more of a seizure.

But later there were the cats. There’d be a call: one of them was in the coal cellar. Limpney’s jaw would harden. ‘I’ve got to get back to Massivebury at once.’  Smallmeal went the same way. When I first knew him, in the late 90s, it was understood that he was one of those brilliant businessmen who had achieved a totally clear desk – delegate, delegate. He would diarise night and day. We were quite a little gang, Robert Nevil, Sebastian Archer, the Multis and Smallmeal.  Then his mega landfill company was bought up by another mega landfill company and he became an employee as well as the head of landfill (or whatever) in this country. After that, it all started up, the Earls’ Court mode, the regimented focused life, the exclusion of weakness, the diary organised around Limpney’s cat shows, and so forth.

Do be at China B, John Lewis, Oxford Street and boo!

Sunday 15^th November 2009

Yesterday I had a blank Saturday. I wasn’t used. When the TV or Radio phone up they say: ‘We want to use you.’ Quite often they phone back later and say, ‘We’re not using you.’ I have transferred the expression to social life. I was supposed to be dining with Arjan Bose and Robert Nevil in Frankie-Doreen Gunn’s basement flat where Arjan is living. But the  exquisite young man had made a mistake with his rota – he works in flowers, the hours are odd. Robert Nevil was meant to have told me but, whirled round in pre-publication flurry over the Pony Club book, he forgot. It only came out by chance last week when we were at the Ashmoleum Opening. What’s more, he had already made other arrangements; what’s furthermore, it emerged yesterday, Arjan was after all free and was joining in the other arrangement.

According to Robert Nevil this is what happens if you get involved with the young and decorative – which is what we like to do.

So there it is – a blank Saturday. The worst! Nothing for it but to read some fabulously boring documents to do with my mine. Do you remember about my mine ?  Not working yet. Will it ever be? Some weeks ago, you might also remember, I wrote about the absolute centrality of the diary to Poor Little Rich Gay life. You must have a diary and you must fill it. And Saturdays are the most precious of all, ardently to be filled, only given as the rarest and most special gift.  It was somehow the beginning of the end of my friendship with Simon Limpney when I confined in him that I am sometimes unused on a Saturday. He took it very seriously; he thought there must be something dreadfully wrong – with me, apparently.

Now is the prime time of year for the Diary. Run up to Christmas, you know. If you’re not filling up, you’d better do something about it. Smallmeal, I hear, via the Multis is already saying, ‘We’re looking at mid-January at the earliest.’ You need to be able to say, ‘December! You must be mad. The diary’s completely packed.’  Others, so the photographer Multi tells me (and they shall be nameless), have also got pre-Christmas arse and grandeur well underway, with the added touch, always worth including, of no explanation.

When refusing an invitation, just say, ‘Sorry, not free.’

Another more extreme approach was modelled by Simon Limpney. Why not try it? Phone up your friends with the specific purpose of telling them how little you are free. ‘The earliest I can see you is 16th December,’ was what I heard when I picked up the phone at the end of  October some years ago.

Above all, never crack, never show the slightest rufflement, never say, ‘But that’s two months’ away. Let’s do it sooner.’  That’s how I got wrong with the Smallmeal/Limpneys. Somehow, I’m not sure how, I crossed the Massivebury diary. ‘We have so many friends, so many people to Massivebury,’ Simon Limpney found it necessary to say to me as he launched Stage One of my termination process, ‘I’ll only be able to see you once a month at the most.’ This was after I’d know him for ten years, during which time, I now realise, Massivebury, metaphorically speaking, had got grander and grander.

No, you must never challenge the diary. Poor Little Rich Gays are easily frightened. If we lose control of the diary, what then? Besides, if you show even the tiniest glint of weakness, you might be showing us too much of ourselves.

Thursday 12^th November 2009

Did I mention?  Robert Nevil has written a book. It’s not the first time. On the whole Poor Little Rich Gays would rather write a book than read one. And some not even that: the Photographer Multi once went to graph Hilary Mantel (writer, you must have heard of). He said, ‘I’ve never read a book so I can’t imagine why anyone would want to write one.’ She was thrilled. I mean she really was.

Foolishly I’ve been pretending not to know what the Robert Nevil volume is about. It’s an utterly thrilling historie de le club Pony, or A History of the Pony Club, sub-titled ‘Gee up!’ I’ve not read it yet, but take it from me Robert Nevil can enliven any subject. It will be superb. His first book was un-put downers, a biog of an obscure woman in Putney who held her guests to ransom all over Christmas with a bread knife – and was mystified that they didn’t want to come the following year. That had a devoted cult following. This new one will be huge. Already it has received a special mention from a very top bishop giving a sermon, in the presence of Royalty, on ‘How Useful Outdoor Activities Bring You into the Arms of Jesus’.

It’s flying out of the shops. Robert Nevil could be a multi yet. I wonder what he will have – car with driver?  seccies in an outer office? Racehorses? He could mount an aggressive takeover bid for Massivebury and drive out Smallmeal and Limpney – or reduce them to a minority shareholding. ‘Just the attic for you, Smallmeal!’

But the launch party – simple venue, back of bookshop with ordinary members of the public milling at the front. No rhythmic thrust of canapés forging out, as per Con Party on Monday. Publishing. Reduced. Nevertheless Poor Little Rich Gays must be there – and are. The lure of books  irresistible, even to non-readers – it’s importance you see, couldn’t possibly miss it. Books are important.

What a whirl! So many people known to me, not all with names though. Ghastly blank with Helmut Mutti (very important editor).  Otherwise it was one sentence per person approx: Eddie Sedgewick: ‘Got to get back to Brighton – dogs!’ Miss Lallian Lark, of the Titlark Tours: ‘We used to live opposite’ (Yes, where the avo bathroom was). Lady Parvula de Panzoust: ‘I’ve been to Uniqlo.’ Leon de Veer and Miles Kent (you won’t remember: Anthony Mottram went down with Swine at their home, The Vases, in July) ‘How’s Lady de Veer?’  Ambrose Cecil (music master and friend at Robert Nevil and Eddie Sedgewick’s school): ‘We’re only two bus stops apart.’ Rick Mather: ‘Loved your Ashmoleon extension’.  Mary Slubb (wrote bestseller on how the leccy came to her street): ‘Hello, how are you?’ Kit Reading (author of The Slut’s Cookbook): smile, smile.

Robert Nevil made a speechlette, saying  Thank God I cut out the rude bits about the C of E (in view of bishop going wild for his book). But where was Sebastian Archer, his itinerant partner? Well, yes, wandered off to New York. Boarded that morning apparently. Modern gay relationships! Instead Robert’s friends from the sub-continent in abundance. Arjun Bose (was at my birthday, in miraculous shirt) most affectionate, huggy, huggy, but will it last? Sadly Abdul Mohammed Habibi busy running the Double Diner in Whitehaven, couldn’t come.

It was the best kind of party, with all your closest friends and many others you know and a glow coming centrally from Robert Nevil who is adored. I don’t mean to mock. You see everyone for a flash, a spark flies, something might happen. It is life.

The bookshop said it was their best launch ever – and last week, they had Giles Brandreth!

Afterwards the Multis, Laura Malcolm, Matt Driver, Frankie-Doreen Gunn (in black satin; the only one who could be said to be truly frocked. Her husband, Giles Ullerston, at woodwork class), Peter Acharya, Ned Czernowski and Bruce MacBain (my architect; always have him at hand, in case I need a building running up) went to the Royal China. But we somehow got into the wrong branch. It was the Royal China Club, in Baker Street, smoked glass, big fish tank, smoke-coloured carpet, staff Chinese version of Bond Girls. Faintly sinister, Sixties throw-back, whiff of Monaco. Who should be at the next table but SIR PHILIP GREEN!

That says it all.

I sit next to Matt Driver, about to board for Germany to meet with Adidas at the highest level in forest clearing somewhere. He said it’s a very macho company, they’re all massive muscle-men who work out at lunchtime. Sounds quite gay.

We go dutch and have cheaper wine. The Multis are terribly excited. £60 a head.