Thursday 10th October 2013

I’ve actually been very quiet since the weekend dinners although this eve I go to the opening of a Tower Block, on behalf of Dainty Lady TV, and then the Diana film, privately.

Laura Malcolm gave a large heterosexual dinner. O’Halloran Ta´óesch´Marsh came in from the Daily Mail. We throbbed with expectation in view of the Miliband Crisis. Paul Dacre, he said, refuses to leave his house. He’s awfully shy. Also, I suspect can’t be arsed. The Daily Mail is the Daily Mail and what can we do about it? Readers of the Daily Mail are readers of the Daily Mail. Clearly now there will be no apology although it was quite wrong to put a headline saying that Milly’s father ‘hated Britain’ just because he was a Marxist.

Otherwise O’Halloran was rather subdued, tactically I’m sure. But Charis Cameron, formerly married to a massively huge pap, now with O’Halloran, had a fabulous run on Foxy Knoxy. Guilty. Conversation sparkled at the table. Such happiness.

The next night, I went to Palm Beach. Well, the Bayswater Road actually, where Lansdowne Reindorp and Rocky Masters have taken back their palatial apartment after a prolonged spell in New York and Palm Beach. Lansdowne’s taken a massive City job and Rocky’s commuting from Palm Beach where he runs a gracious business. In London they give an international feel. There was a cute couple over from Palm Springs, the younger of whom had a Fifties quiff. They’d all run into the Multis at the Battersea Decorative Arts Fair that morning.

Lansdowne sits at the head of the table and brings people in, which you rarely see done these days. Somehow I was telling them all about Val and his unsteadiness on my birthday which prevented him getting further than his front door as he tried to board for my birthday outing. ‘He should lose the ‘Val’,’ I heard one of the New York dames growl at the other end of the table. But how could Val not be Val?

Later somebody was complaining that in New York people accept invitations to dinner then don’t turn up if a great Opening or Gala beckons. ‘They won’t know anyone at those things,’ Rocky said. ‘Why bother?’ Oh dear! What’s happening to Poor Little Rich Gays!

Otherwise Lansdowne said he and Rocky had twice been falsely accused. When they first moved into the present Bayswater Road apartment, the previous owner kept phoning up about some shoes she’d left behind. They looked and looked but they weren’t there. Eventually she said, ‘I know you’re wearing them.’ Outrageous. Then Lansdowne’s own mother, who very unfortunately is a ferocious Republican in Australia, bought a Prada handbag in London and left it with Lansdowne for later shipping. ‘Of course you’ll use it,’ she said. ‘I know you will.’ Then the cute young man with the quiff said that his mother asked where he and his boyfriend slept when they visited another gay couple in Miami. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘Well, do you sleep with them?’

She assumed that all Gays automatically orgy if overnighting with each other.

Tuesday 8th October 2013

Val, sadly, was unable to board owing to unsteadiness. He did try. He got as far as his front door.

So Robert Nevil, biographer of the Pony Club, and myself were the party for the Multis’ new Kent demesne, only in June, when acquired, the dirtiest house ever known. It’s got 30 acres.

We drew up in my Official car with Xenon driving lights. The transformation! Armies of woodmen in all directions setting fire to things. All the undergrowth around the house cleared, scrub chopped down so you can see the view which is splendid. The house cleaned by teams of Brazilian ladies brought down from London, prior to the full renovation which will take at least a year.

The Multis looked wonderfully fresh and rested. Lady Carmichael, the Blond Multi’s mother, came over from her nearby home bought by that living phenomenon, Pergola Trehair, the Blond Multi’s sister (one of them). Pergola recently described her normal day: up at 6, sheets off the bed, into machine, children’s breakfast, children to school, back home, plan menus, up to London, go to Tiffany’s, collect pearl necklace, back home in time to do Waitrose shopping before collecting youngest dau from school at 3.20. Then complex web of conveying various children from school to clubs etc, tea/dinner in shifts, finally put clean sheets back on bed and get into it.

On this particular day, she’d been up at 6 to bake a gingerbread for my birthday with lemon icing. Superb.

Then Viole arrived, the Blond Multi’s other sister who does artworks including a stone handbag with ‘Divorce’ chiselled in its side.

So we were a simple party for the excellent pub lunch after champagne and nibbles in the farmhouse.

Maybe Poor Little Rich Gays will go rural. After all that struggle, they’ll sink gracefully into the rhythms of the land before descending finally to their blissful place in the earth.

In the afternoon, Robert Nevil and I went on to Dixter. Garden of gardens, mecca for Poor Little Rich Gays. Never have we been so late in the year before. Utterly thrilling of course. A riot of colour and drama. This is the perfect garden, teetering on the verge of good taste, grandly careless but never a mess, never pretentious or prissy, bold, outrageous and gay.

Let the graphs speak for themselves.

Then we returned to the Multis in the marvellous, still, Autumn gloaming to gather apples which I’m living off still.

It was a perfect day.

Rural Simplicity: My Birthday Luncheon Laid in a Pub near the Multi’s New Kent Demesne

Dixter: Red Salvias, Thought by Some to be the Absolute Worst

Dahlias and Helenius ‘Lemon Queen’, with Asters at Dixter: Glory

More Drama at Dixter

Fabulous Bold Blocks at Dixter

Can you Believe it? Dixter

Great Stalking Cosmos: Why Won’t Mine Do That?

Dixter: Did You Ever?

Thursday 3rd October 2013

I took 56 years on Tuesday very quietly but in a new outfit of which more later. Essentially I’m pushing cream and bone right into October. It was a country birthday in the bosom of friends and so much kindness shown.

Last week was the official side. The Multis lavished Storey upon me. It’s a new restaurant formed from an old toilet block right by Tower Bridge on the south side. The Photo Multi spotted it from a bus in June but it’s taken this long to get in so booked is it.

At Storey they’re cooking with seaweed, grass, coal and rabbit. We had the ten course tasting menu, although it was finally more like fifteen courses. There were three un-menu-ed amuse bouche, a surprise cheese course and two petit fours courses (if you see what I mean), one of which was in a bottle.

The first amuse bouche was a cod skin crisped, blobbed with tiny dots of creamed cod’s roe and sprigged with a herb. There were several more aspects but I can’t remember what they were. Will have to go back to revise. £75 for the 10 course option plus wines of course. The second amuse was a nasturtium flower into which had been tweezered some oyster confection. A candle was placed on the table and lit. It turned out to be the dripping as in the bread and dripping course. Beetroot came with coal oil and horseradish done as snow by some wild new technique. A duck was shown, cooked in a pot, then taken away to reappear the course after next styled on the plate with tiny discs of burnt cucumber and six or seven other things. One of the puddings was puff pastry that had been cooked, dried in the oven, pounded, re-dried etc. It really did taste like a breakfast cereal without milk. Another pudding was an almond cream with dill ice cream. One of the after-puddings came in a bottle reminiscent of school milk. We all thought Margaret would appear at any minute and snatch it.

The Blond Multi was a little gruntled at Storey. I could tell he longed for a good square meal (no, I didn’t say ‘meal). Storey is a noble experiment. The odd thing is for all the elaboration, the range of flavours is a little limited and just a touch austere if not harsh.

But thrilling to have taken it.

How lucky I was.

Tomorrow I dine at the heart of the Daily Mail. Oh dear! But will hear all about the Ed Milly scandal from the mouth of the horse.

The Dried Cod Skin Amuse Bouche taken at Storey

The Second Amuse: Nasturtium with Re-formed Oyster Inside

A Third Amuse: But the Radishes were not Absolute Top-Notch

Charcoal and Sea-Weed Biscuits: Restaurant Storey

A Rabbit Puff with Dyed Carrot Top Piece: At Last Something Succulent! We Fell on These Puffs

A Scallop with A Flower and Other Items: Can you Tell What They Are?

30th September 2013

For years I’ve meant to warn. At last I’m warning: Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the World, get your Christmas card organised now.

It’s not too late.

You’ll need a concept for your card but that’s not hard: it’s either you, or your home, or your hotel suite. See some inspirations below.

Then you’ll need to consider backdrops, flowers, costumes. But your photographer and stylist should organise …

I look forward to thrilling cards this year.

By the way, Val and I carried out our annual tour of Buckingham Palace last week, mainly to see the Coronation Dress and other Coronation artefacts on display.

But that Palace really is something. Three drawing rooms in different colours. Intensely intimate and really quite small-scale, but unbelievably grand and great. A really superb Nash interior. Well done Nash for creating it and well done HM the Queen for not spoiling it.

Inspiration for your Christmas Card: From ‘My Royal Past’ by Cecil Beaton. Note the Vase and Double Doors to Give Drama

Or a More Intimate Portrait: You Could Show your Poor Little Rich Gay Life and Its Burden but Delight

Buckingham Palace Cappaccino

28th September 2013

You’ve heard about the great Return to Houghton of the pictures from the Hermitage? Sir Robert Walpole, creator of this great house, or his descendants, sold most of the paintings to Catherine the Great. Money trouble. Now, just until the end of October, you can see them returned and hung in their original places as conceived by William Kent, architect of the mansion.

All summer I’ve been trying to arrive at Houghton but not as an ordinary member of the public. Joshua Baring was guided personally by Lord Linley. Worst of all, Blue Roland and Santon de Belvoir lightening-ed for two nights from New Orleans, one spent in the State Bed at Houghton and the other with Nicky Haslam and Bryan Ferry. Their tour was led by David Cholmondeley, whom they described as ‘this big-deal aristo’. His sister had visited New Orleans on a lecture tour and invited them.

Maddening.

I had to buy a ticket and mill with the general. This great house I visited years ago with Robert Nevil – he incidentally gave a private talk in the gardens there to members of the Pony Club. ‘My husband’s just died,’ one of them said. ‘More time for the important things then,’ was the response, characteristic of the Pony Club. Unfortunately the widow kicked the other one really hard who had to be taken to Causality. Other members made little of it though.

But Houghton is one of my favourite houses. I’m not quite sure why since really I prefer the sparer style of the late 18th century. Houghton is a palace and unbelievably palatial. But William Kent judged so perfectly even though his client, Sir Walpole, about whom I know nothing and never will, no doubt aimed for grandeur and ‘me, me,me’. Normally, when the pictures from the Hermitage are not there, your experience of the house acquires another dimension from the exquisite items collected by Sybil Chomondeley, grandmother of the present Marquis, who had acres of money, superbly spent.

But they’ve all been cleared away for the returned pictures from the Hermitage.

Of course, one had to go. Once-in-a-lifetime experience. Truth to tell, the pictures appeared to have been chosen mainly as an enhancement to the decor.  The huge red saloon,now hung with vast religious and mythological canvases, made an unforgettable decorative impact. But few of the paintings stood up on their own merit. There was one good Rembrandt, one fab Van Dyck of man full-length in an incredible outfit of sky-blue and cacca de Dauphin, some good Knollys and a small Rubens. Bruce MacBain admired a Poussin over a bed. There was just the one Poussin. Unfortunately I don’t remember it now.

In the basement, other returned items were shown, but returned from America. One piece of silver now belongs to Oscar de la Renta, the frockist.

Houghton: the Rembrandt Returned from the Hermitage for the Season

Silver Piece Returned to Houghton from America for the Season, now Belonging to Oscar de la Renta, the Frockist

Houghton: Not Homely but Great

Friday 28th September 2013

Peter Ainger flew in and gave a talk at the Italian Cultural Institute in Belgrave Square. It was the fruits of his time at the Getty. I was bolt upright in the audience as was the former British Ambassadress to Rome. A TV greatness came in late with her husband who is a Knight for building services.

The talk was: did the new nobility favour coloured marbles after 1644 in the church known as Scalzi on Venice’s Grand Canal?  1644 signif date because from then purchase of Nobility for vast sum permitted by Venice authorities. So they were nouveau, weren’t they? Common, sweeping in with vulgar, fuck-off notions, swirly-whirly chapels in all directions in v. pricey coloured marbles. Old Nobility apparently good taste with colourless marble, but that was all they could afford. Hence need to allow new Nobility at a price.

Venice in fact just a massive tart’s bedroom by Versace equivalent, no better than Berlusconi’s drawing room (I know: we’ve never seen it. But you can imagine.)?

Frightful horror in the audience.

All this right up the Poor Little Rich Gay street, of course. Does money free or imprison? What drives to money? What inadequacy, if any? And so, are money’s products, as art or buildings, merely vulgar over-statements of wealth and eminence?

In our own lives,connecting us to the Venice of the 17th century, we have the same issue. The Multis’ penthouse is marble-lined and, if you count black as a colour, coloured-marble lined. When they did the penthouse there was a marble-crisis. A supplier ran off with a very large sum of Multi money. The Multis responded by flying to Italy several times to select their marble from the marble mines at Carrera. It was lorried over plus a team of marble-fitters who lived with their marble work for six weeks before the Multis took full possession of the Pent.

But the Photo Multi is an artist and their interior stuns all who walk its marble halls.

Afterwards we withdrew to the residence of the Cultural attaché for a fork supper. I chatted long with the TV star about high heels. Also with an Italian man who said, ‘When next in Rome you must call on Prince Jonathan. Just mention my name’. He gave me a card which I shall keep. He also said Berlusconi is the new Mussolini. Italy is finished as a place of high culture. I suppose the calling on Prince Jonathan is somehow a part of it, the idea of a stranger in a foreign city calling on someone they’ve never met quite gone now. Mainly because one is only ever there for a few days, at most a week. In the old days one might have stayed for a season and Prince Jonathan would have given an entreé.

And so, on to Houghton, where Sir Robert Walpole wished to swagger but somehow ended up with William Kent to gild and marble his halls.

Come back tomorrow. Come back. Come back.

Church Known as The Scalzi in Venice, Where New Nobles Possibility Self-Aggrandised

Sunday 22nd September 2013

I’ve ordered the tulips for next year, not completed my accounts, carried out engagements in Southampton, undertaken assignments for Dainty Lady TV (my cruise segment). Yesterday and today were Open House Days in our Capital.

The Multis have been blackberrying.

This morning I visited Erno Goldfinger’s house at 2 Willow Road, Hampstead, it being an Open House on Open House Day (normally National Trust) but today free. Of course Bruce MacBain, my private architect, was received there in Goldfinger’s day. Indeed Mrs Goldfinger chased Bruce down the road after he had left to explain – for Goldfinger was utterly impossible.

Trellick Tower, which he built – once a slum, now an icon. Also, its matching pair by Blackwall Tunnel, now adored. In the dis-used laundry room of Trellick Tower I attended a party in 1977 to mark the departure for America of Virgil Grayson’s then boyfriend, as they were called in those days. The drums of the washing machines were filled with ice for the oysters.

I do hope my home becomes National Trust after I’m gone. It certainly should. A life is quite completed if the liver’s home becomes National Trust after they’re gone.

Love the Goldfinger home actually, although would never live there. No antiques.

For reasons not declared Robert Nevil has been in Eastbourne despite that we’ve got Dixter to visit. Tomorrow I take Buckingham Palace with Val. The Corrrie Dress!

This afternoon, I attend, on the recommendation of Genevieve Suzy of the magazine world a play with musical numbers about the life of A.A Milne by Giles Brandreth called ‘When We are Sixty’. Mainly because the Gay Mother knew Christopher Robin, or rather Commander Milne.

I forgot to mention on Wednesday last I was at a preview with Genevieve of a play about Constance Spry. After we managed to infiltrate the party of a world-figure on the Daily Mail and got into the Ivy on the coat-tails where we had cocktails on the management which were quite strong for Genevieve who then argued with the world-figure whose occasion she had penetrated. The world-figure was subject to massive hate-mail one time when she referred to the circs of a person’s death as ‘sleazy’ – which is all very well except that ‘sleazy’ is now something many chose to be rather than a moral failing.

Yesterday I went with Connor Cadaux and Cèsar-Kaiser Kaiser to Battersea Power Station which was open for Open House Day . Queued for two hours with ordinary members of the public. Felt sick. Connor and Cèsar were absolutely not speaking, each accusing the other of having kept the other up all night. The Power Station is truly great from the outside. The inside reminded me of our own derelict mine buildings, that is the mine buildings on our family land, except it’s bigger.

Lovely though and a massive must-see because only that day, yesterday, to see it before it’s turned into a John Lewis or whatever.

Actually I was furious because the Evening Standard, which is a free newspaper, had the impertinence to hold a party for the so-called 1000 most-influential people in London in Battersea Power Station earlier in the week. Could not believe it. Fuming. If only I’d known in time I would have seen to it that I was one of the 1000 most influential people in London for sure. Because that’s how those things work, you know. If you announce that you’re influential, then you are.

I am influential.

Afterwards we went to the Unilever Building and finally City Hall. I forgot to behave like Queen Victoria. I had hoped to say to a guide, ‘Bring this building alive for me,’ but forgot.

Unilever – well, Matt Driver WAS Unilever at one time. City Hall – nice but nasty materials.

Tuesday I am exhibited at luncheon for Dainty Lady TV. Haven’t a thing to wear.

Wednesday 18th September 2013

Invitation figures continue to rise. Dare we speak of the green shoots of recovery?

Friday at Bruce McBain’s, where he was fearfully ragged over his lack of pre-cooking of the plums by some new Poor Little Rich Gays. Saturday to Houghton for the once-in-lifetime Return of the Paintings from the Hermitage, missing the Alice Temperley Show. I wasn’t able to attend Joshua Baring’s private tour conducted by Lord Linley in June owing to pressure of engagements. Robert Nevil himself gave a talk about the Pony Club in the garden at Houghton, also in June, or perhaps May. Monday to the Warehouse apartment of Angus Willis and Fergus Strachan for a post-Tuscany dinner. Tonight the premiere of a play about Constance Spry who did the flowers for the Coronation. Can you imagine the Heaven?

Otherwise I’m up to my eyeballs in assignments for Dainty Lady TV. There’s a run on my greatness at the moment. Last week it was Ikea, this week it’s my Cruising thoughts. A colour piece is required, no facts.

All the more fuel to my mission to resemble Queen Victoria this autumn. At the Warehouse I said, ‘Where’s my drink?’ exactly 90 seconds after arrival.

So – we say farewell to gardens (almost) for this year. I’ve been storing up for a long time the wretchedness of Sissinghurst which we visited in June – bare earth, colour clashes, muddle-headed arrangement of plants. No flair or plan. V. disappointing.

The Gay Mother’s garden has been astonishing, especially in late August. Even herself, never satisfied, is minded at last to say so at the age of 89.

Hideous Clash but Not Fun: Sissinghurst in June

Inspired: Sissinghurst the White Garden: Even if in Flower, Wouldn’t Do

Sissinghurst: Ghastly

Sissinghurst: Horror

How It Should Be: The Gay Mother’s Garden in her 90th Year: August 2013

The True Garden: the Gay Mother’s Garden in her 90th Year, August 2013

Thursday 12th September 2013

Val, fortified with port but growing steadier through the afternoon as the fortification wore off, and I carried out an assignment  today for Dainty Lady TV at Ikea, North Circular Road. I’m only just back – shattered. We had a wail of a time. Saw a lady with a 100 frying pans in her trolley. Another contemplated a floor-length paper lamp : ‘The cat’ll play with it, ‘she snapped at her husband then knocked it over. It was a no-buy.  Oh the crewel work lampshades! And the Ming dinner service! Radiant. If only one had room…

Val and I were shown, slightly hysterical, in nipped-in mini-outfits shrieking round Ikea: me saying, in China and Glass: ‘I’ve got those silver entreé dishes, of course. They were a wedding present to my mother. Nevertheless I feel the call of more serving dishes.’ But where was the selection? Val said, ‘Sweden’s near Russia. Perhaps they favour service à la Russe.’ He seemed to think service à la Russe was equivalent to plating up. I said, ‘Service à la Russe need not preclude serving dishes.’ I added, ‘The Blond Multi hates the vegetables plated onto the plate at dinners. He likes to help himself from serving dishes.’ ‘At least I got one thing right, ‘ said Val.

We must not upset the Multis.

We went on about service à la Russe for some time because we know what makes fantastic TV.

At one point we were desperate. We had nothing in our trolley. Then Val lighted on some rufflet tape on offer in packets at a certain length. He snapped up despite having no immediate prospect of curtains to make. Rather like the young women in Northern Ireland who sensibly book Northern Ireland’s only desirable wedding venue well in advance, well in advance of having any man with whom to unite. The men of Northern Ireland are apparently impressed by the wife-like quality of booking in advance rather than slightly perturbed.

Then things looked up in Fabrics. We loved a white fabric with children’s drawings all over it. Val said he’d dip it in instant coffee for an aging effect and use it for my dining chairs. We studied how to buy the fabric. You have to self-cut. Can you imagine the adventure? The scissors were chained which reminded Val of how teaspoons were chained against nicking in greasy spoons in the 60s.

Anyway I was going to do my fragments. But what about last night! The Italian Cultural Institute! Dinner after in the private home of Cultural Attaché. Me deep in confab with household name. ‘I love heels,’ she said. She’s 66, you see, although you’d never know it. ‘Can you walk though?’ ‘I don’t intend to walk, ‘ she said.  She said, ‘The people I work with have given up on heels. I haven’t.’ She meant Gloria and Angela.

So: my fragments…

Genevieve Suzy, of the magazine world, dined, oddly in August (who dines in August in London: it’s impossible) with Roland Mainflower and Ed Jasper, the bed linen expert. She’d never dined there before and only by co-incidence knows them. Magazine people are big at Roland and Ed’s. Genevieve couldn’t believe it. The champagne! ‘The money…’ she spluttered. In pre-nibbles, caviar was actually assaulted upon her mouth by Ed. ‘He talked very fast,’ Genevieve said. ‘There might have been a reason for that,’ I said. We reckon their income is £350,000 a year, what with the private doctoring in Harlena and the investments.

Robert Nevil, lured by the call of the Pony Club back from the bottling factory in Bulgaria (the orphans would piss in the pickling plant) dined last week after West Side Story, the Musical. ‘Chatting to Danny Boyle in the Post Office….’ he dropped. Arse. He knows DB because neighbour, not through the Pony Club, of which DB is not a member. That man was a credit re: the Olympic Opening Ceremony but I’ll never forgive him for that unspeakable boy-in-toilet incident in Slumbog Millionaire. As for the wretch-making nightmare of Trainspotting throughout, but when that heroin-addict soiled the pink sheets…

Unforgiveable. That’s enough, Danny Boyle. You’ve gone too far. Heroin addicts should buck up. And I’m never going to India.

Finally I lunched at Penn, the richest place in Britain, with old friends, not often seen. Carole Vaux, Carstairs as was, married Derek in the late 80s when all he had was a lock-up in East Finchley. Now she’s got a pool (outdoor but heated), rose garden, extensive garaging and Fern Britton – well, you can’t say next door because each house is in a wood of its own. Roxanne General, the jet-powered headmistress, was the other luncheon guest. She recalled being seven and eating a box of Milk Tray in a park with one hand while with the other holding the penis of the man who had given her the chocs, with the promise of bigger boxes on further days. ‘Didn’t affect me at all,’ she said. It was annoying when somehow the practice was discovered and put a stop to because no more chocs.  Any idea of arresting the man did not occur.

Ikea Fabric Bought: Val to dip in Instant Coffee for Aging Effect

Ikea: Chained Scissors

Lady of the 100 Frying Pans: Ikea

Ikea: Crewel Work Shades: Must-Have

Tuesday 10th September 2013

I’ve been immured in estate work. Papers all over the floor. Plus I’ve resolved to use up all the nearly used up small bottles of shower gel in my shower.  Pliers though to get the top off the one from L’Occitane which was free gift for press trip.

So the Autumn Season began with rather too much Benjamin Britten – but more of that later. I must also launch my scheme to be more like Queen Victoria in the later years.

Rufus Pitman, world-loved novelist and critic and commentator, is in blazing form. He gave a dinner. There’s a cat that visits his flat. It actually lives downstairs, in another flat, where it is viewed as a girl-cat called Pamela. But chez Rufus it is Monty and definitely male. Rufus has written and performed on Facebook a jolly song about the life of Monty, not explicable in normal terms. Further drama: Raj Zoraster, other half of Rufus, insists on the rather ITV3 spelling of ‘Monti’. He absolutely does.

As always at Rufus’s, fantastic luxury gossip because all the other guests run the country. Apparently in the old days, the Whips were actual heavies who would tower over recalcitrant MPs and lift them off the ground if necessary until their voting plans were clear. Now it’s all Ed Milly, pretty, pretty, Hampstead communists. More and more I’d like to take Ed Milly home and soothe him in a basket by a nice warm fire.

Lord Arrowby also runs the country; he was diagonal from me at the table. Dead opposite was Sir Morton who runs the peers, I believe. Otherwise he and Lady Morton bicycle around the Central of Europe and do their best for some delirious old gay called Helmut who thinks of nothing but sex and has sadly reaped the consequences. They had much difficulty in conveying their story of Helmut because Poor Little Rich Gays, even the most powerful in the world, have the concentration span of gnats and, as we know, rarely listen  or change their minds anyway – how else would they have become what they afterwards became? But Lady Morton was having none of it and forged on, even if it meant hospitalisation with the effort. Lord Arrowby himself was distracted, just at the vital point, when Helmut had escaped from a secure unit,  and I had to tell him off. I’m one of the few that would dare. But I put it down to his suffering and constant contact with the Prime Minister. Whereas the PM, as we know from the Cornish beach shots, has turned into a barrel, Lord A has grown never more lovely, with a miraculous transfigured quality, transfigured by the cares of this world and transported to another plane. Whose heart would not stir? Speaking to me, he melts completely and is radiant. But if I speak to him, it’s another story. ‘I hated Coldbarrow,’ he wailed at one point. ‘Hated it.’ That was his Public. He won’t take what he calls a long car drive (i.e. ten miles to a plant nursery) because of unpleasant memories of going back to The Firs, the former dentists that was his Prep School. The last time he went on a car journey, he said, was with me and Robert Nevil, about ten years ago. It was only to near Stansted Airport for a plant nursery.

I must tell you who Robert Nevil met in the Post Office, what happened re: caviar when Genevieve Suzy of the magazine world dined with Ed Jasper, the bed linen expert. Also the story of  Roxanne General, the jet-powered headmistress, who was offered a box of Milk Tray by a man she met in a park when she was seven. Finally, finally, who did we see in the audience on an obscure visit to Guildford?