High life
I think I was there
Taki
Thear uninvited and uninformed hacks tell it, Svengali has blown into town and mesmerised Trilby. Or Rasputin has arrived to manipulate Sir James Goldsmith into taking over Pakistan. In reality, all that has happened is a man and a girl fell in love and got hitched, c'est tout. Mind you, it wasn't exactly the boy next-door meets girl type of romance. Nor the party to celebrate it. In fact, it was a Visconti-type ball, not a rented party chair in sight, columns of flow- ers to the ceiling, an orchestra to make Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire proud, three orchestras to be precise, and a gar- den lit for the kind of romance that our parents knew and we have only heard about.
The uninformed ones billed Jimmy and Annabel Goldsmith's ball as the party of the year — and for once they were right. Actually, Jimmy Goldsmith's parties are all the same. He always sits at table numero uno surrounded by his buddies, Aspers, Selim Zilka, Jim Slater, Lord Rayne, and after the main course he walks around the room paying compliments to girls like Elle MacPherson (seated next to Taki) and demanding assurances from friends that they will not ask Aspinall to make an after- dinner speech. (Ergo the three orchestras, especially the one from New Orleans, that can drown out an Demosthenes-to-be.) Needless to say, your correspondent got dead drunk, despite the fact that I had sworn that I wouldn't in order to be able to write about the bash under deadline. The reason is easy to explain. The party was too good to stay sober for. Jemima Khan didn't help. She looked like a young Rita Hay- worth, backlit by the starry heavens. Look- ing at her and Imran one realises what utter nonsense people write. And why not? After all, it makes for good copy.
And now for the party. Henry Kissinger came after dinner, as did Oscar and Annete de la Renta. Jerry Hall sans Mick, Harry Worcester with Tracy, Petruchio and Kate in the guise of Mark Shand and Clio Goldsmith. Also Sir John Falstaff, dressed as Dar, Imran's tonsorial adviser, and Hamlet, as in Nigel Dempster, agonising whether he should or should not write about the evening. (There are still five unmarried Goldsmith children, ergo parties galore to come.) During dinner we played the Shake- speare game, who would be who if the Bard was describing the bash. 'Jimmy is Henry wit, of course,' said a sweet young thing, momentarily forgetting the said monarch eluded the Bard's pen, probably because he wasn't around at the time. No matter. Titania was Bruce Oldfield, Lord Lambton was England's greatest lover, Romeo, Prospero Alistair Londonderry and Portia as in India Jane Birley, Jemi- ma's half sister who thought the whole thing up to begin with.
The House of Windsor was represented by Princess Alexandra and Princess Michael, with husbands in tow, and the House of Rothschild by Sir Evelyn and Lord Jacob. Alas, I was the only Greek, unless my old friend Joe Dwek, very much present, has changed his Egyptian national- ity for that of the Olive Republic. When I left at 5 a.m. my host and hostess had long gone, but I did have a very friendly discus- sion with some very nice Pakistanis waiting outside in Ham Common. Whether they were there as guests or as gawkers, I was too tired and emotional to work out.
Previous page
