High life
Some party
Taki
Talk about a picture being worth a thou- sand words. Mo Mowlam taking the floor in the arms of the grotesque Chris Evans (at the Palace nightclub in Blackpool last Sun- day evening) must surely be the defining image of the Nineties: ugly, joyless, form- less, pampered, unpatriotic, mushy, weak, sappy, pompous and self-satisfied. Cherie Blair's half-sister, Lauren Booth, wrote that she found the Blackpool 'atmosphere elec- tric'. Gee whiz, now here's somebody I will make sure to hire for my section in the New York Press. If she found the drab Blackpool low-lifers electric, imagine how she'll describe the glamour of Manhattan.
A less inviting atmosphere I could not imagine, except perhaps in Tirana on a rainy Sunday night. But not to worry. Just as the uglies (la Booth described them as groovers and funksters) began to shake their shape- less bottoms at their Seventies Blackpool party, the exact opposite was taking place at Windsor Great Park. Maya Schoenburg, aka Maya Flick — she has reverted to her maid- en name, and rightly so — chose Sunday evening for her 'Hollywood 1940s elegance' blast, one that I shall not soon forget. In fact, I have a confession to make. I had a white linen suit specially made at Anderson and Sheppard for the evening.
Maya's house was turned into a Holly- wood Forties nightclub, with tables named after Bette Davis, Ginger Rogers, Clark Gable and so on. There were three bands, all playing golden oldies, jazz and Nat King Cole favourites. The ingredients necessary for a successful party are good music and great wines. Most important of all, of course, is the mix of people. Maya has an uncanny ability to mix people and get away with it. There were Bismarcks and Habs- burgs, Schoenburgs and Thurn and Taxises, Shawcrosses and Rothschilds, Fortes and Summers, Valentino and Joan Collins, de Bottons and Metcalfes, Lawsons and Kents, Taubmans and Parker-Bowleses, Paul Johnson, Lady Carla and the Hindlips, Blacks and Stevenses, Fyrial of Jordan, Muck Flick and so on. There were three outstanding beauties: Jessica de Rothschild, Alannah Weston and Avery Agnelli, all in their twenties and all three extremely nice and unpretentious. There was not a single supermodel or pseudo- celebrity within 25 miles, and if there were any It girls around, they were assigned to the kitchen or the loos. This is what made the party so much fun. All 175 of us are Maya's friends, and nobody was selling nut- tin', as they say in Brooklyn, a rare occa- sion at London parties nowadays.
As always, I was the last to leave, crum- pling my white suit while I slept in the back seat of my Mercedes. But I woke up with- out a hangover, which is yet another sign of a successful wing-ding. The more tame the blast, the more one drinks to alleviate bore- dom. At Maya's one worked off the booze on the dance floor, leaving room for more.
London has been fun this time around, and it will get better tomorrow — I write this on Tuesday — at the Lord Hanson goodbye celebration. James Hanson has been a good friend and supporter for 40 years. He started Hanson Trust from noth- ing and turned it into a giant conglomerate, in the process making a fortune for his investors. The trouble with modern govern- ment is that people like Hanson are not lis- tened to. Instead, we have people like Roy Jenkins — a man who has never competed where it counts and who has been a profes- sional politician (read bullshitter) all his life — deciding the future of the electoral process. This alone is outrageous. On a military level, it is like excluding General Patton in favour of Boy George. What will Fat Ken Clarke, Ted (Don Juan) Heath and Michael (le faux aristo) Heseltine learn about the euro that Lord Hanson has not already forgot? Hanson is pro-Europe and pro-pound, and now that he's retiring he should be offered a column in a serious newspaper to advise those pompous jerks who pretend to know better in Parliament on matters financial.
I am now off to the Big Bagel to try to do a reverse Tina Brown. (She took a good magazine and turned it into one celebrat- ing the scumbag and his ilk; I will try to make a section of an already very outspo- ken weekly more so). Wish me luck, and next week I will tell you about the David and Goliath struggle of my old London karate dojo.
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