Long life | 24 March 2012

For a country in which ‘gay marriage’ is supposedly still illegal it seems to be happening rather a lot. Gay weddings are already big business, and hard-pressed country house owners are desperate to host them. One grandee who has cashed in spectacularly is Earl Spencer, brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Five years ago he let out Althorp, Diana’s childhood home and burial place, for three days of lavish celebration by a couple of American gays and their many guests for what was admiringly described in Tatler as ‘Britain’s first high-society gay wedding’. One of the ‘grooms’ (you get two grooms at gay weddings) was a well-known New York writer and heir to a great pharmaceutical fortune, Andrew Solomon, who, sparing no expense, even hired a British army tank sprayed pink for the occasion as a ‘going-away’ vehicle that fired bubbles instead of bullets from its gun turret.