Party time

The trouble with throwing a party is it only lasts for a few hours. Compared with the time and effort it takes to organise, it seems, well, a waste of time. John Aspinall spent months preparing the extravagances he used to stage at Howletts and Port Lympne, his perfect Palladian structure near Canterbury. At one of his parties, the staircase was festooned with dwarfs, while acrobats and wild animals roamed around the rooms. I remember playing chemmy next to Tina Onassis, or Blandford, as she then was, and a large tiger making an entrance and sniffing the green felt table. Tina fled to the loo. I was too embarrassed to do likewise and called banco instead. I was too nervous to notice whether I won or lost. All Aspers’s parties were centred on a theme or one of his heroes, people like Mithridates or the Diadochi or Cuauhtémoc, the last emperor of the Aztecs.