The ‘Clooney effect’ hasn’t touched my corner of Provence

My eldest daughter’s husband is from Como. In the early 2000s George Clooney caused a stir in the town when he bought a villa on the lakeside nearby, triggering what’s become known as the Clooney effect – a rise in house prices and the number of ‘bougie’ shops and restaurants catering for an increasing number of visitors. Rather than take a boat trip and gawp at the Villa Oleandra, visitors would be better heading to Gardone on Lake Garda and visiting Gabriele D’Annunzio’s insane Il Vittoriale.

Unlike Clooney, D’Annunzio (1863-1938), whose motto was ‘Me ne frego’ (I don’t give a damn), was a short, ugly, almost blind, toothless early 20th-century proto-communist/fascist war hero. He was also a dramatist and poet who, in his seventies, claimed to be still enjoying drug-fuelled orgies. I’d bet my cave that his house, which I visited with my young family 20 years ago, is more interesting than George’s.

A year or so ago, Clooney and his wife Amal bought a house half an hour away from the village in Provence where I’ve lived for ten years. Sometimes they eat at the Jardin Secret, part of our posh new hotel and restaurant complex, Lou Calen. My daughter and son-in-law dined there the evening that Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and saw the Clooneys in the next room. They’ve decided that George is following them around Europe, although it’s doubtful that he’ll be buying a house in their hometown of Paisley any time soon.

I first came here in 2008. Even then it was busy, but gently so. The restaurants were plentiful and full; the best were metres away from the four-storey village house on the Cours we rented for the following six years. There was a DJ in the corner of the square every Friday night where my then teenage daughters and I, plus half the village, danced to an unchanging playlist that began with Elvis and ended with the Black Eyed Peas.