The Trump I (barely) know

I can’t say I know the new President of the United States very well, but during the five years I lived in New York between 1995 and 2000 we were on nodding terms. That is to say, when I turned up at a party and he was there too, we would politely acknowledge each other. This was for two reasons, neither of which reflects particularly well on me.

The first is that I was briefly the party columnist for Vanity Fair, deciding whose photos should appear in the monthly round-up. Donald Trump was keen for his picture to appear as often as possible, obviously, hence the nod. The second and more important reason is that my girlfriend for some of that time was Lucy Sykes, a British ‘It Girl’ that Trump had a soft spot for. He would actually cross the room to talk to her.

Trump had been married to Marla Maples, but they separated in 1997, and after that he was footloose and fancy free. He certainly had an eye for the ladies, scanning the room for potential conquests. I remember being told by someone who worked with him on The Apprentice that the producer Mark Burnett – now Trump’s ‘special envoy’ to the UK – employed someone referred to as the ‘Trump Whisperer’, whose job was to calm him down whenever he was about to lose his temper. Apparently, the most effective method was to persuade an attractive young woman to cross the room in his peripheral vision. ‘Who’s that?’ he’d ask, forgetting about whatever it was that had annoyed him.

Lucy is the source of my favourite Trump story. She was in Pastis having lunch with her friend Lloyd, an English lawyer, when she noticed Trump at another table.