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The invitation came from Ewan Venters, a Scot who currently steers the Paul Smith brand, and the venue was Angela Hartnett’s Cafe Murano in Marylebone. Would I like to come to a ‘small, intimate’ dinner (which usually means a small multitude) to meet Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Labour party in Scotland, who obviously
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The first Saturday of the Hay Festival is always a bit like the first day of term — bumping into people you’ve haven’t seen in months, sometimes for a whole year. Then there are the people down from London, dressed in mufti, sporting inappropriate sunglasses and crumpled linen jackets that haven’t been out of the
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When Keith Richards stepped up onto the stage at the Norman Mailer Gala at the Mandarin Oriental in New York last Tuesday, to collect the Autobiography Award from a bumptious Bill Clinton, he appeared to be almost speechless. Words eventually came, though, if a little tentatively: ‘I’m not usually fazed by stuff,’ said Keith, almost
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To New York, for a benefit gala at Cipriani 42nd Street for the Norman Mailer Centre and Writers Colony. We are there as a team to present British GQ’s first student writing award to a 65-year-old mother of two: Helen Madden, who presented the children’s TV show Romper Room in the early 1970s and still
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A side effect of last week’s failed putsch is Peter Mandelson resuming his position at the front end of Gordon Brown’s election pantomime horse — pushing Harriet Harman into the rear. This is not good news for the Tories, as Harman would undoubtedly have alienated even more floating voters. I sat between her and Boris Johnson
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Dylan Jones is astonished to find in Sofia that the former communist country has embraced his guide to the mores of modern life — and that not everybody looks like Borat To Sofia, then, on a ten-seater NetJet Falcon from Farnborough, accompanied by Bryan Ferry and a small coterie of GQ apparatchiks, including the best-dressed
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There are many things I’ll miss about my year with David Cameron, not least my regular visits to Portcullis House, the ugly upside-down cow’s udder opposite the Commons (it was designed by Michael Hopkins, although it looks as though he did this in the dark, possibly using Plasticine and some peat briquettes). After a while
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My holiday reading list this year was both accidental and catholic. Usually I plan some months in advance, but this year I managed to wolf down my summer reading list before stepping on a plane. Consequently I went to bed with Joanna Trollope, woke up with Philip Roth, had an affair with Tom Bower’s Conrad
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It’s been a busy week. There was Charles Finch’s dinner for Cate Blanchett at Drones (Jack Nicholson as louche as ever; Juliette Lewis surprisingly normal); a Calvin Klein dinner at Locanda Locatelli, the YSL Serpentine party and the BSME party at the Ritz. Everyone has Cameron Tourette’s these days, and you can’t go anywhere without
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Unlike Randy Newman, I’ve always loved LA in a completely unironic way. I love the climate, the light, the vegetation, the fake breasts, the lot. And the celebrity culture is impossible to get used to: I still get a childish thrill when I pull up to the lights and find myself next to Tom Cruise
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I am invited to the Oxford Union to speak in the last debate of the term. I had originally been invited to speak on the death of feminism earlier in the year, but as I couldn’t go they kindly invited me back. The motion is less onerous – ‘Life is too short to drink cheap