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Thursday 4 December 2008

Death of a clubman

Mark Birley: a man who was right in everything

Mark Birley really knew how to live

He then triumphed with a classic: ‘Nobody tells me anything anymore!’

I could only laugh. And laughter was what I shared a lot of with Birley. We would meet regularly. When he was fit (and I often saw him pumping iron at the Bath and Racquets), we would always lunch at Mark’s or Harry’s or George. And we would tell endless jokes and poke fun at the maximum number of friends we had. He never went anywhere else. He simply wasn’t interested in anything outside of his Mayfair quintuplet. When Nicky Kerman eventually got him to lunch at his new Mirabelle, Mark brought along his largest Alsatian, because he knew Kerman, in his bourgeois sense of hygiene, would not allow a dog. They ended up at Harry’s Bar, where Mark had pre-booked a table.

So Mark was mischievous. After he and I swam with dolphins off the island of Baru in Columbia, I asked him what he thought. ‘Slimy — but I enjoyed it,’ he said. ‘Just like a few of our friends.’ He always carried with him a sardonic sense of wit, usually coupled with a cutting condescension for others, especially in matters of taste. He was fastidiousness personified. When we went on holidays with him, he would take his beloved and dedicated factota, Elvira and Mohammed, and a cook, and all his tableware and crockery and cutleries and vases, so that he would have all his usual perfection surrounding him. If he had been at the feeding of the 5,000, he would have complained that there was no lemon for the fish. That’s how spoilt he was. But ultimately, he was right in everything. Who would have thought of filling up the walls of the sumptuous Harry’s Bar with an army of cartoons, or subjecting Annabel’s to a basement of low ceiling (certainly for a man of 6ft5), or cladding ostentatious onyx all round each of the showers at the Bath and Racquets, or creating Mark’s Club from a windowless rectangular room? Yet they all work, and work beautifully. And that’s what made Mark Birley remarkable — his eyes and hands. There are fine painters and writers and sculptors and composers who make an enhanced difference to our lives. Mark Birley did so with his clubs and all the rituals that went with our insatiable demand for eating with comfort and luxury.

More articles from: David Tang | this section

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