A nicer side of Nero

I haven’t felt such shirt-dripping, mind-clogging wet heat since Saigon back in 1971. The Bagel is a steam bath, with lots of very ugly people walking around in stages of undress that would once upon a time have embarrassed that famed stripper Lili St Cyr. How strange that very pretty girls do not shed their clothes as soon as the mercury hits triple figures, but less fortunate ones do even if the number is a cool 80.

June is my London party month, or used to be before the city was transformed into a prison camp. And what about The Spectator party? I haven’t heard a woid, as they say over here, so I’m sending a little boid over to find out. I have ordered a brand new white suit for the occasion — if it takes place, that is. If it doesn’t, I’ll mothball it and wear it just before the man who is always dressed in white comes to visit.

It all seems so long ago, the Turf Club ball, the Hanbury and Goldsmith cricket matches, the 4 a.m. race around Berkeley Square, the all-nighters after Ascot, the country balls. But such are the joys of getting old: more memories than action, and there are always the regrets. Never mind, I miss London and my English friends — the dinners at Bellamy’s followed by drinks at 5 Hertford Street. When I’m next allowed to visit London without having to quarantine — I have a beautiful house waiting for me to give a party — I will head for the British Museum in order to see for myself Nero: The Man Behind the Myth, the sprawling new show about the Roman emperor, #MeToo’s second most hated man after Harvey you-know-who.