Princess Margaret’s grand car-boot sale at Christie’s last month reminded me of my own souvenir of PM. Several years ago I had decided to collect silver boxes, and a mutual friend asked if I would be interested in a couple belonging to her. ‘She’s having a clear-out,’ the friend explained, ‘Wants to get rid of a lot of junk. Would you be interested?’ He brought over a beautiful, and rather large, embossed square silver box for which I cheerfully coughed up £600. The following month PM had another clear-out and I bought another smaller but equally attractive box. When I opened the first box, I was fascinated to discover hidden under the velvet a small engraved card announcing ‘Presented to HRH Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones on the occasion of their visit to ________.’ (I shan’t reveal
the name of the country to save international embarrassment.)
That Christmas I gave my annual party and the friend declined my invitation because of a previous engagement with PM. However, at 11 o’clock, he rang to ask if he could bring her over for a nightcap. ‘She’d really like to see you. She loved you in Private Lives.’ Flattered, I told him to bring her right over. As the princess regally entered my hallway, I suddenly remembered the giant silver box sitting front and centre on the coffee table. I tried to stop her from coming into the room by persuading Roger Moore to engage her in spirited conversation (which worked). A few Famous Grouses later — in a tiny glass because ‘my hands are too small to hold a large one’ — the princess was as happy as can be and, except for a small glint of recognition which I quickly doused with more FG, the silver boxes went completely unnoticed.
I wonder how much of the England players’ lacklustre performance in the World Cup had to do with their subconscious concern about what their wives and girlfriends had been doing the previous night. As everyone knows the Wags took advantage of their freebie weeks in staid Baden-Baden to indulge in all-night partying and boozing, and all-day plundering of the local boutiques. For the players, many unsophisticated and yet virile men in their twenties, it can’t have been a million laughs having to go to bed at 10.30, forfeiting their conjugal rights, then seeing pictures of partners doing their girls-behaving-badly acts in the rags. Allegedly, some of the Wags even telephoned their loved ones in the early hours for a boozy chat. So maybe it was the fleshpots of Baden-Baden and not the Machiavellian Ronaldo that made our team lose its bottle because, to my inexperienced eye, during the final between Italy and France, the players seemed to have far more get-up-and-go than our boys did.
I was sad to learn of the death of legendary producer and my Dynasty mentor Aaron Spelling. But even more tragic, rivalling any of the duplicitous characters in his TV sagas, were his final days, as his family life had become the scandal of Beverly Hills. Languishing in his gargantuan $150 million palace, his official cause of death was dementia, Alzheimer’s and respiratory problems, but maybe a broken heart also contributed. Tori, Aaron’s actress daughter, has made a TV sitcom NoTORIous, in which her mother Candy is mockingly portrayed as a ditzy spendaholic by the pneumatic Loni Anderson. This, and other family matters, caused a public rift. In fact, Candy and Tori haven’t spoken for over a year, during which time most of Aaron’s oldest friends have not been able either to visit him or reach him by phone.
Tori apparently was also angry at her mother for moving Mark Nathanson, an ex-con who had spent time in jail for racketeering and tax evasion, into the Spelling mansion. The couple soon became the talk of Hollywood and were seen everywhere together. What the arrangement was we’ll never know, but it was noted that, rather than stay at home with Aaron, Candy preferred to hit the town and Vegas and NY with Nathanson.
I’m told that few of Aaron’s friends were at the funeral, his loyal secretary of 40 years making the cut at the last minute, and the eulogy made few references to Aaron’s many accomplishments. How this contrasts with the passing of my dear mother-in-law this week. Bridget Gibson’s funeral was a celebration of her life rather than a mourning of her death by loving friends and family — a fitting tribute to a wonderful lady.
We have had, by law, to install four hideously ugly alarm posts on each corner of our gorgeous infinity pool in the South of France, creating an infrared barrier which is supposed to prevent people drowning. The reason for this new and totally ridiculous ‘nanny-state’ law is that the toddler granddaughter of the minister of the interior, sadly, drowned in her parents’ pool and the minister had the power to put the alarm-post law into immediate effect, so he did. The alarm is supposed to emit a high-pitched whistle except that it only works if the potential drownee is wearing a complicated plastic bracelet — quelle horreur. When this nightmare was presented to my two-year-old petite fille she let it be know in no uncertain terms that this non-fashion accessory would never grace her wrists. It is a tragic truth that dozens of children drown in ponds, bathtubs and in the sea every year, but I’m not sure that this device will help much. And what new rule will we be forced to adopt next? A cover over every frog pond? Railings around the ocean? The mind shudders.
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