Before his untimely death last year, David Tang had attended a Pug’s club luncheon with the proviso that no one ask him how he felt. So all 20 of us asked him in unison, ‘How do you feel?’ He burst out laughing.
Sir David — he threw a riotous party at the Dorchester to celebrate his knighthood at which I got a bit tipsy and asked a good friend of his the reason for the honour. ‘For inserting his face the deepest in Prince Charles’s bottom’ was the rude answer — was a storyteller nonpareil. It was he who first told me about Fan Bingbing. Fan Bingbing is a Chinese actress and apparently very beautiful. When I asked David if he had Fan Bingbinged her, he feigned anger and told me to have more respect for a great Chinese thespian. Again, I was a bit tipsy (we only met at parties, never at funerals) so I insisted. ‘Come on, David, did you Bingbing her or not? You’re talking to Taki, not some credulous hack.’ ‘If you write that I Bingbinged her I will sue, as I should have done all those years ago,’ he said.
David Tang threw a party for me the night before I left to attend Pentonville University 35 or so years ago. Some years later, in St Moritz, he asked me please not to write that he was in attendance at a particular great summer blast. (He was a very loyal Spectator reader.) Back in London, I received a telephone call from him and he was in Orlando Furioso mode. I assured him that I had not mentioned his name because I knew that he was on a dirty weekend with the lady who was to become Lady Tang.
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