High life | 8 January 2011

Six hours into the new year and already there was trouble. My own bash to welcome 2011 with 50 of my nearest finished around 5 a.m., so I rolled down towards the Palace hotel still looking for some action. I had a very pretty German girl in tow, Fiona, a friend of my son, so I swept into the lobby in style. Then it happened. I saw the vision to end all visions and a desperate, sensuous pain — the type that can make a grown man cry out — hit me as never before. This is the curse upon those who follow the supreme Beauty — that is to say, the Beauty that belongs not to ideas and ideals but to living forms.

Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder, but I say that’s all crap. Real beauty is rare and extremely precious. It means torment and despair and it leaves a man enchanted and trembling. Take my word for it. This one was the real thing. And she came up and started chatting.

Now I won’t play coy. I recognised her despite my extremely inebriated state. She’s Russian-born, very young, a so-called supermodel and married to a titled Englishman with lotsa real estate. We discussed what ends a marriage. Or rather I did. Lack of good sex or utter boredom. She was discreet and non-commital. She kept staring at me with a very amused look on her face, while three men, two of whom I knew well, hung on her every word.

She never told me her name or where she came from or where she was staying, and I never told her mine. I said I had once seen her at Ascot from far away and left it at that.