Morning:
14°c
Happy birthday to the Colony Room Club which celebrated its 60th anniversary this Monday. I was a proud member of the seedy Soho dive for nigh on 15 years and am saddened by reports of its imminent demise.
Entering the club was like walking into a cartoon strip. It gave you a heightened sense of reality: the salty vernacular (profanity after profanity), the drinks (treble shots all round) and the eclectic clientele (I'll never forget Lisa Stansfield warbling into my ear). Then two years ago I smelt a rat and never returned. After I mistakenly cancelled my standing order, I got a letter from the manager, Michael Wojas, cajoling me to cough up. I thought nothing of it and imagined I would pay my dues on my next visit. But then I got another cajoling letter. And then another. And another.
These missives undermined the whole bohemian ethos of the place. And why was he sending them out by first-class post? Surely he had enough funds to cover the £12,500 rent?
Auberon Waugh had a much better way of parting individuals from their money. He didn't send out letters but got his victims completely sloshed. He once invited me to the Academy Club, plied me with Château Musar and by the end of the evening I had handed over a humongous cheque.
So Michael, please don't send me another letter. But if you are happy to talk about it over drinks, well, that's another matter.
* If you are feeling despondent, can I recommend a great tonic? I have just read Anita Brookner's latest novel, Strangers, due out next year. Her fictional landscape is as instantly recognisable as Greeneland. It is peopled by frustrated old spinsters who are disappointed in love. The opening line is classic Brookner: "Sturgis had always known that it was his destiny to die among strangers." So far, so melancholy. The story opens on a rainy Sunday and even a car passing down a deserted street exhales a certain "wistfulness". Only once I had finished this misery-fest did I realise quite how much real life has to offer.
* The dearth of novels about the credit crunch has become a common lament. Where is the Martin Amis de nos jours? Nobody has got their teeth into capitalism quite like Mart did with Money. But now Sebastian Faulks (below) is rising to the challenge. His new novel will chronicle a week in the life of a hedge fund manager. Hedge fund managers display human failings writ large: greed, pride and hubris.
And nobody is better qualified to write about filthy lucre than Faulks, as he has lots of it himself. "The best thing about having money is that I don't have to do anything else," he recently said.
Apart, that is, from write a good book about money.
