Morning:
9°c
Get out your glad rags, put out the bunting. The party season has begun.
TS Eliot got it wrong: August is the cruellest month because there are no parties. After a long, hot summer (or what should have been a long, hot summer) September is the season of lists and mellow social fruitfulness.
Next week sees the GQ Men of the Year awards dinner, the Booker prize shortlist announcement, the Sebastian Faulks, Francis Wheen and Tom Parker Bowles book launches, and the New Contemporaries party at the Serpentine, followed a week later by London Fashion Week which celebrates its 25th anniversary.
Never in the field of human socialising will so much champagne have been consumed by so many (and paid for by so few). As Winston Churchill used to say of champagne in general and Pol Roger in particular: “In victory, deserve it; in defeat, need it.”
Only this week, Simon Parker Bowles launched the new Green's oyster bar in the City, as Chris Blackhurst recounts on the opposite page. There, the organisers ran out of champagne glasses rather than champagne, which is perhaps a sign of the times.
How gratifying that despite the severe economic turndown we have still not lost our festive spirit. London knows how to party even when the chips are down, and we Brits know how to shake our booty with the best of them. Last weekend's Notting Hill carnival is the biggest such event in Europe.
The economy may go boom and bust but the human dedication to revelry endures. In recent months connoisseurs of the social scene have noticed another encouraging development. Never mind the green shoots of recovery, check out the party bags.
There was an austere period, post-Lehman brothers, when party bags went out of fashion both sides of the Atlantic. At the recession-chic Oscars in February the organisers made the goody bags less bling than ever — they were worth only a miserly $40,000.
But party bags have since returned with a vengeance. At the Serpentine summer party guests walked away with Smythson wallets, jeweller Stephen Webster showered his friends with Myla underwear at the opening of his new Mount Street shop, while guests at a recent Dorchester hotel book launch were given Carol Joy moisturiser containing diamond dust.
The omens have never looked so good. Europe's two biggest economies, Germany and France, have already emerged from recession, and it is surely only a matter of time before Britain follows suit.
So come on down. It's time to smear yourself with diamond dust and hit the town.
No way to treat a lardy
Jamie Oliver, dontcha love him? Not if you have been watching Jamie's American Road Trip, which has just started on Channel 4. The bloggers are not universally won over by his cheeky-chappie charm or his faux-naïveté. Some have been positively bilious. “Looking at the size of him a diet book might be in order, Mr Oliver,” says one disobliging critic.
If anybody had said that about the Domestic Goddess Nigella Lawson, they would have been run out of town as sexist/sizeist. Why can Nigella be voluptuous but not Jamie?
I never had much time for the Naked Chef after his mug appeared all over Sainsbury's. But after this level of personal abuse it is surely time to come to the rescue of this national icon. Jamie, ignore the naysayers: you can eat for England as far as I am concerned. Best eat for England before England eats you.
Samuel West's spitting sour grapes
Samuel West has complained that recent audiences for his play, Enron, in Chichester have been a “little stodgy”. Thanks, Sam. I was among a number of young Londoners who trekked all the way down to West Sussex over the bank holiday weekend and forked out £26 for a ticket only to find myself besmirched by you.
Actors, of course, have every right to insult their audience. But will Sam dare to be so outspoken about London audiences when the play transfers to the Royal Court? Will they prove any less stodgy? And could it be (dare one say it) Enron is a little overrated?
It is a fast-moving, slick production with an exemplary cast and is an entertaining allegory of corporate greed. But I for one didn't much care what happened to any of the characters nor did I find it emotionally involving. I admired it without being moved. If that's stodge, then yes I am stodgy.
Bring back the joy of socks
Having just returned from holiday I missed the great sock debate. Fay Weldon says women would find it easier if they picked up their husband's socks and cleaned the loo: “It's such a waste of time trying to tell your husband to pick up the socks or clean the loo. It's much easier just to do it yourself.”
In my post-feminist household I have a problem with holding on to my socks rather than letting them go. They all get filched by my wife from the communal sock drawer. I have seriously considered installing a Berlin Wall sock divide in the drawer but then I think that might be a bit sad, if not completely ineffectual.
The problem is that all socks these days seem to be gender neutral. Please, please can someone design a male testosterone sock that no women would want to be seen in dead or alive? I am all for sexual equality, but not socks equality.
